In a collaborative workplace, no matter your seniority, you’ll have to ask others to do things for you. That might be giving feedback on your work, approving something you’ve done, or executing part of a project.

There’s a totally foolproof way to ask anyone for anything.

🙏 What I’m expecting from you.

This should be as specific as possible: frame what you actually expect this person to do for you. The clearer you can be, the less potential confusion and frustration there will be all around!

✨ Manager tip!

If you don’t set clear expectations, you definitely won’t be able to manage people for not meeting those expectations.

🗓️ When I need it by.

Sounds simple, but a deadline! This will help the other person figure out when they’re going to work on it, and also makes it easier for your ask not to get forgotten at the bottom of the to-do pile.

Don’t have a hard deadline? That’s okay – set one anyway, and you can let the other person know that it’s flexible.

❤️‍🔥 And why.

Usually people skip the why, but this matters because it reinforces that this ask is important. It’s harder to dismiss or ignore. The “why” component can be one or both of these:

Why this task?

This is about why the task matters – to the business, to the team, to the customer, or whoever! You can use this to convey urgency, dependencies, or to help others to feel like they’re part of a team effort.

Why this person?

This is about why you’ve chosen this person to do the task, and it could be about their skillset or their role (eg. approver). This can help you to build relationships, build confidence in others, or even help to further clarify what you hope this person will bring to the task.

• …because I trust your judgement in storytelling.

• …because I would appreciate your context as a salesperson.

• …because you’ve done a lot of presentations like this before so you’ll have a unique perspective.

✨ Manager tip!

You can also use this framing to encourage direct reports to practice specific skills – and you don’t have to be secretive about your intentions here. Your “why” can be something like, “…because I want you to practice x.”

Once you have the structure down, you can use it to frame all of your asks – and tweak the phrasing to whatever sounds natural to you! You can dial up the seriousness or make it light, but make sure you always include all three elements to get the best results. 💖