You Are More Convincing Than You Think, so Don’t Be Afraid to Speak
Some of us don’t ask for something because we don’t think it will make a big difference. If you’re afraid to speak up because you don’t think you’re too convincing, you probably don’t trust yourself enough.
Vanessa K. Bones of the Harvard Business Review describes how she and another researcher experimented with the power of persuasion:
First, we asked each study participant to estimate how many people they would need to reach before someone would agree to fill out a survey, make a donation to a charity, or let the participant borrow a cell phone.
Later, when the participants came out and made the same requests, the strangers were twice as likely to say yes than the participants expected. When they returned to the lab, many participants expressed surprise at how willing people were to fulfill their requests. (In a separate set of studies, I found the same to be true even when people ask others to engage in unethical behavior, such as vandalizing a library book.)
This is just an experiment, but the idea is this: it really doesn’t hurt to ask , because getting what you want is probably more likely than you think.
Bones says social pressures are stronger than people often think, and this strength comes in handy in the workplace. She argues that companies place an emphasis on strict rules and official titles, and as a result, employees believe that their own influence is limited and dependent on their role or rank. So they don’t ask for anything.
Her argument reminds me of an article I read about how employers discourage negotiation. Often the employer gives the impression that negotiating a salary is not an option at all. I told a friend about this article when he applied for a new show that fit the bill. He decided to ask for a higher rate, even though it was discouraged. He didn’t get a higher rating, but instead the company offered him a number of perks that weren’t even mentioned earlier.
The rest of her article is worth reading. Check it out at the link below.