Asking for Help is Strength Not Weakness
My family and I recently participated in a significant financial transaction that is also a major life event. As with many significant financial transactions, a lot of paperwork was involved. My wife and I, as well as the other parties involved, had to provide a lot of information. We then had to review information and sign or initial in lots of places on lots of forms. This required a lot of work. Making sure you remember to sign here while also initialing over there and verifying every field creates many opportunities for honest mistakes to occur.
In our situation, a trend began to occur. The other party was consistently making these little mistakes. The oddity was that almost every interaction involved them making a mistake. It was not that these mistakes were costing my wife or me effort (or money), but they were delaying the process. Days turned into weeks; soon, we were a month beyond the timeline we had agreed to.
But wait, there is more…
Eventually, we got to the end of all the paperwork. There was nothing left to be submitted or signed. There was no further opportunity for mistakes to occur. The end date was just around the corner. It was only then that the other party brought forth a confession. There was a problem, and this problem was BIG. So big it was going to prevent moving forward until it was resolved. Another potential multi-week delay was on the horizon.
What we came to find out was that not only did we have a problem, but that the other party had known about the problem for weeks. They had been secretly trying to resolve it on their own. We were brought into the loop only when they reached a point where they could no longer conceal the reality.
Read to the end for a shocking twist on how this gets resolved.
Why should you care about my situation? Because you might also be a Control Freak?
If you are actively engaged in living, you will encounter problems. It won’t always involve significant financial transactions or major life changes, but there will be problems.
However, especially in the workplace, some people choose to live life as if one of the definitions of success is never letting anyone know you have encountered a problem. Success looks like being so buttoned up and so over-prepared that things appear always to be going as planned. I know this to be true because I am trying to stop being one of those people. I can tell you that my motivations when operating out of this “nothing to see over here, everything is fine” mindset were often
Never wanting to appear incapable of the task at hand
Always wanting to be in control or at least appear to be in control
Avoiding having to admit I didn’t know the answer
Striving to look better than those other people who needed help
Maybe you can see the pattern; all of these things are about me trying to make me look good.
The cost of focusing on trying to make me look good was
Lots of extra work for me
Lots of extra stress and anxiety for me (leading almost to a full breakdown)
Lots of missed opportunities for me to
Be a better leader
Be a better parent
Be a better spouse
Learn the better way to do something
Don’t get me wrong, most of the time, I was able to pull off looking like I was in control, but not only did it come at the costs above, but in the situations where I did eventually need help, it went REALLY BAD. Why did it go really bad? Because in my efforts to make myself look good, I waited so long to ask for help that
The project missed the deadline
Other people had to put in a lot of rework to fix what I had done to try and fix it
There were measurable costs such as
Someone’s time
Lost revenue,
Financial fines,
Poor employee or customer experiences
But there is a better way.
Become an ambassador for FAIL-ing.
I read a motivational poster the other day that said FAIL stands for
First
Attempt
In
Learning
When you are faced with an opportunity to fail, it means you are pushing yourself beyond your current limits, outside your current comfort zone, and into the great expanse of growth.
When it comes to problems, your first attempt in learning comes when you admit that you need help. You take the first step towards becoming the better version of yourself by admitting you aren’t perfect and that you see the value in becoming better by learning something new.
How to get good at asking for help
Check your motivations. Why do you avoid asking for help?
You can ask for help all day long, and you will likely get it, but
Asking for help only becomes part of your journey towards becoming a better you when you understand WHY you avoid asking for help or why asking for help feels hard.
Asking for help is about solving the current problem and becoming a better version of yourself.
Ask for help
As soon as you have given it a try and can’t or could but the solution isn’t sustainable, ask for help.
Be specific about what problem you are trying to solve, what success looks like, and what you have already tried.
Sharing this info ensure less frustration because you reduce the likelihood someone helps in the wrong way or on the wrong thing
Pay attention and learn.
Don’t just pass the problem on to someone else.
Stay involved and engaged; ask what was done to solve the problem and how you can learn to solve it in the future.
Then take the time to learn.
Thank the person
Getting help from someone else is likely slightly inconvenient for them acknowledge that you appreciate the effort plus
Being kind is always in style.
If you are a leader, you need to double down on your efforts. You must both participate in your own first attempts in learning and put others in the position to get their own first attempts in learning. Here are some ideas
Put others in positions where they will need to ask for help.
Delegation and stretch assignments are imperative to growth.
Building a sustainable team/organization is part of your responsibility as a leader.
Delegation and stretch assignments build that bench strength.
Admit when you can’t and ask for help
Don’t just say it’s okay to ask for help; demonstrate that you need help sometimes too.
Lots of research on how vulnerability helps with trust and strong teams (yes, I know the flip side is that vulnerability only works once a person establishes some level of competence, but I am assuming positive intent that as a leader, you have demonstrated competence in enough things you can safely ask for help
Be sure to say thank you.
Offer to help others.
Be a mentor
Ask if people need help.
Look for opportunities to be part of the solution.
The end of my personal story
After three weeks of the other people fretting and hiding their secret, it turned out that I knew just who to contact and just what to ask for. I was able to help them get the issue resolved in 4 hours. Had the other people been open and honest about needing help from the beginning, the result would have been less heartache and anxiety for them, less frustration for us, and we would have closed the transaction on time, which would have been mutually beneficial. And you know what, I would never have thought any less of the other folks for needing assistance; in fact, quite the opposite, I likely would have felt good about being able to help them! Making other people feel good about their own competence is another fringe benefit of asking for help!