I've noticed that I don't ask women in my life to do stuff, even most of my relatives. I just do it myself, as you say.
But I realize now that one of the greatest gifts that I can give to a woman I am intimate with is telling her to do stuff for me.
Women like to serve their man, and they like to be led by a man that knows what he wants and isn't afraid to ask for it (and who isn't afraid to let her go when she isn't cooperating).
And although I have a younger sister who I'm used to commanding since childhood, I just never grew up with male role models that did things like that on a regular basis.
I would ask my girlfriends to do things for me in a passive way (as in "can you get that for me?" ending my sentence as a question), but very rarely. And I think that's because I was afraid of being too pushy, which as well all know leads to a loss-aversion mentality.
Meanwhile, I finally noticed that the guys I remember in my life who had attractive women in their lives (From middle school through college) tended to be more verbally commanding and orderly.
The moment this revelation hit me the hardest was when I read an anonymous post online written by a self professed feminist, who had a boyfriend that would tell her to do all sorts of little things:
"Get my phone for me."
"Grab me a soda from the fridge on your way there."
She was asking why she was conflicted by the fact that she liked being told what to do by her boyfriend even though she felt it was anti-feminist. Although hypocritical feminist behavior wasn't new to me at that point, that's when I realized I was missing out on something very useful!
These days I've always been more of a "physical" leader (escalating, hand holding, body language), and even in my "beta" days, somewhat of a "relationship" leader (starting and pushing difficult conversations that she would rather ignore, setting my boundaries, planning dates, breaking up first most of the time). But now I believe it's time for me to finally let myself become a better verbal leader. I almost feel like I've been holding back this part of my manhood all this time for fear of offending a woman.
I think making my commands more stern by removing my "ending on a question mark" habit, as well as saying "please" at the end of my commands would work for me. I'd love to hear other opinions on this.