Raise your hand

Many opportunities are not handed out automatically to the most deserving person. They go to whoever said they were ready.

You can ask for a harder task, a promotion, a reference, a place on a project, a meeting, help, a discount and a chance to try.

People are systematically wrong about how likely a refusal is. Francis Flynn and Vanessa Bohns asked participants to estimate how many strangers would agree to a small request — fill in a questionnaire, lend a phone, walk them to an address. Participants underestimated the share who agreed by about half.

The error has a clear shape: the person asking thinks about how awkward the refusal would be for them, and the person being asked thinks about how awkward refusing would be for the other. So “they are bound to say no” is a poor estimate of probability and a good description of your own embarrassment.

Asking increases the number of refusals. That is its normal price. It also increases the number of agreements that would not have existed without the question.

Initiative is not pressure. After a clear refusal the request is over. Nobody is obliged to turn someone else’s no into the opening of negotiations about how wrong their feelings are.

Ask for something specific, explain the grounds, and leave room to refuse without penalty.

The world is not obliged to guess what we want. Raising your hand is sometimes awkward. But expecting someone to notice silent readiness among a hundred other people is a fairly complicated communication system.