Practicing Asking for Help
I’m one of those people that had to learn how to ask for help. Asking for help did not come naturally or easily to me. Logically I understand people have different gifts to offer, but communicating how and what I needed help with in a way that made it clear to everyone that I was not imposing on their time, feeling entitled to their good will and really needed their unique input was so difficult that I would just spend that time getting it done my way and not bother to ask.
I saw the irony - this was unreasonable, because I loved being asked to help and did not think much of it at all. I did not think others asking for my help were imposing, selfish, entitled or incompetent. Almost always, I felt flattered that they valued my input. This was another tangled wire in my thought process and behavior that made little sense and needed to be untangled.
Just like any other life skills, I needed to practice asking for help to get better at it. I made some ground rules:
It's a 50/50 chance people will say no. When people say no, they are saying no to the task, not to me as a person.
Make asking for help simple - break it down to a single task. You don’t need to give a presentation on the whole project to justify your need.
Say thank you but don’t keep score. Trust life will provide you opportunities to give back.
At The Spark Mill, we have a daily opportunity to ask for and provide help from our teammates. You can read what Sarah Milston wrote about our team management tools here for more information, but one of our daily check-in prompts is: “What’s blocking your progress? Do you need help?” Another is: “Do you have capacity to add today?” This daily practice of asking for help and defining the capacity to help others makes it easier for everyone to work together as a team, creating additional opportunities to engage with each other in a meaningful way.