Helping others help you
One reason leading feels thankless is you don’t feel supported.
It’s likely others desire to support you. However, it may be that others don’t know how to support you.
For example, perhaps you’re frustrated because your day begins with a firestorm of questions and issues. Yet, you feel a need for fifteen minutes of solitude to organize your day. Have you explained your desire for fifteen minutes? Explaining it not only helps you, it helps others help you.
Are you frustrated because others expect your involvement when you want them to move forward without you? Perhaps asking a direct report where they desire your involvement will clarify, enable, and limit them from coming to you. When you clarify your level of involvement you enable them to move forward without out you. When you help them, you help yourself.
Getting help is giving help.
Getting help from others is a way of
giving help to those who want you to succeed.
One of the great questions to ask someone is, “How can I help?” One of the great statements you can make to others is, “Here’s how you can help me.”
*****
Why don’t leaders ask others to help them?
How can leaders help others help them?
Dan, this follows well on the “types of questions you hear as a Leader” theme. Too often we are keen to empower people and “teach them how to fish”, but thinking that we are saving time we often do not transfer knowledge enough to allow people to be independent and carry on with a clear end in mind. You are not helping your staff if they are dependent on you to progress. You help them by working yourself out of the job, so you only need to lead and not manage!
Thabo,
Thanks for your comment. “You help yourself by working yourself out of a job.” Ka ching. I’m afraid that some leaders are afraid to do that.
Best regards,
Dan
Dan – great insight. Allowing others to help you is an act of kindness. You are giving them a gift!
Mark,
Nicely said!
Dan
Read Marks bio: http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/mark-friedman
Hey, Dan – One of the aspects of having powerful conversations with people is about setting boundaries, clear expectations, and lots of clarifying questions to find out what people want from us.
So many of us have learned that we can’t ask for what we want – that would be selfish – and my goodness, we wouldn’t want to do that! But, if we don’t, we end up feeling frustrated and sometimes very resentful. And, this can create an attitude that often blows up in our face.
One of the first lessons I learned was to create clear expectations, and I continue to help my clients with this aspect of communication almost daily. I have to laugh out loud when I listen to someone tell someone what they want – and 90% of what they want goes unsaid, as if the person they are discussing it with can read their minds. Clear expectations – even to “I am less concerned with how it gets done than I am with that it get done” – are critical in a work environment and relieves so many headaches down the road, including the revolving door.
Great follow up article to “too many questions?”
Georgia,
Thanks for your insightful comment.
It’s amazing how much is unsaid in our offices. To go a step further. It’s amazing how much lying goes on…how frequently people lie to the boss. Sometimes its simply saying what the boss wants to hear vs. what the boss needs to hear.
In addition, sometimes people don’t say what they need because they don’t have enough self-confidence or belief to speak up.
I’m glad you stopped in today.
Dan
i have responded best to leaders who give people time to develop a trust in their leadership instead of jumping right in. As a “jump right in” personality style i am learning that patience is often a better way when dealing with others
Why don’t leaders ask others to help them?
Because many leaders didn’t rise to where they are asking for help; so they don’t know how to ask for help. They do know how to order, however.
How can leaders help others help them?
By seeking others’ opinions on issues they are grappling with and relying less on expecting others to guess what the leader happens to be thinking about.
Jim,
Clear, concise and practical. Thanks for dropping a few bread crumbs.
Love the idea that we simply ask others rather than let them guess. I think this also applies to hard conversations. It’s better to touch base and see if an issue really is an issue rather than living in confusion or walking on egg shells.
Best regards,
Dan
Read Jim’s bio at http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/james-leeman
Hmmm… I think that there is a perception both on the part of leaders and followers that if a leader asks for help, then they may be be directionless and therefore are maybe not the right leader. From both sides, this assumption is fueled by fear. And of course, this assumption is not necessarily true. It is sometimes true.
If a leader is always asking for help for unnecessary things, then they may sacrifice respect or recognition of their office and their followers may wonder why they are following them. However, if leaders never ask for help or show vulnerability, they may sacrifice approachability and actual leadership. Humans follow other humans. Showing humanity is important. Taking care of ourselves and the “office” is important. Leaders are not eternal. Like everyone, they have limits.
So communicating, delegating and asking for help is important. And showing appreciation for that help as well. I cannot be an expert in everything. I am not that infinite! To be an effective leader, just as to be an effective mother, I must also take care of myself. Or I may fail when I am needed most.
The times I have found myself in a leadership position, I suppose the biggest factors behind why I did not ask others for help had to do with a) lack of confidence in myself regarding being able to explain the task to them, b) difficulty assessing the demands on their time already and feeling like I was imposing, and c) the idea that I shouldn’t delegate something that I wouldn’t be willing to do myself. I would get stuck in a convoluted loop of “well, I haven’t ever [insert task here] so I don’t have the right to ask Joe to do it but my position description says I have to direct Joe to do support activities so does [insert task here] fit in that, even if he hasn’t ever seen me do it?
As far as how leaders can help others help them, for me, I will WALK OVER HOT COALS for someone who has earned my trust, and I will take the risk of giving them honest feedback and constructive ideas. I think this echoes back to some of the LF discussions we ended up having the other day regarding how others see us (the topic was “what drives you nuts”) but many commenters took the idea a bit farther into “how others see you”. A leader who, for example, is self-aware enough to know that his or her presence sometimes sends a different message than they intend can work on integrating new habits and/or styles of communication that compensate for that. One of the very first things or priest-to-be said when I picked him up for his initial visit to our search committee was, “I have to tell you I struggle with names.” I am sure many of us can relate to that! Shortly after he was hired to be our priest, a name tag ministry was begun. A move that benfitted us all!
I heard a phrase that has stuck with me:
“We teach people how to treat us.”
If I need 15 minutes of solitude each morning, yet keep my door open or answer the phone, etc., I am teaching my support that my solitude is negotiable. But if I stick with my commitment and hold on all calls and visits, close my door, etc., I am teaching them that my solitude is non-negotiable.
I think Georgia nailed it with setting expectations and add on defining roles, identifying individual and group vulnerability/strength, nailing down what a true (healthy) team looks, does (doesn’t do too), feels, thinks, acts– all foundational work that is ‘prep work’ before you can get into the nitty gritty of how to move a vision to reality.
Without that, you may have to add a whole lot of mortar so that what you are building is stable and doing that after the fact takes way more time, energy and resources. It usually is prep work. If that hasn’t happened, might be time for a serious ‘time out’ to remedy that lapse. Very hard to do once gears start turning.
So that is my answer to the ‘why & how leaders can/should ask for help.’ The sooner the better.
As to why leaders don’t ask for help, lots of reasons/rationale/foibles/insecurities/politics or just never learned. Jim noted that they can order or manage, maybe never learned the lead components. Ouch.
Another great post from Dan! You just keep bringing it!
Wonderful topic Dan. I agree that it is VERY helpful to let others know what kind of help you want/need.
What strikes me is what someone has to think or feel to take the risk of asking for help:
—-
Confident
Worthy
Flexible
Ready to hear “no” — perhaps people wouldn’t say this to a leader yet they would to a peer/team member.
—-
As for why leaders do not ask for help, it could be political or personal style. Drivers, who live for end results, will ask for help from others who have a driving style and have shown an end results focus. Analytics ask other analytics. In similarity there is comfort. Not necessarily the best approach yet it does happen.
Leaders must often take steps to ask diverse team members for help otherwise the leaders end up promoting “mini me’s” to be their direct reports.
Kate