There is someone in your meetings who has never quite warmed to you. Maybe they answer your questions in one syllable. Maybe their eyes slide past you when you present. You have tried the obvious things: you have been helpful, you have been pleasant, you once stayed late to fix their slides. Nothing has moved. The uncomfortable truth is that the favors you do for people who dislike you are not what changes their minds. The favors they do for you might be.

The rival and the rare book

In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin describes a problem like this. A fellow member of the Pennsylvania legislature, a man of some standing, had made a speech against him and plainly disliked him. Franklin wrote that he did not want to win him over by "paying any servile respect" to him. Instead, he heard the man owned a scarce and curious book and wrote to ask whether he might borrow it for a few days.

The man sent it at once. Franklin returned it about a week later with a note expressing how much he appreciated it. The next time they met in the House, the man spoke to Franklin, which he had never done before, and, in Franklin's words, "with great civility." He showed a readiness to help Franklin on other occasions, and they became friends. Franklin's moral was an old maxim: "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged."

That is one man's account of one episode, written decades later. It is a good story, not proof. But psychologists have since tested the underlying idea, and it holds up better than you might expect.

What the research actually shows

In 1969, Jon Jecker and David Landy published an experiment in which students won money in a contest run by an experimenter. Afterward, some were asked by the experimenter to return the money as a personal favor, because he had been using his own funds and was running short. Others were asked by a secretary to return it for the same reason, or were not asked at all. Later, everyone rated how much they liked the experimenter. The group he had personally asked for a favor liked him the most.

The usual explanation is cognitive dissonance, the discomfort of holding two beliefs that don't fit together. "I helped this person" and "I don't really like this person" pull against each other. Changing what you did is impossible, since the favor is already done. So the mind quietly adjusts the other belief: I must have helped because he's decent, or at least worth helping. Self-perception works the same way. We often infer our own attitudes from our own behavior, the way an outsider would.

A caveat is worth keeping in mind. This is a well-known effect, but it is not a magic switch. Dissonance explanations have competitors, and the original study was small and set in a lab. What it gives you is a reasonable bet, not a guarantee.

Why we get this backward

Most of us assume the route to someone's good opinion is to give them something. Giving feels safe. Asking feels like exposure: you admit a need, you risk a refusal, you imagine the other person sighing.

Research by Francis Flynn and Vanessa Lake, published in 2008, suggests those fears are miscalibrated. Across several studies, people who needed to ask for help consistently underestimated how many others would agree to it. Part of the reason is that the asker focuses on the cost of the request, while the person being asked often feels social pressure to say yes, and also feels some pleasure in being the one who is able to help.

So you have two things working in your favor: the person is likelier to say yes than you fear, and saying yes may nudge their opinion of you upward. Neither is the story we tell ourselves in the moments before we decide to just do it ourselves.

Why meetings are the perfect place for this

Meetings are where cold relationships are most visible. You sit across from the person who seems unconvinced. Every exchange is public and every silence gets read. That makes it tempting to either avoid them or to over-perform, piling on charm that comes across as effort.

A small, specific ask changes the shape of the exchange. It moves you from two people managing each other's impressions to one person consulting another. "You've worked with this vendor before, what should I watch for?" is flattering, but it is also real information. It lets the other person be competent in front of you, which is a pleasant thing to be.

That said, the favor needs the right features to work.

  • It should be small. Something that takes five minutes, not an afternoon. A big ask produces resentment, not warmth.
  • It should be genuine. People can sense a manufactured request, and a fake one wastes their time and yours.
  • It should use something they're actually good at. Being asked for expertise is different from being handed your chores.
  • It should be closed with thanks. Franklin returned the book with a note. Telling them what the help made possible completes the loop.
  • It should not be a favor you can't accept a no to. If they decline, thank them anyway. A gracious no also builds goodwill.

This is not manipulation if you keep it honest. You are inviting someone into a small act of collaboration and thanking them for it. If you'd be embarrassed to explain your motives to them, change the request.

Your next moves

Try this within the next week, with one person, not everyone at once.

  • Pick the one person. Choose a coworker whose coolness bothers you, not someone truly hostile or someone you have a serious conflict with. For anything involving mistreatment, this is the wrong tool.
  • Find a real question only they can answer. Look through your current work for something where they have experience, context, or a skill you lack. Write the question in one sentence.
  • Ask after the meeting, not during it. A hallway message or a short note avoids an audience. Something like: "You handled the Henderson migration, and I'm about to start something similar. Could you spare ten minutes to tell me what went wrong?"
  • Use what they said, visibly. In the next meeting, mention what you learned and credit them by name: "Based on what Dana told me, we're going to stage the rollout." That tells them the help mattered.
  • Wait before judging. One exchange rarely transforms a relationship. Watch for small shifts, such as a longer reply, a greeting, or a question back, and consider a second small ask in a few weeks.

What this says about the way we try to be liked

There is something quietly humbling in all this. We tend to believe we earn warmth by being impressive or useful. Often we earn it by letting someone matter to us. Needing a little, in a measured way, can be an invitation rather than a weakness.

It also changes how you might read your own meeting afterward. After a tense exchange, the question is not only "Did I come across well?" but "Did I give anyone a chance to help, or to be the expert?" Those moments are easy to miss in a fast-moving hour, and harder still to remember once you're on to the next call.

That is where a tool like Meetingmortem fits. It's a place to look back at a meeting calmly, noticing who warmed up, who stayed cool, and which small exchanges changed the temperature. If a relationship at work has been bothering you, you don't need an app to try the borrowed book. But writing down what happened afterward makes the pattern easier to see.