Give Them an Excuse to Make an Exception

Sometimes you need someone to give you something that goes against their normal actions, or risks undermining a principle of theirs, or may set a precedent they wouldn’t want set. When this happens you need to help them find an excuse to say yes to you and still say no at other times that suit them. They might come up with their own excuse of course, but why bother? For them it’s as easy to say no. You’re the one with the vested interest here, so you’d better do the hard work.

Maybe your mother feels that if she comes on vacation with you to help with the kids she’ll have to do the same for both your siblings, and that’s too much of a commitment. Perhaps management has already stipulated that it won’t take on any new staff. You need to help it change its minds—and what it needs is an excuse for making an exception in this case.

Try telling your mother, “I realize it’s a lot of your time, and we could always cope fine when we had two children, same as Jack and Rachel cope with theirs. But now that we have the twins as well it’s more than double the work....” There’s a justification she can use if Jack or Rachel asks why she doesn’t come on their vacations as an unpaid babysitter.

When it comes to your proposal to management, explain that you agree staffing levels should be kept to a minimum. But this case is different. Two extra, experienced staff to work with the new software can free up four people to sell full time, so the increase will pay for itself in the first three months.

If you can think of a reason for making you the exception to the rule, and one that they can then use on anybody else who asks for the same thing, you’re in the best possible place for them to say yes to you.