👋 Hey, it’s Wes. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share frameworks for becoming a sharper operator, rooted in my experience as an a16z-backed founder.

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One of my new favorite shows is SEAL Team. It’s a military drama where a group of elite Navy SEALs complete career-defining missions in every episode.

In one episode, the team needs to bring along two tech analysts to recoup a drone that crashed in foreign territory. The analysts have a bit of a verbal scuffle with the team because they really want the SEALs to understand how important the drone technology is, and how delicately they have to handle the hardware.

One of the SEAL operators, Sonny, says, “Yeah, yeah. We’ll get your toy back for you.”

Now, I love Sonny, and the show was intentionally trying to dramatize the different priorities of the nerds (analysts) vs the jocks (the SEALs).

But it’s a wonderful example of how sometimes people treat doing their job like they’re doing you a favor.

The analysts didn’t have a sharp retort, but if they did, a good response might be, “It’s not ‘my toy.’ It’s actually US government property, paid for by taxpayer dollars, and we’re both doing our jobs to retrieve this thing. Let’s stop fucking around and go bring it home.”

Why do we sometimes feel self-conscious about legitimate work requests, and why should we stop doing that?

I’m here to do my job, you’re here to do your job

As someone who is self-conscious about bothering people, I’m happy to jump in if a coworker needs my help. But asking others for help? That feels wrong. It feels like I’m imposing, being a nuisance, depending on them when I shouldn’t need to, and that I might owe them in the future.

If you’re like me and are more comfortable giving help than asking for help at work, this reframe will be useful: I’m here to do my job, you’re here to do your job.

A coworker helping out or doing their part isn’t them doing a favor for you. That’s them doing their job. You don’t want to say this out loud because it sounds confrontational, but say it to yourself in your head to develop conviction around this idea. You should feel confident making requests that are perfectly reasonable and are part of your role.

There might be exceptions when what you’re asking for really is a favor. Maybe you’re in a pinch and you have a semi-unreasonable ask that the person could justifiably say no to, and you’d understand why. 

Those are actual favors. But most work requests are not that.

For example, you ask your coworker to prioritize the design for the upcoming product launch because timelines out of your control got moved up—that is not a favor. It’s called doing your job and asking them to do theirs.

You should still frame requests strategically

You should still appreciate when coworkers react positively to your requests. Even if they are obliged to help, they could choose to make your life harder along the way. We’ve all encountered a hotel front desk person, sales associate, customer support rep, or flight attendant who chose to be helpful vs one who you’ve pissed off, who is now hell-bent on using whatever power they have to enforce a rule they could easily choose not to enforce. Working well with coworkers is not to be taken for granted.

This also doesn’t mean you should go around making demands and expecting compliance. No one owes you anything, and your workday will be more pleasant when your counterparts are happy to collaborate. 

That’s why you should frame 90% around why the idea benefits the other person, and why it’s important or urgent for the company. Don’t just toss a demand over the wall—explain why you’re making the request, but do it knowing you’re being reasonable.

Personal favors use social capital

When you’re self-conscious about asking for help, it’s tempting to fall back on framing a request as a personal favor. There’s an emotional element to asking for a favor that makes folks feel sympathetic and brings them emotionally closer to you. When you’ve framed requests as favors in the past, your colleagues probably happily jumped in to help. If it works, why not do it?

The reason is because it’s not sustainable. It doesn’t work long-term because it uses social capital. You have a limited supply of social capital. You need to replenish it. And at work, you will always have more to do and need cooperation from cross-functional team members to do it. 

If you use your social capital on “favors” that aren’t really favors, you won’t have any social capital left when a situation comes up that truly is a favor. Or you’ll be so indebted that you’ll need to go the extra mile to do actual favors for the other person until you’re even again. 

Personal favors make you seem incompetent

The other reason to avoid framing work as a favor is because over time, it makes you seem incompetent. Your coworkers don’t want to work with someone who needs favors all the time. People who don’t have their act together need to rely on last-minute generosity from others to simply do their work.

If you can’t think of a reason why it benefits the other person or their team to help, then appeal to why it benefits the organization. This is useful because there’s an element of a moral high ground. It feels selfish (and it is) for them to say no to something that would clearly benefit the company. So appeal to that. Most people subconsciously think of CYA at all times at work—they don’t want to be the person who has to explain why they were too lazy to complete their leg of the relay race.

You’re both acting on behalf of the organization

Lastly, remember that when you make requests at work, you’re not asking as yourself. You’re asking as an agent of the organization. You’re wearing your hat as director of marketing or UX designer or product manager. And your coworker is responding as an agent of the organization too—and that means you should both be doing what’s best for the company.

Early in my career, I was on a marketing team that had to forecast units for upcoming product launches. I needed some data from a database that only the inventory management team had access to. When I asked the analyst, they acted like it was the biggest imposition—when really, it was literally part of their job to support the marketing team because setting accurate forecasts was a big part of making sure the launch was a success for the brand.

If you’re a leader, make sure your team doesn’t react like this to other teams’ requests. Complaining about other teams is an easy way to bond, but it’s a lazy way to bond. If you don’t have a great relationship with Joe from a cross-functional team, Joe shouldn’t drag his feet. You should ask nicely, but Joe needs to do this job regardless of whether he likes you.

And if Joe has a request for you, you should treat the request with an appropriate sense of urgency because what you think about Joe as a person is irrelevant. You should do what’s best for the company.

Otherwise, you create a culture where high performers eventually leave. As leaders and managers, we don’t want that to happen. It’s better for everyone to have the shared understanding that work requests aren’t favors. It helps both the asker and the other party because eventually, both sides will need to do the asking too.

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Thanks for being here,
Wes Kao

PS See you next Wednesday at 8am ET.