Making Requests (Part 1 of 2)

This article is twenty-sixth in a series of 31 blog posts on assertiveness, dating Friday, August 5, 2011 to Monday, April 2, 2012, with a few excursions elsewhere along the way.  Most of the material is based on Dr. Randy Paterson’s Assertiveness Workbook.  There are exercises you can do, either on your own or with a partner – worth the twenty bucks! 


Corner Gas is a popular Canadian sitcom that is in reruns now.  It shows in some parts of the US.  The show centers around the residents of a small Saskatchewan town called Dog River, and the dialogue is often drawn directly from conversations overheard in small town diners across the Canadian prairies.  It’s a great show, and I have a corner Gas coffee mug to prove it. 

One episode features a subplot involving veteran police officer Davis Quinton (Lorne Cardinal) and the perennial rookie Karen Pelly (Tara Spencer-Nairn).  Neither of them wants to make the coffee.  So they keep taking just enough so that there’s barely a cup left so that their partner has to make the next pot. 

By now you know that assertiveness[i] is not about getting what you want.  What it really boils down to is controlling your behavior without trying to control anyone else’s. 

Over the last few blog posts we’ve taken a little break from assertiveness per se and I want to finish this series out and get moving onto some new things.  The last piece on assertiveness we did was on saying no.  When you say no, you are asserting your right to decide for yourself what you will and will not do.  If you’re still learning assertiveness, saying no might be very difficult.  Making requests can be tough too. 

But remember, people can ask anything they want and so can you.  You can refuse any request that comes and so can they.  Assertiveness is about controlling our own behavior without trying to control the behavior of others.  Some of us are passive, and we rarely ask anybody for anything, as if we don’t have the right. Aggressive people believe on some level that they have the right to tell others what to do.  Aggressive people feel respected as long as other people are compliant, submissive.  Passive aggressive people try to arrange circumstances so that the other person has to do the desired action without their being asked, like Davis and Karen from Corner Gas with their coffee pot. 

It is perfectly reasonable to make requests of others.  It is perfectly reasonable to decline requests, even if it ticks the other person off. 

Here are five tips for making requests of others: 

1.    Figure out what you want to have happen in a given situation.  Sometimes we’re so full of emotion we are more interested in venting on the other person than actually seeing anything change.  That reinforces a feeling of helplessness.  Set aside their feelings for now.  What do you want? 

2.    Reflect on what is reasonable in the situation.  If you seem to do the dishes all the time and they rarely do the dishes, maybe it’s reasonable to ask them to do the dishes.  If you have a hard time making requests, you may need to re-align your idea of what’s reasonable.  Review my blog post, Believing Assertively if you’d like. 

3.    Don’t apologize for asking.  Again – broken record time – you can ask for anything you want.  Just remember others can say no.  If you apologize you are telling them that you don’t think you have the right to ask.

4.   Don’t put yourself down in the same breath you make your request.  So avoid saying things like, “I’m such an idiot.  I left my wallet at home. Do you mind paying and I’ll pay you back later?” 

5.    Phrase your request as just that: a request.  It’s not a demand and assertiveness does not make demands (aggressiveness does). 

We’ll flesh this out next time using a DESO script: Describe, Express, Specify, Outcome.  See?  I’m whetting your appetite.

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[i] Most of the material on assertiveness on my blog is based on the work of Dr. Randy Paterson and his Assertiveness Workbook.  If you would like to explore assertiveness skills more deeply, I encourage you to buy his book. He’s got exercises you can do on your own or with a partner – great material!