Ask And You Shall Receive

Every once in a while I have a class that changes my perspective. This week was one of those classes. I’m taking a class in negotiations and we did a negotiation exercise in which we had to negotiate a job offer with another classmate that acted as the recruiter. We were given a paper with point values assigned to different things to negotiate. In the process of this negotiation, we found we had many competing interests, so many that when we started negotiating about location, we didn’t ask for what we really wanted, we each gave in a little from what we really wanted. As a result, the one location that would have helped us both best we never asked for.

It made me wonder how many chances I’ve passed up just because I don’t ask for exactly what I want. This served as a wake up call that there is never any harm in asking for what you really want, the worst that you can get is a “no”, so go for it!