From the course: When Negotiation's about More than Money: How to Negotiate (Almost) Anything

If you don't ask, you don't get

From the course: When Negotiation's about More than Money: How to Negotiate (Almost) Anything

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If you don't ask, you don't get

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- So the first part of the negotiating process is deciding to do it. Does this apply to negotiating with your boss? And I would say absolutely, it does, 'cause a lot of us would avoid negotiating with our boss. But if you don't ask, you don't get. And I know people who've said, "Oh, I would love to go to Australia, but I don't think I could get the holiday." And they've never even tried. I say to them, "Have you asked your boss?" "Oh no, I don't want to cause a fuss." And so they've never been to Australia and that's tragic. What a loss to have not seen such a brilliant country. So if you don't ask, you don't get. And there's no harm in trying. The worst that's going to happen is they're going to say no. And you can always crumble. It's fine. Because if it is a no, you just say, "Okay, well I just thought I'd ask." But the point is they kind of owe you for next time now. The boss is thinking, "Oh, I said no to his Australia trip. I feel a little bit bad about that. I might have to let him do something else in exchange to keep him happy and motivated." So you've got nothing to lose. The worst that'll happen is you'll have to go, "Oh, all right then." And you now have more information about what you can get. So if you say to your boss, "I want six weeks," and they go, "Well, you can have four, rather than three," at least we know we can get four. Maybe we can't go to Australia, but we can go to somewhere else for four. We know that. So we now know a bit more about what we can get and what we can't get, and that's always useful. A final thought about this is if you've done something really well, you've just completed a really successful project or brought in a big contract, a big deal or something, you could say to your boss, "I did really well on this, didn't I? And I'm thinking that maybe I've earned something a little bit special, and what I would really like is to be able to go on holiday to Australia for six weeks. Is there a way we can work this?" So you could take your opportunity and link it to something that you've done really well.

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