Making the Connection: Strategies to Build Effective Personal Relationships (Collection) (42 page)

Inside Back Cover

Sandy Allgeier, SPHR,
is a consultant, trainer/facilitator, and coach who helps organizations maximize their human resource potential. Before launching her consulting business in 2000, she had 25+ years’ experience in HR, rising to SVP of HR at a major provider of assisted living services, with responsibility for over 7,000 employees.

Allgeier contributed to the book
Conversations on Success, Volume 7
(Insight, 2005), which also featured Stephen Covey and Dr. Denis Waitley. She earned the 1999 Award for Professional Excellence from SHRM’s Louisville chapter and was selected as faculty member and facilitator for SHRM’s HR Generalist Certificate and Recruitment and Retention Certificate Programs.

Cover Design by Chuti Prasertsith

How to Get What You Want

Without Having to Ask

Richard Templar

Vice President, Publisher: Tim Moore
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© 2012 by Richard Templar
Publishing as FT Press
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458

Authorized US Licensed Edition from the original UK edition, entitled HOW TO GET WHAT YOU WANT WITHOUT HAVING TO ASK, 01 Edition, published by Pearson Education Limited, © Richard Templar 2011.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the Publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and above-mentioned publisher of this book.

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Printed in the United States of America

First Printing July 2011
978-0-273-75100-7 (Original UK publication)
ISBN-10: 0-13-282436-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-13282436-1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Templar, Richard, 1950-2006.
  How to get what you want : without having to ask / Richard Templar.
       p. cm.
  ISBN-13: 978-0-13-282436-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
  ISBN-10: 0-13-282436-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
 1.  Success. 2.  Success--Psychological aspects.  I. Title.
  BF637.S8T434 2011b
  158.2--dc23
                                                                        2011021751

Introduction

It’s easy to look at the world and think that the people who always seem to get what they want are just lucky. Actually luck has only a small part to play. Of course some people have a better start than others, but we all know people from comfortable, even cushy backgrounds who are miserable, and others who started out with nothing and have created a successful and happy life.

So what’s the difference between those for whom things always seem to work out and those for whom it’s always a struggle? Well, if you observe other people (as I do) you can see that some people know how to get what they want, and others don’t. My wife, who is nothing if not focused,
¹
comes from a decent background, but it’s a long way from where she is now. Sometimes people tell her how lucky she is to have the lifestyle she has, with a job that fits perfectly around the kids, to which she replies (politely but firmly), “Lucky? Luck had nothing to do with it. I planned it this way.”

It’s true. She always knew she wanted to live in an old house in the country with cats and dogs and children and a job she could fit around them all. And I’ll tell you something else. Before we ever
met—eight years before our first child was born—she had the opportunity to become a free lancer. She knew she wanted kids in the future, and she thought, “This will be the job I need one day, when the chance for kids comes along,” so she took it. You can see why she resents being told she’s “lucky” to have a job she can work around the children.

There’s nothing special about my wife’s approach. Anyone can do it. You can do it. Forget about luck—if it decides to join you for a while that’s great, but you can do without it. It’s just a matter of being clear about what you want, and then knowing how to go about getting it. Which is what this book is all about.

There’s a common misunderstanding that getting what you want is the territory of the superconfident, those with chutzpah, bravado, oomph, front. I guess that’s because those kind of people are comfortable bossing others around and asking brazenly for what they want. But it’s not all about that at all. Of course, if you’re not as confident or assertive as you might be, you may not like asking for things. Sure, I can understand how you feel. You don’t want to put other people under pressure, or maybe you don’t want to be told no. Perhaps you’re just uncomfortable about baring your emotions to other people when it comes to discussing the things that really matter to you. It’s OK; we can work with that.

You see, if you play your cards right, there’s often no need to ask directly for what you want. A lot of the
skill is in the work you put in yourself in private—the thinking and planning. If you get that right, the job’s half done already.

On top of that, you want people to see you as someone they’d like to help and support. If you present yourself as a positive, likeable person, why would anyone say no to you, without a really good reason? And if they do have a really good reason to say no—well, there are ways to deal with that, too. Ways of helping them to say yes.

If you’re not used to getting what you want, stand by to change all that. It may take you a while to develop all these skills, but they’re all achievable and you can start right away. So what are we waiting for? If this is what you want, let’s do it.

RICHARD TEMPLAR
[email protected]

Part 1: Be the Kind of Person Who Gets What They Want

Look around you. Can you see the haves and the have nots? Of course you can. Some people just seem to have everything fall into their lap, whereas others maybe try just as hard but don’t get everything. We all have good breaks and bad breaks. So why do some people go on to get what they want so often, whereas others always seem to get the short end of the stick?

Well, it’s a lot to do with you personally. If you get the foundations in place, you’re much more likely to get what you want most of the time. So before we look later on at the techniques you can use, let’s just start by considering how you can maximize your chances of getting anything you decide to go for.

Know What You Want

Pretty obvious really. But hang on; are you really sure you know just what it is you’re trying to get? Promotion maybe? A pay raise? Are you desperate for somebody to offer you a new job in his company? Or do you want to persuade your partner to cut down her hours and spend more time with you? Start a family maybe?

Let’s take just one of those as an example—say, getting promoted. OK; that’s an aim. So what’s your problem? If you work reasonably hard, the odds are you’ll get just what you want, eventually. Most of us gradually work our way up the ladder. Oh, you don’t
want it eventually, you want it now—is that right? Well, why didn’t you say so?

And while we’re at it, precisely what job do you want to be promoted to? And at what pay?

You see, the clearer you are about what
exactly
you want, the easier it is to aim for it. Otherwise you may not even know when you’ve got it. Take getting your partner to work less and spend more time with you as an example. If he comes home earlier one night a week, will you be happy? Will you have what you want? Maybe that will be fine. Or maybe you want him to come home at a reasonable time three days a week, or every day, or just one day but to also be up for going out for the evening.

Try asking yourself: “How will I know I’ve got what I want on this?” What will be different? What will have changed? How will your life look?

So the first step to getting what you want is to identify precisely what that want is.

Know Why You Want It

So let’s go back to that promotion. What’s that all about then? Is it that you want to be recognized by the company? Or to improve your career prospects when you move on? Or to make your folks proud? Or because you want the pay raise that goes with it? Or is it just that you don’t want that colleague you can’t stand to get it instead?

There’s a reason for considering this. You see; it might turn out that what you
think
you want isn’t actually what you want at all. Suppose you were offered a more impressive job title but without any pay raise or significant increase in responsibility. Would you have gotten what you want? That’s going to depend, isn’t it? If what you really wanted was recognition from your boss, it may well be the answer to your wishes. But if you wanted a promotion because you needed a higher salary, then it’s not going to help. In fact a pay raise without a promotion would have been much closer to your goal.

Say you want a better relationship. Why is that? You might think that the answer to this question is obvious. And indeed you might be right. Sometimes it is obvious. But sometimes we don’t realize exactly what we want until we’ve established why we want it. People who get what they want don’t take the “why” for granted. They think it through.

Know How Much You Want It

We want lots of things. Well, I know I do.
²
I expect you do, too. So it’s important to know what you really, really want. Sometimes we have to play one thing off against another. That’s hard to do unless you know where your priorities lie.