How to Ask Your Boss for Something and Get a Resounding YES - 3 Step Framework

Hey everyone, this is self made Millennial. I'm Madeline Mann. Today we're going to be talking about how to ask for something from your boss and get a resounding yes. This is about asking for things that are significant, like privileges to work from home, getting a raise, having them sponsor your visa, getting vacation time, moving to a new role in the company. I will give you a framework on how to ask for all these crucial things that you want. And, and I'll also provide two real world examples on how to use it. If you follow this framework, your boss will be enthusiastic about granting your request instead of feeling like they're giving something up. One thing to note before we jump in to all the content is make sure that you are not asking for anything big. Until you've built trust with your boss. You've got to fill up that credibility piggy bank by showing that you will put in the time, that that you're reliable, that you're hardworking. And that does not come in the first few months of employment. You should generally wait at least a year before asking for something big. That timeframe could be shorter or longer, depending on your situation, but that's generally a good rule of thumb. So the three steps to asking your boss for something big are gather information and develop a plan. Create a framing strategy and deliver the message. So let's start with the first one. Gather information and develop a plan.

Before you make this big ask, make sure you fully understand the context, the impact of what you're going to ask. And start gathering information and planning around that ask. Make sure you have all this information and context prepared. And don't forget the part about planning ahead. What's your plan? This is the part that a lot of people leave out. If you're going on vacation, who's going to take over while you're gone? You're switching roles. What's your transition plan? These are key things to think about so that when you go in and make the ask, they don't feel like you're unloading problems, but you're actually bringing them solutions. For example, let's say your ask is to work from home more often. Start gathering evidence of why that would be a more productive thing for you to do. Now, this could be anecdotal, it could be stories that you tell about different contexts that you've worked in and how that's worked out. But that is still helpful to help paint a picture. Your boss developing a plan on that side of it is when you're out of the office, how are you going to make sure you're in contact with everyone? How are people going to schedule meetings with you? How are you going to attack this? Have you done it before? And really understand all the questions that might arise and have solutions to those questions. You could also pull articles of what other companies are doing or when you're asking for other things, like you're asking them to invest in you, like invest in your Visa or. Or invest in a raise. Gather up examples of you excelling and developing over time to really show that you're a great person for them to invest in. So the second step is creating a framing strategy.

Here you have to understand who you're talking to and what motivates them, and then frame your ask as a win for them, not as something that you need or deserve. One important approach when framing is to focus on the future. A lot of us, when we're asking for a salary increase, we might focus on the past, things we've accomplished and how now we deserve this raise due to what we've done. Take it a step further. Do talk about what you've accomplished in the past and talk about how you're growing, you're continuing to grow, and that they will be investing in you and how you want to take the company to the next level. Level. This is much more compelling because in this scenario, they're getting something. They're getting someone who's constantly looking towards the future and looking to improve and giving the company more and more. And then the last step is delivering the message.

So this is all about your tone of voice, the way you present it, the actual conversation, the way you address their questions. And this part will be a lot easier if you've done a lot of homework on the first two parts. I think all of this will become more clear as we walk through some examples. First example is about an employee who had been at a company for about four years. She was a high performer, she was a leader, and she put a lot into the company. And she thought that it was the perfect time for her to take some time to herself, go travel for three months and work remotely abroad. This was a big ask. She was the leader of the company. No one at the company worked remotely. And for her to ask to go away for a while, that had a lot of question marks around how it would affect the team. The way she asked for this time abroad was, look, the timing is right in my personal life to go do this. I really want to. I feel like I've earned this since I've been here for Four years, and if I don't get this, I don't really see myself staying at this company. This is not the way to do it. There is no win win here. She completely focused on her needs without addressing any of the companies. It really didn't sound like she'd given any thought into the plan she was going to put in place. And there was a bit of a threat at the end there where she said she would leave the company. So it really kind of left a bad taste in her boss's mouth. So let's hop in the time machine, take her back to before she had that conversation and go through the three steps we listed and figure out a better way to do this. Let's start with gather information and make a plan. She needs to think about how will this affect the team, what impact will it have that she will be out of the office? Then she needs to design a plan of exactly when she's abroad. How is she gonna keep in touch with everyone, which meetings she can attend? This is a lot to figure out, but she had to figure that out before the conversation. Then the second part is to create a framing strategy so she has to think about what her boss is like and he has empathy, he's highly focused on the goals of the company, he's detail oriented. And so what should she do to make sure that he feels like he's winning? So in that case, she should express her devotion to the company and her passion for it and then walk through all of the details of the plan so that he feels secure that this is going to be positive for the team as well as he knows exactly how it's all going to unfold. The third step is delivering the message. And, and this is how I imagine she would have delivered the message had she planned out the first two steps ahead of time. Past four years, I have been so focused on this company and I realized that I need to take a step back and reframe my mentality so that I can bring the same level of enthusiasm that I brought four years ago to my work. Today I'm asking if I can work abroad for three months remotely, and I've come up with a full plan of how to make that work. I actually think this plan will bring a great structured workflow to the team that we've been lacking lately. I know you value us focusing on our mental health and our motivation, and I truly believe that this will help me perform at a higher level. This example talks about what the boss gets. He gets a more enthusiastic, more engaged employee. Who has thought through exactly how they're going to make sure that their decision is not going to affect the team in a negative way. All of this cushy framing language is only substantiated if you truly have a plan in place of how this is all going to work. Talk is cheap. You have to make sure your actions follow what you say. So having the piece of framing with actual evidence and a plan is the perfect marriage of making sure that. That this plan is gonna work out and that your boss is gonna walk away thinking that this is going to be a positive thing for the company. So let's do another example. In this one, the employee, he did everything right. He had been working in a department where his boss was all about mentoring him. She was preparing him to take over her position someday. And that was actually a really big thing that she took a lot of pride in. So you can imagine when he wanted to start to work in a different department, when he just realized that his interests were stronger, Else that he felt super weird about telling her that he wanted to move department. So he began step one, gathering information, seeing if it would even be possible to potentially move to that department, Making sure he had everything in line for that, as well as who would take over for him if he was to leave that department. He doesn't want to leave his boss high and dry. So he started thinking about how he's going to train different people in his group and even reach out to some people in this network should they need to bring in a replacement. Then he moved to the second part, creating a framing strategy. So if he was thinking about what motivates his boss, what's meaningful to them, it's her dedication to mentorship. So that was his focus of his framing. He focused his discussion on what an amazing mentor she's been, about how she's been pivotal in helping him in his career, and that he wants to take those teachings and bring them to a department that doesn't have the same kind of leadership that this department already has. The underlying current of this message is that any success that happens in that other department will be in part due to her mentorship. Result of this conversation was not that she felt that he was ungrateful or that he was abandoning her. She actually felt this higher sense of purpose, like she was helping more than just her department. This was really powerful. It allowed them to strengthen their bond and allowed him to make a transition to a different department without any kind of awkwardness or feeling like he was harming the relationship. Those were two examples. I feel like we could talk about this topic at length and I would like to do future videos on asking for more specific things, but I think this is a good start to really frame what you're asking for as more of how can we both win? It'll be fun to read your comments if you have any stories of when you asked for something and it went completely wrong, or you asked for something and it went famously. This is a new channel, so hit a like on this video and definitely subscribe if you want to see these videos coming up every single week. That's all I've got until next time.