Self-reliance is a virtue that is drilled into most of us from an early age. After all, most of the work you’re asked to do in school from kindergarten onward through college is done individually. Group work is done sparingly. When a student does ask for help, teachers are reluctant to give answers away. They often answer cagily at best, and so many students will stop asking for assistance.
These habits are so deeply ingrained that they are likely to persist well into your work life. As a result, when you get to the point where you do need significant help, you aren’t practiced at requesting what you need. Here are a few tips for engaging your colleagues to help.
1. First, relax
One reason you’re reluctant to ask for help with projects: You’re afraid people will say no. Start by asking yourself what you’d say if one of your colleagues asked the same thing of you. Chances are you’d want to be a good colleague and help. So don’t assume that people will say no when you ask for assistance.
Indeed, research by Vanessa Bohns, a social psychologist and professor at Cornell, and colleagues suggests that people are much more willing to give help to others than we expect. You shouldn’t avoid asking for help just because you’re afraid someone might say no.
Even if they do say no, they are unlikely to resent you for asking. If you need help, ask for help. You’re not shirking responsibility. You are trying to get work done. Work is a team sport, and we have to rely in each other if our work is going to succeed.
2. Prepay for help
That said, most of us want to feel that we are net contributors to an organization rather than net takers. The best way to feel good about your requests for help is to prepay for the help you need. Develop a reputation as someone who will step up to help others.
As a first step, that means accepting other people’s requests for help. But it also means looking for opportunities to be of assistance. When you help others within the organization, you not only become someone who is seen as reliable, but you also get to find out what other people are working on. That gives you more chances to experience aspects of the business that go beyond your particular role. That experience will be useful as you move forward and want to take on new roles and responsibilities.
Of course, being of service to others in the organization doesn’t mean that you should not take care of yourself. Don’t take on so much extra work that you are working an unhealthy number of hours. Make sure that you advocate for yourself during annual evaluations to ensure that you are considered for promotions and raises. While there are benefits to being helpful, work is not charity, and in the long run you should be compensated fairly for the contributions you make.
3. When in doubt, give a reason
Finally, if you’re looking for a little extra boost to get help on a project, it never hurts to give a reason for why you’re asking. Indeed, for small requests any reason will do. There is a classic research finding that people in a library who were about to make photocopies would typically allow someone to cut ahead of them just because they asked and said they needed to make a copy.
For more substantial requests, the reason needs to be more significant and should highlight your plight if you don’t get assistance. That said, your colleagues naturally want to be helpful and generally don’t want to argue with you about the reason why you’re asking for help. So that is likely to increase their tendency to want to be helpful.
Bear in mind that helping each other is good for your relationships with colleagues. Doing small favors for each other that you pay back over the long run is the sign that you are treating each other as members of a community rather than strangers. After all, strangers have to pay for help from others in the moment. Community members return favors over a longer time horizon. Asking for help can actually help to cement your relationship with your colleagues.