It Doesn't Hurt to Ask (for More Time): Employees Often Overestimate the Interpersonal Costs of Extension Requests

Jaewon  Yoon; Grant  Donnelly; Ashley V. Whillans

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

It Doesn't Hurt to Ask (for More Time): Employees Often Overestimate the Interpersonal Costs of Extension Requests

by Jaewon Yoon, Grant Donnelly and Ashley V. Whillans

Abstract

Setting deadlines can improve productivity. Yet, miscalibrated deadlines are a major source of stress, undermining employees’ health and happiness. An effective strategy to maximize the benefits of deadlines while minimizing the costs could be to set task deadlines and adjust them as needed. However, results from six studies (N = 4,297) show that employees frequently avoid requesting extensions on adjustable deadlines, instead submitting suboptimal work. Employees’ reluctance to ask for deadline extensions is driven by self-presentation concerns: employees believe that their supervisors will view them as incompetent if they request a deadline extension. In contrast to these beliefs, supervisors actually perceive extension requests as a sign of greater motivation (vs. incompetence). These findings suggest that employees often underutilize a proactive behavior at work—making extension requests on adjustable deadlines—due to incorrect perspective taking and suffer from unnecessary time stress as a result.

Keywords: extension request; impression management; Employees; Time Management; Perception;

Language: English

Format: Print

56 pages

Read Now

Citation:

Yoon, Jaewon, Grant Donnelly, and Ashley V. Whillans. "It Doesn't Hurt to Ask (for More Time): Employees Often Overestimate the Interpersonal Costs of Extension Requests." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-064, January 2019. (Revised August 2019.)

Supplemental Information

Appendix

When looking to improve workplace performance, people often seek third-party input by asking for feedback. However, we propose that asking for feedback might not be the most effective way of soliciting critical and actionable input. We offer a simple yet powerful alternative: ask for advice instead. Across four experiments (N=1,438), including a field experiment, we show that people offer more critical and actionable input when they are asked to provide advice (versus feedback)—even when they are asked to provide comments on identical output. When asked to provide feedback (versus advice), givers focus too much on evaluating the recipient, which undermines their ability to generate constructive (i.e. critical and actionable) input. Our findings suggest that framing feedback provision as advice provision may be a promising way of soliciting constructive third-party input.

Each year across North America, millions of graduates have to make tradeoffs between time and money as they plan their next steps. Despite the importance of these choices, we know surprisingly little about how people navigate major life decisions that involve making more money at the expense of having less time, and vice versa. Researchers asked more than 1,000 graduating college students in Canada whether they generally prioritized time or money. They found that students who prioritized time at graduation were happier and more satisfied with their careers 1 to 2 years later than those who prioritized money. They explored why that might be and how factors like financial security and student debt play a role in people’s decision-making and happiness.

Faculty & Research

It Doesn't Hurt to Ask (for More Time): Employees Often Overestimate the Interpersonal Costs of Extension Requests

Abstract

Citation:

Supplemental Information

About the Authors

More from these Authors