When Should We Ask?

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When we mindlessly just comply with a request, people's default is actually to say yes. We often don't have to put the kind of extraordinary effort we put into making those requests. People will write out this long winded emal laying out all these rationals for why they're asking someone for a favor and their friends re read it a thousand times. And so instead of negotiating ourselves down before we ask for something, we should really assume there's a good chance in get what i actually need or want. So i should ask for that before i start asking for less, before i even do the first ask yes.

Vanessa Bohns talks about how all of us have hidden influence and how we can use it effectively.

— YOU’LL LEARN —

1) Why we end up underestimating the willingness to say yes

2) How to get more comfortable with asking

3) How to say no without feeling guilty or awkward

Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep701 for clickable versions of the links below.

— ABOUT VANESSA —

Vanessa Bohns is a social psychologist, an award-winning researcher and teacher, and a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University. She holds a PhD in psychology from Columbia University and an AB in psychology from Brown University.

Professor Bohns has been a Visiting Scholar at the NYU Stern School of Business and has taught at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and Harvard Business Review, and her research has been published in top academic journals in psychology, management, and law, and featured by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, and NPR's Hidden Brain.

Her first book, You Have More Influence Than You Think, will be published in September 2021. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two daughters.

• Book: You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion, and Why It Matters

• Twitter: @profbohns

• Website: VanessaBohns.com

— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW —

• Study: "The really fundamental attribution error in social psychological research" by Sabini, J., Siepmann, M., & Stein, J

• Blog: Rejection Therapy with Jia Jiang

• Book: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

• Book: Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want by Nicholas Epley

• Book: Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection by Jia Jiang

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