Tired of Doing It All? Here’s How to Ask for Resources Without Sounding Like You’re Complaining
The difference between getting help and overextending yourself often comes down to one thing: how you communicate what you need.
Welcome to Reframed!
I decided to record a voiceover this week, press play. It’s a good one!
Work is complex, career advice shouldn’t be. I’m Ashley Rudolph and I write this newsletter for people who are ready for the next level in their careers. Reframed readers describe the experience best:
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Why leaders who make the shift from “I’m drowning and I need help” to “Here’s what we need to win” actually get the support they need.
When I say “negotiate”, what comes to mind?
Getting more money?
Getting more PTO?
A new job title?
It’s all about working up the courage to ask for more, effectively.
We talk a lot about the negotiations you’ll encounter at the start of a new job or during performance review season. But what about the asks, small and large, that you make every single day?
The requests for yourself, for your team. To executives? To peers?
The trade-offs.
Getting budget approval.
Communicating a delay.
Some call this managing up. But to me, that doesn’t really tell the full picture. You’re flexing your negotiating skills each time.
Today, we’re going to talk about a negotiation point that impacts high achievers more than most: asking for more support or resources.
THE CONTEXT →
The secret reason why asking for help goes wrong
You may have found yourself at some point in your career asking for help. Maybe you were stretched beyond your limits and not understanding why leadership didn’t see it. If you’re a high achiever, you’re likely someone who does the impossible and you do it well. But that track record often earns you a seat in leadership that comes with a new set of responsibilities.
You can’t just power through on your own anymore.
You have to scale.
So you take the logical next step: advocating for support by saying you’re “stretched thin” or “don’t have the time to get everything done”. Seems reasonable, right? Not having time should clearly signal that what you’ve been asked to do may not happen without support.
But when executives hear “I don’t have time,” their brains often register inefficiency, not overcapacity. People interpret constraints as personal limits before they see systemic ones.
Annoying but true.
This is why when you support your case for additional hires by citing a lack of time it can trigger the opposite of what you intended. In response to your request for help or support, you may hear:
Silence (“This isn’t a real problem, the work is getting done.”)
Support you don’t need (“They must be struggling with prioritization; let’s coach them on time management.”)
Homework you don’t have time for — pun intended (“Show me everything you’re working on.”)
None of these are what you asked for. Or what you need.
So you continue on, putting your head down, doing the work, carrying the load.
What no one tells you is that framing your work around volume (time, bandwidth, capacity) signals that you’re an operator, an executor.
When you’ve been asked to stretch into senior leadership, volume-based framing doesn’t work anymore.
You have to speak to the stakes and lead with strategy.
THE FRAMEWORK →
Use this framework to get the resources you need at work
I recently worked a client through this transition. I sat down this weekend and reflected on the specific shifts we worked on to get her from carrying it all and heading toward burnout to being tasked with building her own team with investment from the business to back it up.
When you need to advocate for resources or support, use this five-step process to move from sounding overextended to sounding strategic.
1. Reframe Your Language
This one feels obvious, but it’s where most people stumble.
I have another brilliant client who came to this conclusion after a chat with a mentor. She recently started reframing her asks from “I need support because I’m working all the time” to “I need support because if I don’t get it, this thing won’t get done because I cannot do it”.
The key is to eliminate volume and bandwidth framing in favor of impact and strategy.
Eliminate volume-based framing (“I don’t have bandwidth”, “I’m doing 2 peoples jobs”, “This task takes so much time, I can’t do anything else).
Replace it with impact-based framing (“By delegating daily account management to a new team member, I can focus on improving margins across our largest partnerships — an opportunity worth roughly $X in revenue this quarter.”).
Of course this shift is easier said than done.
I jokingly told client to pinch herself every time she was thinking about framing her asks around time. There’s a reason why. Sometimes change doesn’t work because we haven’t built a system around it. When you’re used to operating in a certain way, me just telling you to operate differently doesn’t lead to lasting change.
The “pinch” was a cue meant to force awareness of the habit and break her default pattern. Neuroplasticity is a buzzy topic these days, but the gist is your brain can learn how to do things differently. This small (but silly and memorable) action helped her develop awareness of when she was engaging in a pattern that wasn’t serving her. Over time, a little trigger like this helps you replace reflex with intention.
Want help getting what you need at work?
Here’s what a recent client had to say:
My husband was just remarking on how much my mindset has changed in the past few months, to which I replied, “That was all Ashley!”. After years of not being truly seen/appreciated by the leadership team at my work, I just felt really small, invisible, and unconfident. You gave me the confidence to level-up. You also helped me to stand up for myself and be more visible at my current job.
Priceless. Let’s chat about coaching and see if we’re a fit.
2. Anchor to Business Drivers
This is key.
When I say stop framing your ask around volume, it’s because what you’re really doing in that moment is centering yourself. As a leader, there are investments in self that a business will make (think: raises, promotions, sponsoring coaching). They aid in your growth and development. Adding headcount to a team is not an investment in you — it’s an investment in the business strategy. Your case for resources should sound like a business case, not a personal plea.
When you reframe your ask, you’re shifting the story from your workload to the company’s outcomes. You’re showing that your request isn’t about personal relief, it’s about business leverage. What additional resourcing and headcount supports is an investment in scalability, an important initiative, or a new opportunity that moves the business forward.
So instead of anchoring on “time” or “bandwidth,” connect your request to one of these four levers:
Revenue: growth potential, deals closed, monetization
Margin: efficiency, cost savings, scalability
Risk: exposure, turnover, operational bottlenecks
Speed: time-to-market, decision velocity
When you talk in these terms, you’re speaking like an executive and that’s what moves a request from noise to necessity.
3. Clearly State the Cost of Inaction
I’ve been the high achiever who asked for help, heard “no,” and quietly made it work anyway — at the cost of my wellbeing. But guess what? No one saw the late nights or the burnout. They only saw that the work got done and that we hit our goals (amazing!! but also annoying for me, personally!)
If you’re going to make an ask, there needs to be a clear cost of inaction. Be explicit about what the company risks by maintaining the status quo (think: missed revenue, talent attrition, stalled initiatives). And it has to be real. If you ask for an investment and then succeed without it, you’ve unintentionally signaled it was optional.
Here’s how to communicate the cost of inaction:
“Without additional headcount, we’ll have to pause expansion into [new market/product line], which could delay an estimated $X in new revenue this quarter.”
“If we keep operating at the current pace, we risk burnout and turnover on a team that’s already lean. Having to backfill just one person would cost us months of ramp time and continuity.”
“If we can’t reallocate resources now, we’ll miss the window to capitalize on [partnership, trend, campaign] and that window won’t reopen for another 6 months.”
Do you see how these paint a clearer picture for decision makers?
4. Use the 5-Part Ask Framework
Okay, now that we’ve gotten this far I should make it clear that I believe you. I know you don’t have time. The reason why I’m saying to stop leading with that is that no one ever tells you that it puts you in a losing position when you’re negotiating. Your objective is to frame your ask in a way that moves decision-makers to act.
Here’s a quick structure to do that, in writing or in conversation:
The Point: What’s the headline takeaway?
Why It Matters: Link to business stakes — revenue, margin, risk, or speed.
The Ask: What decision or resource are you requesting?
Two Options + Trade-Offs: Present A vs. B and the consequences of each. (Limiting to two choices matters. Research on cognitive load theory shows it reduces decision fatigue and boosts action.)
Next Step: Make it easy to say yes — define what happens next and by when.
Use this list as a gut check. When you’re prepping your ask, does it hit these points?
CLOSING THOUGHTS →
Every leader learns this transition the hard way. When you learn how to change the frame, you change the outcome. And that’s what leadership actually is: not doing more, but making what matters most impossible to ignore.
If you’re realizing you’ve fallen into some of these habits, that’s a good thing! That means you’re paying attention. Don’t feel like you’ve been doing anything wrong; this is one of the most common growth moments for high achievers. No one teaches you this stuff explicitly! Some people learn it from great managers, some from an executive coach (like me), others through trial, error, and intuition.
I’m here to help you become more strategic.
Good luck. See you Thursday!
Ashley
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Really nice framework for asks. Thanks for sharing, Ashley!