Are you looking to ask for a promotion?
Or a pay rise?
Maybe you want to negotiate your duties.
Or you are looking to get more PD paid for or drop a day of work.
Whatever it is that you are looking to ask for, it can fill you with dread and worry. You know you need to ask, but you are not sure how.
& even if you know how, you are afraid of hearing NO and having no options left.
Often we spend a lot of time ruminating in our heads. Playing out scenarios, getting worked up, playing with the different responses and fearing rejection. So much so, that by the time we have the actual conversation, we are on the defensive.
We go in with our back up, ready to fight.
If we hear YES, we are taken by surprise and we feel like a balloon deflating fast. If we hear NO or are questioned WHY, we don’t know how to respond and feel frozen.
So here’s a new way of approaching this situation.
When you want to make a request, try to understand what you are asking for, from that person’s point of view. So put yourself in your senior, supervisor or employer’s shoes.
Think about the information they would need, the order they would need to hear it and the reasoning behind your request.
You already do this every week when you are speaking to a parent asking them to see a paediatrician, do a particular activity at home or start their child at daycare.
By bringing it back to something you already do, you can recognise what you do well, and what tweaks you put in place, based on the person you are making the request of.
The same skills can be used when you are asking for something YOU desire from your employer.
This way instead of going into the conversation with your back up, filled with dread and the fear of rejection, you are going in with information, ready to have a conversation. You are meeting your employer where they are at (just like we do with our families), ready to work with them, to get what you need. It’s a relationship built on trust and rapport.
& by focusing on that, it takes the heat and anxiety out. It brings in kindness, understanding and compromise.
Leaving you more empowered and more likely to ask more often for what you need.
Because like most things, with practise, it gets to be easy.
