The Lowball Offer: When Momentum Meets Undervaluation

After surviving the painful near-foreclosure experience, Cindy and I put our heads down with an intense focus on climbing out of the hole it put us in. Outside our full time jobs, we continued to put every ounce of energy we had into growing our multilevel marketing business. That provided plenty of adversities to search for seeds in, and we’ll circle back to that soon enough. Within the company I received my W2 from, though, a unique opportunity was brewing.

While I wasn’t traveling extensively to support other facilities’ behavior-based safety initiatives through 2008 and 2009, I was still involved and had a very close relationship with the gentleman based in the UK who oversaw the process globally. I learned in mid 2009 that he planned to retire the following year. Having led a process locally for nearly a decade and supported him throughout North America for so many of those years, there wasn’t a close second in the company who had qualifications that even resembled mine. 

Before I move on, please know I don’t make that statement based on ego; it was anything but… I was still paid hourly at that point, with overtime being viewed as a cardinal sin, so my annual earnings barely hit $40,000. Even as the first decade of the twentieth century came to a close, that wasn’t setting the world on fire. All that said, I had no complaints. That role provided me with a reasonable living and growth opportunities I may have never had otherwise. When Dave formally announced his retirement, I had several serious conversations; with him, with the corporate safety director Dave reported to, with Cindy, and with Rod (my local HR manager). If I moved forward with the interview process, I knew there was a high likelihood that I’d be offered the position. Being offered the position was one thing, accepting it and fulfilling the responsibility that came with it was something far more intense.

The job duties weren’t at all intimidating, I had done very similar work (just on a smaller scale) for the sites in the US, Mexico, and Canada for several years. The big change would be the significant increase in international travel. Dave traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America; I hadn’t been to any of those places. And he was often away from home for weeks at a time. Even without considering the business Cindy and I were juggling on the side, this would require tremendous family sacrifice. Matt was fifteen at the time. We didn’t have the best relationship then, but young men need their dad to be present to grow into the strong men they’re capable of being; he was no exception.

Rod provided me with amazing insight before I threw my name in the hat for official consideration. I had a very candid conversation with Tim, the corporate safety director I’d be reporting to if I was offered and accepted the position, to get clarity on the full scope of the role and the total compensation package. To that point, I had always been an hourly employee working out of a home facility. Both of those things would change in this new role. I also had conversations with friends who held similar responsibilities in other organizations, so I knew what the market rate for a position like that was. Tim provided all the details about the job I had hoped for, including the pay range. 

With all those bases covered, it was game-on! At the risk of sounding arrogant, I interviewed exceptionally well - and I should have. Not only was I the most qualified, I had nothing whatsoever to lose if by some chance I wasn’t offered the job. I can’t remember where I was traveling home from, but I do remember getting off a flight in Charlottesville, VA and getting a text from Tim that the offer letter was in my inbox. I spoke with him by phone as I drove back to Harrisonburg, discussing the timing of my transition if I accepted the position. We did not, however, discuss money; I didn’t think there was a need to since he was very specific in our initial conversation about the range.

When I got back to my office, I opened his email with the offer and was shocked by the number - and not in a good way. The annual compensation was just two-thirds of what he said he thought was too low in our initial conversation. I called him immediately to let him know there was clearly a typo in what I had received, but it wasn’t a typo. He explained the “corporate policy” limiting any internal promotion to a 25% overall pay increase, regardless of the change in workload or responsibility. When he confirmed that this was indeed the best he could offer, I (not so) politely declined.

Even after years of scarcity, a “promotion” can still feel like a professional gut-punch when the compensation reveals how little your value is recognized - whether it's masked as a corporate policy or not. Bad situations disguised as opportunities force real negotiation of worth, even when it takes years to identify the greater benefit available in those seeds. Looking back, I’m completely certain that this was God’s hand moving because I wasn’t nearly smart enough to understand just how much every aspect of my family life would be strained if I had accepted the role. That said, it still stung! We’re about to look at that in more detail. Before that, I’ll challenge you to reflect on a time an opportunity felt like a step forward until the details smacked you in the face - like I experienced when I opened the offer letter. Note the immediate emotional reaction and one early warning sign you might have ignored.

The Sting of Being Undervalued

In our initial conversation about the position with global responsibility for our corporate-wide behavior-based safety initiative supporting around 80 facilities, Tim shared that the salary range was initially listed as $63K to $75k. He followed that statement by immediately saying he felt like that was too low; I agreed. I had a close friend doing similar work for another organization at the time and he was being paid over $100k to cover just North and South America. Tim was able to get an increase approved, moving the range to $72k to $85k. That was still well below what my friend suggested as a reasonable consideration for the work involved, but also significantly more than I had ever earned. With the increased range approved, I decided it was worth pursuing.

The formal offer came in at just over $50k, leading to my question about the typo. I’ve never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer but I was able to develop reasonable arithmetic skills in grade school. That number was well below the bottom end of the initial range Tim and I agreed was too low - and the range that was no longer in place. The $40k annual salary I was making at the time was based on a standard forty-hour work week (where I slept in my own bed each night) with very limited domestic travel. Make no mistake, I was in no way chasing a significant payday. This role would have required me to travel internationally two to three weeks each month and 80+ hours per week including travel time. While I (almost) understood the corporate policy limiting increases to 25%, we were not comparing apples and apples.

The sting of being undervalued was real. If I’m being completely honest, it pissed me off. I mentioned being completely convinced that this was God’s plan; had the offer been even in the initial range (that Tim and I both agree was too low), I likely would have accepted. The title and responsibility may have fed my ego but it probably would have wreaked havoc on my family. Even through the sting, Tim and I maintained a great relationship in the years that followed. In fact, he took me to a Chicago Cubs game in Wrigley Field’s 100th anniversary season during my final trip to the corporate office years later. He wasn’t responsible for the stupid policy…

In complete transparency, the true pain wasn’t the low offer. It was realizing how much I had been undervalued (intentional or not) while still carrying the scars of scarcity. Earlier, I referenced the tenth leadership attribute Napoleon Hill outlined in Think and Grow Rich, “Willingness to Assume Full Responsibility”; I did just that and took a hard look at all my options moving forward. I stayed in my role and continued working as hard as I ever had, but I also started actively seeking opportunities outside the organization for the first time in more than a decade. 

Looking back, that scenario provided the seeds I’d soon need for developing what Hill shared as the third leadership attribute: A Keen Sense of Justice. He defined that by saying “without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of followers.” As self-centered as my desire for that position may have been, accepting it would not only have placed a heavy burden on Cindy while I traveled, it wouldn’t have provided our family with anything resembling fairness or justice - regardless of which salary range the offer came in at.

As much as it hurt my ego in that moment, declining the offer provided a foundation I could draw from later when I’d truly need to stand on that keen sense of justice. More on that soon. It also showed me that negotiating from principle is far more effective than attempting to negotiate out of desperation. Before we look at that more closely, think about a situation where you’ve been undervalued. Consider the role you played in that personally and the lesson you learned from it - or the lesson you can draw from it now.

As I realized just how frustrated I had gotten over someone who may have actually had good intentions sharing his insight, regardless of how little I agreed with him or that I hadn’t asked for it, I knew I needed a change. I had led the local behavior-based safety initiative for more than a decade, and I was one of the most tenured within the company. That said, turning down the global position did indeed mean that I no longer had upward mobility, at least not in that vertical. The fourth leadership attribute Hill described was “Definiteness of Decision,” and I was about to apply it in my career.

Soon after butting heads with the second best behavior-based safety person in the company, I learned that my current human resources manager was planning to add a human resource generalist role locally - a role that had been in place various times over the years but had been vacant for a while. I had no formal training in HR at the time but had been involved in various aspects for years since safety was in that department. And who am I kidding, I’ve never let a detail like not having formal training keep me from getting involved in anything…

Before the position was even posted, I had a very candid conversation with the manager and convinced her that I should be considered. While the sting of being undervalued was still relatively fresh in my mind, I was negotiating from principle instead of desperation. The structure of my compensation would change but the overall salary did not. One condition I had to agree to for her to take the idea to her boss at the corporate level (who was then Rod, my former HR manager) was that I would enroll in and complete a degree in Human Resource Management, paying for classes out of my pocket then being reimbursed as I completed each successfully - and outside my regular work hours. If you remember what I shared previously about why I chose not to go to college after high school and why I stopped enrolling in the night classes I was taking years prior, you may be stunned to learn that I never even hesitated in agreeing to that condition. This time, the conversation had nothing to do with money. The principle driving me in the negotiation process was opportunity and challenge. I knew I was very capable of earning the degree, I just never had a strong enough reason for it before; in the world of human resource law, staying out of jail became that reason.