By: fallen angel

Have you always gotten a “No” for an answer? Do you find it difficult to get things your way? Whenever you ask for something, do you always prepare yourself that you might not get what you want?

Maybe you’ve been asking the wrong way.

The way you frame your questions or requests matter. You could ask for something in two different ways, and end up with two different results. Let me share with you what I learned early in my career.

I was at Melaka, and the company I was doing my internship at was having a team building session over the weekend. They flew people in from Hong Kong and Singapore, and there were activities and all, you know, play games, motivational talks, company presentation and boring stuffs like that.

And then it was time for dinner. We all went to the restaurant at 7pm, although the reservation was for 7.30pm. Someone asked me to ask the waiter if we can sit down first, but one of the senior managers stopped him and told me, “Don’t ask like that. Go tell the waiter that we have a dinner reservation and ask him where is our table.”

I was stunned. The same question, but asked in a different way.

The first, “Hi, we actually have a reservation at 7.30pm, and we’re wondering if we can sit first” gives the waiter an opportunity to say no, or say that he has to ask his manager first.

The second, “Hi, we have a dinner reservation. Where’s our table?” does not give the waiter any chance to say no at all, and forces him to show us our tables. Of course he may still say no, but with so little opportunity to say so without offending the customer, most of the time he will just do his job and show us the table, and if there’s no tables, prepare one for us.

See how asking the same question in a different manner gives different results? Just by framing your question differently, you position yourself in a dominant position, and this increases the chances of things coming your way.

Good luck!