Introduction: Why We Struggle to Ask for Help

[00:00:02] Paul: Welcome to Employing Differences. A conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals

[00:00:08] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:00:10] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis.

[00:00:12] Karen: Each episode we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, can I get help?

[00:00:19] Paul: We've talked before on the show, in fact, a couple times recently about how when we work in groups, when we live in community New York, when we're together, when we have access to that relational space, that the other people around us are tremendous resources for helping things to get done.

Team Support Is Everywhere, So Why Don’t We Ask?

[00:00:35] Paul: They're people we can reach out to, we can tap into their expertise, we can ask them to take care of stuff for us. That we can ask for their assistance, all these kinds of things. And yet, we very often don't. And what Karen and I want to dig into a little bit today is why is it that we don't ask for help when we are in groups where actually help is very likely to be available to us?

[00:00:59] Paul: And how might we do something about that? How can we make it so that we are more likely to ask for help when it would be useful?

[00:01:08] Karen: I think it is so often true that something that would massively help me would just make my life so much better, can be done by somebody else with no effort or very minimal effort at all, or vice versa. But the disconnect or the disparity between the good that can be done by somebody else doing it, and the effort that it takes for that person to do it is so often the case.

[00:01:33] Karen: And to me, that's all just missed opportunities. And the reason that the person who could easily do this little thing doesn't do it is because they don't know it would help very often. I think it's super true in communities, but also if you're working on a team and you're with each other all day, every day, odds are good.

The Hidden Cost of Not Asking for Help

[00:01:51] Karen: There's a lot of these opportunities, and they're just being missed because we live in a pull myself up by my bootstraps kind of society, and I have to look independent and I can't look like I am needy and asking other people for things all the time, or my boss will think I'm not good at my job.

[00:02:08] Karen: Like we've got all these internal stories that we give that prevent us from doing the thing that would actually make our team, our community, our group more successful, more effective, more connected, more appreciative and happy with each other, like layers and layers of good that come out of this and all of it gets blocked by the failure to say, could you do something for me?

[00:02:34] Paul: I think there's two layers to that, the story that we tell ourselves, right? So, certainly, and we've talked about this on the show before, right? For many of us, there's a cultural value around helping is good but receiving help is not. Right. There's a one up, one down relationship between someone who is helping and someone who's receiving help.

[00:02:55] Paul: And so we're loathed to put ourselves into that one down relation with anybody else. Right?

The Vulnerability Barrier: Why It’s Hard to Request Help

[00:03:00] Paul: And I think that even further, there are times when we would probably accept help if it were available, but we really don't want to ask for it. That asking for help is even more vulnerable. And so we sometimes, get into that place of really hoping that other people will guess correctly about what it was that we would need.

[00:03:19] Paul: We might hint at it indirectly because then at least, you know, we save face in terms of we don't ask for help. But if someone, you know offers, I could do this thing for you. We might immediately say yes, but we have this barrier to actually saying, could you do this thing for me? It would be useful in this way.

[00:03:36] Paul: And so I think there's the two things there. Like, there's the status difference just in the way that we see help and being helped. And then in the what is it like and how vulnerable do you have to be to actually ask for help.

[00:03:47] Karen: And I know my instinct, if I'm not pretty intentionally doing something else, I will only ask for help if it's the only way I can get the thing done. If I can, you know, work twice as hard for extra hours and whatever, and not have to ask for help, that's gonna be my path. But I will ask if I really, really need it.

[00:04:09] Karen: If I don't have another way, but to just ask because it had sure helped me out. I don't have to have it. My world won't come crashing to an end if it doesn't work for you. If it's not as easy as I think it would be for you and you need to say no, I can live with that. But gosh, it'd be nice if you would. I don't say it.

[00:04:28] Paul: I mean we talked way back in episode 167 about invitations and requests and demands, and I think one of the problems is that we often don't make a request early enough until then we get to the point where we're just feeling so desperate. Now it's a demand. Now it's, I have to have you do this.

From Requests to Demands: Asking Too Late

[00:04:47] Paul: You need to do this thing. Otherwise I'm in trouble. Right, because we haven't opened the door earlier to saying, Hey, if you could do this thing for me, it would help me out in these ways. Because that's really, I think what you and I are pointing at is the ability to, what we're actually asking is for you to reveal to the other person a thing they could do and how it would be beneficial or helpful to you.

[00:05:10] Paul: So that then they can make a decision about it. And you need to, as we talked about in that episode, come to that from the place of you're okay with the No. Right. But you're also okay with the Yes. You'd be willing to accept the help. And I think maybe that's the space that we have to get ourselves to in order to be able to ask for help is to be, if I made this request and they said yes, would I be okay with that? Could I actually accept it? ' Cause I think there are times when we don't make the request because we aren't.

[00:05:36] Karen: I think that's totally true, and I also think there is this piece about we have a vision for living in a community or working on a team where we help each other out a lot.

[00:05:48] Karen: And our picture of that is that we're gonna get help and we're gonna give help, and that's all part of it. And we don't quite realize that in order for that to work, somebody has to make the request.

[00:05:59] Karen: And it's very rare in those kinds of cultures for anybody to say, I can't believe she asked me for that. Like, what was she thinking? That's not usually it. The most likely time that's gonna come up is if the person receiving the request is not willing to say no when they should. So that's another piece of this is that it has to go both ways that you make the request and it's a request and they can say yes or no.

Modeling Healthy Requests in Teams and Communities

[00:06:23] Karen: But a way that I frame this is, I think it's actually a gift to both the person you may be asking and also the community you may be a part of, to make a request. To model that this is normal behavior. Because if you've made a request of me and I've been able to help you out, the likelihood that I now can make a request of you comfortably goes up dramatically.

[00:06:46] Karen: So if we wanna get to a place where there's more mutual help happening. One of the best things we can do is start modeling it. Have people start asking for things, and even asking for things that are unessential, not a big deal, not desperately needed, just would help me out.

[00:07:05] Karen: And so I think that idea that I'm not asking just for my own selfish benefit, I'm asking because I want to create a culture. Where people ask and therefore help each other.

[00:07:17] Paul: Yeah, and I think that's a really key piece, right? It can feel like, if I'm the only person asking for stuff. Right. Now, I can start to tell myself the story about how I'm needy and I shouldn't be doing this and things like that. But if it becomes just a normal part of the way that we work together, of the way that we live together, these kinds of things, then it's harder for me to tell that story, you know, when I see other people giving and receiving help.

[00:07:41] Paul: And that, how they feel about it. So we talked, two weeks ago on episode 261, about this notion of is it just me? Am I the only one seeing this problem? And one of the things that starts to happen when we create a deliberate space where we point people at each other to be able to share those sorts of things, is it starts to break down some of those.

[00:07:58] Paul: I think there's a similar thing with the making requests and asking for stuff. So one of the things that I commonly do when I'm working with a group on a particular problem, is that I actually wanna point them at each other, because they're, as we've said before, great resources to help each other out.

Facilitating Peer-to-Peer Support in Groups

[00:08:14] Paul: Because they're living in this space far more than I am. I might have some abstract ideas, but they have a way better idea of what will work here and now, right? What works in this context? And so when I do this right, we often do it like as a fishbowl or something like that, where a person can make a request and often it's a request for advice, right?

[00:08:34] Paul: Hey, I'd just love to get some perspective that's still a request for help. And someone, the first person who usually makes that into the space, like there's some vulnerability around doing that. But then all of a sudden, all kinds of people jump in with suggestions, with advice, things like that.

[00:08:49] Paul: That often then turns into, great, here I can help you go look this thing up. We'll go find this. Like, it turns into a way bigger bit of help than the person who is asking, thought it could have possibly been, and certainly more than they felt comfortable asking for. And then suddenly that just becomes a thing like then people are jumping in, like the ball starts rolling on it.

[00:09:11] Paul: And so I think it's a hundred percent like we tell ourselves this story about what other people's reaction is gonna be if I ask. But then when we actually see people not have that reaction.

[00:09:22] Paul: It helps shift that story for us. So when we can model the making requests and we can model when people actually get to see, I think in most organizations and in many communities, there is more help happening than we know, right?

[00:09:36] Paul: Because it often happens one-on-one and we'll ask our closest friend and usually, we'll start it with this is probably gonna be a real burden for you. And I hate asking and this, that, and the other thing, right? And they're just like, yeah, absolutely no problem. I can do that. Because those helping relationships often are very private and they're one-to-one.

[00:09:55] Paul: We don't know how much of that is happening out there. So it can feel like, if I'm asking for help, I'm the only person who's asking.

The Joy of Helping: Why People Want to Support You

[00:10:02] Karen: And I really wanna lean in here to, most of us know how good it feels to do a thing for somebody else. And even better if it just wasn't hard for me, I had time that day. Or, you know, picking up a thing you need from the store while I'm there anyway, just basically costs me nothing. But it saved you a trip to the store, which is a big deal.

[00:10:21] Karen: Whatever the case may be, that it feels so good to know that I helped to know that I made life better for you. That actually relates to what we were talking about in the episode last week of where do we get our fuel? This is a fueling thing of I get to feel good because I did a thing for you and I couldn't have done it if you didn't tell me what you needed and I couldn't have then turned around and asked you for what I needed.

[00:10:46] Karen: Right? So it's this like self-reinforcing fabulousness that we're really bad at in our culture, and so it takes a lot of intention to get it going. But the payoffs are in like the actual work that gets done because things happen faster and easier and better. And the efficiencies in that they're in the good feelings that happen between people, they're in the sense of connection, they're in the sort of interdependence that can be incredibly valuable.

The Ripple Effect of Asking for Help

[00:11:12] Karen: And sort of the security that comes from that, like the payoff is huge. And so while I wanna acknowledge that it's not as easy as I make it sound. Asking for help is a great service to any team or community that you may be a part of.

[00:11:25] Paul: So to track where we've been today, we're talking about this idea of making requests for help, right? Being able to say like, it would be useful for me if you could do this thing for me. And what gets in the way of that, you know, the fact that in our culture there is a lot of status around helping, but, a lack of status around receiving help.

[00:11:45] Paul: And that making a request, asking for help requires a degree of vulnerability. That in both of those cases, you know, situations, we're kind of putting ourselves one down. And so we often don't do it. And yet when we do actually make real requests, right, when the other person is really at choice about whether or not to say yes or no to it.

[00:12:06] Paul: That can be tremendously useful for a group that when we give people the opportunity to help us, right? That that's fuel that can help us to continue to work together. This idea of really seeing, asking for help, and really again, making real requests as opposed to demands. That when we do that right, that becomes a real gift to the group that we're part of.

Final Thoughts: Asking for Help as a Leadership Practice

[00:12:27] Paul: Because we are tremendous resources for each other. The reason why we work together is to help each other out on things. The reason why we live in community is to be able to help each other. Not so we can do everything all on our own, and ignore the people around us. And so if we have a way where we are modeling and normalizing, that asking for help and giving help to each other, that where we see it more often, it becomes less of an issue for us.

[00:12:56] Paul: We are more willing to step into that place of vulnerability, and to give the other person the opportunity to feel good, because that very often is what comes along with actually helping each other.

[00:13:09] Karen: And that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:13:13] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis, and this has been Employing Differences.