So asking for help is basically the worst, right?
I've actually never seen it
on one of those top ten lists of things people fear,
like public speaking
and death,
but I'm pretty sure it actually belongs there.
Even though in many ways it's foolish for us to be afraid to admit we need help,
whether it's from a loved one or a friend or from a coworker
or even from a stranger,
somehow it always feel just a little bit
uncomfortable and embarrassing
to actually ask for help,
which is of course why most of us try to avoid asking for help
whenever humanly possible.
My father was one of those legions of fathers
who I swear would rather drive through an alligator-infested swamp
than actually ask someone for help getting back to the road.
When I was a kid, we took a family vacation.
We drove from our home in South Jersey to Colonial Williamsburg,
and I remember we got really badly lost,
and my mother and I pleaded with him
to please just pull over and ask someone for directions back to the highway,
and he absolutely refused,
and in fact assured us that we were not lost,
he had just always wanted to know what was over here.
(Laughter)
So if we're going to ask for help,
and we have to,
we all do, practically every day,
the only way we're going to even begin to get comfortable with it
is to get good at it,
to actually increases the chances that when you ask for help from someone,
they're actually going to say yes,
and not only that, but they're going to find it actually satisfying
and rewarding to help you,
because that way, they'll be motivated to continue to help you into the future.
So research that I and some of my colleagues have done
has shed a lot of light on why it is that sometimes people say yes
to our requests for help
and why sometimes they say no.
Now let me just start by saying right now,
if you need help,
you are going to have to ask for it
out loud.
OK?
We all to some extent suffer from something that psychologists call
the illusion of transparency,
basically the mistaken belief that our thoughts and our feelings
and our needs are really obvious to other people.
This is not true, but we believe it,
and so we just mostly stand around waiting for someone to notice our needs
and then spontaneously offer to help us with it.
This is a really, really bad assumption.
In fact, not only is it very difficult to tell what your needs are,
but even the people close to you often struggle to understand
how they can support you.
My partner has actually had to adopt a habit
of asking me multiple times a day,
"Are you OK? Do you need anything?"
because I am so, so bad at signaling when I need someone's help.
Now he is more patient than I deserve,
and much more proactive, much more about helping
than any of us have any right to expect other people to be.
So if you need help, you're going to have to ask for it,
and by the way, even when someone can tell that you need help,
how do they know that you want it?
Did you ever try to give unsolicited help to someone who it turns out
did not actually want your help in the first place?
They get nasty real quick, don't they.
The other day, true story,
my teenage daughter was getting dressed for school
and I decided to give her some unsolicited help about that.
I happen to think she looks amazing in brighter colors.
She tends to prefer sort of darker, more neutral tones,
and so I said, very helpfully,
that I thought maybe she could go back upstairs
and try to find something a little less somber.
(Laughter)
So if looks could kill,
I would not be standing here right now.
We really can't blame other people for not just spontaneously offering to help us
when we don't actually know that that's what is wanted.
In fact, actually, research shows that 90 percent of the help
that coworkers give one another in the workplace is in response
to explicit requests for help.
So you're going to have to say the words,
"I need your help."
Right? There's no getting around it.
Now, to be good at it,
to make sure that people actually do help you when you ask for it,
there are a few other things that are very helpful to keep in mind.
First thing: when you ask for help,
be very, very specific
about the help you want and why.
Vague, sort of indirect request for help
actually aren't very helpful to the helper, right?
We don't actually know what it is you want from us,
and, just as important,
we don't know whether or not we can be successful
in giving you the help.
Nobody wants to give bad help.
Like me, you probably get some of these requests
from perfectly pleasant strangers on LinkedIn
who want to do things like
"get together over coffee and connect"
or "pick your brain."
I ignore these requests literally every time,
and it's not that I'm not a nice person,
it's just that when I don't know what it is you want from me,
like, the kind of help you're hoping that can I provide,
I'm not interested.
Nobody is.
I'd have been much more interested if they had just come out and said
whatever it is what they were hoping to get from me,
because I'm pretty sure they had something specific in mind.
So go ahead and say,
"I'm hoping to discuss opportunities to work in your company,"
or, "I'd like to propose a joint research project
in an area I know you're interested in,"
or, "I'd like your advice on getting into medical school."
Technically I can't help you with that last one,
because I'm not that kind of doctor,
but I could point you in the direction of someone who could.