Soft Skills Subject: Career Development & Career Coaching

Career Development: Asking for Help at Work

If you want to succeed, you’ll need to be able to accomplish everything on your own.  Is this true? Not at all! But this is a common misconception, especially among recent college graduates.  School was all about doing your own work.  If you turned in a test or homework after asking someone else for help, it’s considered cheating.

After 16 years of conditioning at school to make sure you do everything on your own, no wonder many people join the work force and still carry the notion that asking for help is bad or a sign of weakness.  This is just NOT TRUE!  It’s great if you can handle the work and don’t need help, but most people take jobs that have a ramp up time and a learning curve or jobs that have constant new challenges throughout.  A job is suppose to challenge you and help you learn.  Inevitably, at some point, you’re going to need help.

Reasons to Ask for Help at Your Job

As you struggle to figure out how to succeed in any job, don’t do it alone. No one expects you to.  Here’s why…

• If you do well, your manager looks good. No one cares about how you became high-performing as long as you get there.  If you need to ask your team to help you ramp up on knowledge or your boss to give you advice on certain situations, do it.  They’ll be glad to help as long as you drive the process.
• If you screw up, you just dumped the problem on your manager.  It’s a lot worse to struggle alone, suck at it, and then force your manager to be brought in to clean up the mess.  Now your manager has one more problem to solve.  Prevent this from happening by asking for help before you get too lost.  It’s okay to admit you don’t know everything.  I’d much rather manage a person who knows when to ask for my help than one who wants to be perfect and then surprise me with a big “mess” later on.  The person that asked for help shows me that he’s still in control and in control of the problem at hand.  I only need to give him the parts he needs to continue forward.
• It’s less costly for the company to develop people than to hire a whole new person. Once a company hires you, it’s in their interest to help you succeed at your job. Hiring a new person takes time, money, and has it’s own risk.  This is especially true if you have been at your job for a period of time already.
• Asking for help shows maturity and strength. You show that you’re not giving up and you have the self-awareness to know that you have limitations.  It especially helps if you’re very specific about what help you need from which people – again showing you’re driving the process and have a plan on how to get through it with other’s help.

Don’t make the mistake of struggling alone at work, either out of ego or pursuit of perfection.  It’s a fool’s journey.  Produce results any way you can.  If you ask for help at work the right way and still take ownership of the overall work, you’ll be perceived as being resourceful and proactive instead of weak.  So, if you are struggling at your current job, figure out where you need help, from whom, and how to ask others to help.  Ask more questions and ask for advice.  Good luck!