deepstash
Beta
The Best Way to Ask for a Favor
Just because someone didn’t help you before doesn’t mean they won’t help you now.
In fact, research suggests they’re more likely to help. Because they want to feel better about rejecting you previously and repair the relationship.
126 SAVES
146 READS
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
4
Key Ideas
Don't try and convince someone how much they will enjoy helping you. It reeks of control and is presumptive. It drains their joy out of helping.
How they feel is for them to decide.
One common tactic is to portray the help we need as so small, that it is barely a favor. "Would you add these updates to the database? It won’t take you more than five minutes.”
It is conveying that you think the work the other person does is easy, quick, trivial and not very taxing. That’s not a great way to enlist help. You might also underestimate the size of the favor. Do not presume it won’t take them very long the next time you ask them for help.
While reciprocity does make people more likely to comply with the request, it also makes us feel controlled, which takes all the fun out of it.
Reminding someone that they owe you a favor does not create good feelings. Scorekeeping is fundamentally bad for relationships.
4
Key Ideas
11
Key Ideas
A raise isn’t a favor or a gift; it’s a way for employers to pay fair market valu...
It’s not greedy or entitled to ask for a raise. Unless you work somewhere truly dysfunctional, it’s understood that you work for money. This is okay.
You shouldn’t ask to talk about your salary when your manager is especially harried or having a bad day or nervous about impending budget cuts.
On the other hand, if you’ve just saved the day with an important client or garnered rave reviews for a high-profile project, or if your boss has seemed particularly pleased with you lately, now might be a particularly good time to make the request.