Imagine this, It is your first day in office, as you go for lunch in canteen, you realize that you have left your wallet on your seat at 3rd floor. Everyone around you is a stranger, what would be your first/preferred option?

1. Go back to the seat to get wallet?
2. Ask the canteen owner that I forgot to bring my wallet, so I will pay tomorrow or later?
3. Ask a stranger, who is probably your colleague as well, to pay for you?

Very often we go for 1st option because we do not know stranger and it does not look "nice" to ask someone for a favor.

Let us check this now, If you were to go back in your school or college days, how often have you asked or you have been asked for a favor.

"Can you help me with a Math problem?", "Do you have biology notes?", "Can you drop me home?", or some other type of favor to strike a conversation.

Sometimes, these conversations have a potential to grow into friendship or may be even stronger relations.

What is different here? One, for sure is that in latter case there is a need/desire to strike a conversation even if there is no real need of help. Second, there is no ego of why should I ask?

Let us see what can happen in first case;

There are high chances that someone will lend you money, possibly have a opportunity to sit and talk during lunch, hence an opportunity to build relationship. When you return money back, trust is getting built based on transactions. Trust, which is the most basic ingredient of relationship. As we do more and more transactions, you would get to know the other person better and hence there is potential that the relationship will get stronger.

What if the other person denies, (bleak chances, but let us say it happens) one would feel embarrassed about asking for money, but you still took a chance to strike conversation, and can still chose to go for option 1 or 2.

Interestingly either GIVE & TAKE OR TAKE & GIVE, both work. Another interesting thing is that if it is either GIVE alone or TAKE alone, it does not work.

In case of businesses, we have a responsibility to maintain relationships with team members and customers. If you are a manager, I am sure you are probably at another end of extreme of asking favors from team :-), however have you asked for a favor from your customer which you can return back, even when there is no need to ask for favor?

Has there been an intent to strike a conversation by asking favor with your peer to build professional relation :-)? How often have you intentionally put your ego down to ask, or put your ego down to give favor?

Asking Favors can become a powerful tool to build relations, especially when there is no need to ask.