What does asking have to do with being powerful? Everything.
What does asking have to do with being powerful? Everything.
Please picture this with me.
Once upon a time, a woman walked into her boss’s office and said: “I’m going to have a baby. I want you to continue paying me while I have my baby and stay at home with the baby, even though I won’t be working. Later, I would like to return to my position, with the same salary.”
It’s likely that this ask sounded greedy, selfish — insane, even. Yet now in many countries, thanks to that woman’s outrageous desire and how she asked for it to manifest, we have a concept called “maternity leave”.
So, what does asking have to do with being powerful?
Everything.
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Power is not something one experiences in isolation. It’s not a feeling. You do not sit in a room alone and empower yourself. Power is a function of strong relationships where what you give is valued by the receiver and what you receive from the people in your life is exactly what you need and want.
The difference between what’s implied by “empowerment” and what’s implied by a “powerful woman” is that the latter includes all of the relationships and communications a woman has. (Because power is not a feeling).
So we can’t look at a woman’s power without looking at ONE, her desires, and TWO, her relationships to everyone she knows.
That is why, here at The Academy, when it comes to teaching power to women we begin with asking. (Get your first three lessons on asking powerfully for free here.)
Your own ‘outrageous’ ask might be a request for a promotion, a request for a divorce, to open up a monogamous relationship, or a request involving a large sum of money.
Sometimes big asks are not the ones that look big on paper, but they are big to you because they stand to change the status quo.
These asks, big or small, that stand to transform the way things are – our identities, circumstances or even our world as we know it – are the most important. These are also the asks that summon the greatest amount of fear in the hearts of the most loving people. Therefore, they are also the ones that often go unasked.
People make the mistake of thinking that there's more harm in asking than in not asking, and nothing could be further from the truth. Asking creates roles for people. So when we minimize our ask before we even make it, or give up altogether believing that “there’s no way that he or she would agree to that” we deprive them of the opportunity to step into that role. And we deprive ourselves of a renewed dynamic with someone that the intelligence of our deep desires is trying to call forth.
And for a powerful woman, this simply will not do.
People make the mistake of thinking that there’s more harm in asking than in not asking, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Asking creates roles for people.
So when we don’t ask, we deprive them of the opportunity to step into that role. And we deprive ourselves of a renewed dynamic with someone that the intelligence of our deep desires is trying to call forth.
Good Girls & Independent Women: The Prohibition Against Asking
I don’t need to tell you stories or show you studies; bedroom or boardroom, women are socialized to and have become masters (or rather mistresses) of accommodation.
We tend to forget that for millennia, in order for a woman to even survive in society, an entire set of behaviors was necessary: accommodation, harmonization, pretending you don't need much so you can be a low-maintenance, "good" girl. A good girl has no outrageous desires. She makes no big asks. (Because the good girl is designed to keep things running smoothly, AS THEY ARE!) The good girl is perfectly and expertly trained to maintain the status quo, without ruffling a single feather.
In more recent times, there's been a breakout character from the good girl – the Independent Woman. Now at first appearances, the Independent Woman doesn’t look like a good girl, because she goes after what she wants. But she doesn’t ask for much; if anything, she gets it all by herself.
She may be running the company, but she doesn't ask for the team she needs. She may be the breadwinner, but she doesn’t ask her partner to pick up the slack at home. She's still carrying that good girl conditioning of making do with what she has and doing it invisibly and quietly.
The Good Girl doesn’t tend to ask. She accommodates and harmonizes the status quo.
The Independent Woman doesn’t tend to ask. Rather than having it all, she ends up doing it all.
This is a disaster for women.
Going it alone: The Myth of the Lone Ranger
There’s a myth out there that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Do it alone.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Most of the time when we hear a “success story,” that person has been aided by various support structures, in law or in practice. Oftentimes, those structures are built by labor, mostly invisible, performed by women. Just as often (and even more invisibly), those structures consist of labor performed by immigrants or people of color.
In some cases, we will need to change the invisible structures. Or at least, make them visible so they can be honored, paid, and properly acknowledged.
That’s going to involve asking.
Reimagining what asking means
When we at the Academy refer to Asking, we are summoning one of our most powerful tools – one that goes far beyond making a request.
Asking isn't begging.
Asking isn’t transactional or tit-for-tat that gets tallied on a scorecard.
Asking isn't making brutal command until the other person acquiesces.
Asking isn’t about using force in order to control and manipulate.
Asking is about presenting a compelling vision for the future.
Asking is about what you’re fighting FOR, not fighting against.
Asking is an invitation to someone to step into a role in your life that you believe would bring out the best in them.
Asking freely, without shame, in a full-bodied way, is the most compelling invitation a woman can make for the collaborative support of her biggest vision and her smallest yet critical needs.
Continuous transformation in your world and the world at large is NOT POSSIBLE without periodic changes to the status quo, and nothing instigates change like a powerful ask.
Relationships die before they end, jobs become life-sucking before they end, even political systems crumble from the inside without regular changes to the status quo.
Change can be proactive, or it can be reactive.
The first is creative; the second has a body count.
The first involves asking, inviting and proposing;
the second has us at the mercy of inertia.
I want women to be the agents of change in their worlds, in their homes, in their communities, in their workplaces.
That’s why I begin with Asking and with the following exercise, which you can do from home.
Handing back the Kool Aid: Undoing the brainwashing around asking
What comes into your mind when I ask you: what do you wish to create with all the people you know, right now?
In this exercise, you don’t need to be sure. You don’t need to have nailed down exactly what you wish to create.
This is a top-level, free association landscape of all the requests you can make of all the people you know and as an invitation to create something that does not exist yet.
They can be big, they can be small, petty, or meaningful, but they all need to begin the same way.
On a sheet of paper you write:
I COULD ASK ______ FOR ________.
And you fill it in.
Fill the first blank in with a name.
Fill the second blank in with what you could ask them for.
Repeat. Fill the page or write until you run out of steam.
You will not have to ask for these things in real life so you can write whatever you like. Explore the edges of your imagination!
With the Asking Practice, we are simply exploring the boundary between where your permission ends, and others’ permission begins.
To watch a free 10-minute video guiding you through The Asking Practice, sign up to receive The Keys to Power free lessons here.
What the Asking Practice Reveals: I shouldn’t even have to ask!
This simple exercise reveals so much. In class, I ask students to go over the list and look for patterns. Who made it on the list? Who was excluded? What kinds of things feel easy to ask for? Which feel hard?
In seven years of teaching thousands of women, these are some of the most common reactions the first time someone tries the Asking Practice, but this list can be endless:
“I felt enraged. I shouldn’t even HAVE to ask”
“I felt sad because if I ask and they do it, it won’t mean as much.”
“What if I hurt them by asking?”
“What if this ends the relationship/job/agreement?”
“What will they think?”
“I will sound bossy.”
“I will sound needy.”
“I can only ask if I know if I deserve it.”
“I couldn’t think of anyone I could ask.”
“I couldn’t think of anything I could ask for.”
“I found that I didn’t include any men in my list!”
“They won’t or can’t meet my needs. There’s no point in asking.”
“This is going to cause a confrontation that’s not worth it.”
“If they say no, I will just die. Right there. On the spot. Spontaneous combustion.”
I want to suggest to you a radical notion: each of these reactions is, in part, the byproduct of the conditioning and social brainwashing of women. Beyond a series of laws or customs, the first place patriarchy seeks to legislate is the imagination of those whom it controls.
Having needs and desires is a natural part of life. As children we have no trouble asking for a pony or a castle, regardless of how we think it's going to make someone feel. We just want what we want, and we have no say in what we want.
At The Academy, we work with each of these reactions, class by class, exercise by exercise. The good news is that we’re not learning something new, but rather learning what children naturally know.
In that sense, the cards are stacked in our favor.
Returning to what is normal is simple, but I’m not going to lie: it’s not easy. In a classroom, I can work with a student for weeks and months as we expand her sense of imagination, legitimacy and skill.
In this blog, however, I want to encourage you to do one thing:
Begin by simply beginning to examine the role that asking plays in your life.
See if there are any asks on your list you could make.
See if you could challenge some of the assumptions or challenges around asking. Try the Asking Practice out. See where you can expand. And if you want mastery in this realm, sign up for our Influence 101 course.
Nothing meaningful is ever really accomplished alone.
Do you know the folk story of The Stone Soup?
It’s one of my favorites. It goes like this: a hungry traveler comes to town with nothing but a rock and an empty cooking pot, yet inspires the whole village to contribute to and share the meal. In that contribution, something greater than the sum of its parts was created.
And so with asking. You too have a community, whether you know it or not. There are people that you've known in your life, who can be invited through the power of your ask to create something bigger than you could have alone, whether it be a big pot of soup, a work project or a revolution.
Nothing meaningful is ever really accomplished alone. You can't make even apple pie from scratch without creating the whole universe. And so anytime we plan to bring to life a magnificent, status-quo changing vision, we should not forego inviting others to join us on our journey.
Power isn’t a feeling you have about yourself alone in a room on a good day.
Power is relational. You are powerful when you have powerful relationships and can steer them in the best possible way to create powerful communities.
And it all begins with an ask.
Your outrageous ask.
The greatest obstacle that comes between a woman and the things she most wants in life is the prohibition against desire and asking.
Influence 101: Liberating your Desire and the Power to Ask is a brand new online course taught by Kasia Urbaniak.
With over 60 videos and 30 practical assignments, Influence 101 is the starting point for all study at The Academy.
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Throughout centuries, women have been trained to give away their power.
The Academy teaches women to take their power back.
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