How to Be Helped
“Over the years I learned how to be helped.” Donald Hall in Work Life.
Receiving help requires more humility than giving it. Helping makes us feel important. Sometimes superior. Being helped makes others feel important and reveals our vulnerability.
Frailty teaches what pride resists: We need each other. We begin reluctantly. As time passes, we welcome help.
I hate it when old people talk to me like I’m one of them. While loading material into my pickup, an old man asked if I wanted help. My first thought was, “Get away from me.” Instead, I said, “Thank you, I got it.”
I want to be the guy who helps, not the old man who needs help. But, if you live long enough, you will learn to be helped.
When you receive help you communicate:
- You matter.
- I trust you.
- I depend on you.
- I don’t need to prove myself.
Receiving help is leaderly because it lifts others.
The issue always returns to humility.
At the heart of a real team is delight in helping and being helped. No helping, no team. Constantly giving help, but refusing to receive it, diminishes others.
How to Be Helped
- Admit you need help.
- Ask for advice.
- Ask, “What do you think?”
- Accept an offered hand.
- Let someone teach you something.
- Say, “I could use your help with this.”
Learning how to be helped helps others.
First we learn to help ourselves. Once the bag was carried. Now it’s in a cart.
What does this mean for you today? First, it’s better to humble yourself than to be humbled. Because when something humbles us we can still nurture arrogance in our heart. The way I do when an old person offers me help.
When you receive help you add value. You also build a connection. When you let people help you, they like you more. Unless you’re just needy.
What helps you learn how to be helped?
Too Damn Helpful – Leadership Freak
Book: Helping by Edgar Schein.
Great post, as always Dan! And a good reminder, as none of us are getting any younger.
My “wise, old” dad always said: Help isn’t helpful unless it is needed AND wanted. I have repeated that sentence to myself many times as I felt compelled to offer help to someone.
Good morning Cheryl. Thanks for sharing your dad’s wisdom. Sometimes we want to help so deeply that we get frustrated when people bristle at our help.