How to ask for help at work (without feeling awkward)

0:00Hi everybody, it is Helen here from the Squiggly Careers podcast and you are listening to one of our Squiggly Shortcut episodes. These episodes come out every Thursday. They're designed to be a really quick listen to help you with a specific challenge, opportunity, problem you might be having at work right now. And today's topic is about asking for help.

0:24The more we are able to ask for help at work, the less likely we are to get stuck in situations and the more able we are to succeed in our squiggly career. So good news on that front. However, the bad news is that lots of us find this really hard to do. We worry that people will think we don't know what we're doing. So we feel a bit vulnerable and exposed when we ask for help. Also, if you're anything like me, I have this sort of dogged persistence where I think, well, I'll just work a bit harder and then I'll be able to do it. Or perhaps sometimes you think, well, I don't want to bother that person because they're really busy too.

1:00But all of these blockers that we put in the way of asking for help means that we are more likely to struggle for longer. It's more likely that we're going to be ineffective in the way that we're working. You know, it's faster and easier and often more enjoyable when we ask for the help that we need at work. So we need a practical approach to be able to do this a bit better. And that is what I have for you today. And as I was going through my own thinking about how to ask for help in a way that feels easy, I ended up writing a lot of notes on a post-it note. And that's what I'm going to talk through today.

1:36So if visuals help you, I would recommend heading over to our YouTube channel. And you can kind of watch this there. you'll see me holding up the post-it note with the framework but I will do my very best to explain it if you are listening right now in your car walking your dog or wherever wherever you like to listen to the podcast so I think the first thing when we're asking for help the first thing that we need to do is we sort of need to neutralize the ask in our own heads because of all this emotion that we get with asking for help and often we ask for help and we really really need it so it's a kind of more of a high pressure situation or a problem so I want to neutralize that because I don't think all of that emotion is really helping us.

2:14So right now, I think a very useful thing for you to do is to spend five minutes writing down all the things that you need a bit of help with at work. And that might be projects that you're working on. It might be things that you need for your development. So maybe a bit longer term. So I'm going to hold my post-it note up now. This is everything that we're going to talk through. But in its first column here, so I've drawn a bit of a table with four columns. And in the first column, I've just written, I need help with and I put four different things so growing in new markets US and Middle East I put building products to support our service offer I put integrating more technology into our products and services and I put PhD just PhD because that's quite a big one that I need some help with so that is me being quite neutral I'm not panicking right now but realistically there are some things I need help with so I want you to do that kind of neutral view of what you need help with in terms of your work and development over the next six to 12 months.

3:09The next column is I want you to think about what type of help would be most effective. And here there are three. So you might need some support. This often looks like a peer who gets the thing that you're doing. Maybe they need some help with it at the same time. It's someone that's quite trust that you can you can just talk to and they understand. So maybe you need a bit of support with that thing. Maybe you need solutions. Maybe you need someone who has been there and done it and they can tell you how to do it. Or maybe you need a sounding board, like an ideasy person, a connector type person who can build on your thinking and help you to be better.

3:46Maybe you need something like that. They are three different kinds of help. So rather than saying, can I have some help, which feels quite big and can be quite hard for someone to respond to, we are going to think, well, with that thing I need help with, specifically, what kind of help do I need? So in my next column, I've got I specifically need. And if I take that first one, that's where I said I need help with growing a new market. And I put I need a sounding board. I've got loads of ideas I could just do with somebody who's in that market to help build my ideas better. Or for example, on the integrating more technology, which is something I need help with, I said I specifically need solutions.

4:23I need someone who has done that because I don't know how to do it. And I need someone who's got expertise in the area that I don't. So you're going to go through each of the areas you need help with and write down whether it's solutions, a sounding board, or actually a bit of support. Now, the next thing is, who's the person? Who's the person that has got that ability to give you that kind of support? And I would just write their names down. And I've done that in my third column. So I've written, you know, Ben for New Markets, for example, Mark and Chris for building out our products. These are people that I know, and that I believe will want to help me.

4:56However, for the PhD, I've got a giant question mark, because I don't know who can help me. And that's okay, because you can go to your friends or colleagues and you can say, do you know anyone who? I'm looking for someone who's really good at solutions on this area. Do you know anyone who? So this means your ask for an individual can be much more specific, which means that someone's more likely to make a connection or think who can help you. Now, the fourth and final area is how you frame the ask. So this is the last column on my table here. How do you frame the ask? I've written here my ask sounds like what I would recommend here is to avoid the can you help me can I have some help because it's big it's ambiguous as I said it's hard for people to understand what you mean instead I would try to ask for advice I'd frame it differently so for my first example the growing in new markets my ask sounds like do you have any advice on how I can build my reputation and brand in Dubai, for example.

5:57My second one, where I was talking about building products and supporting our service offer, my ask sounds like, what would you do if you were running my business? My PhD ask, where actually I'm looking for support, kind of that peer level support, my ask there sounds like, what are you finding hard and how could we help each other? Framing your ask for help without always mentioning the word help means that you will feel you're more confident when you make the ask. If you are in the moment and you've not thought about it, you might stumble over your words, you lose clarity, you lose confidence.

6:29But if you write it down, it's a lot clearer and it's easier for you to communicate. So these are my four steps for asking for help in a way that can help you to move forward with your squiggly career. As I said, I've written this framework, I've written my examples down. So I'll possibly pop a photo of this on our Instagram page or our LinkedIn page as well. So just find Amazing If and you'll be able to see that there but you can see me talking all through on YouTube if that makes sense for you but I hope that has been a helpful squiggly shortcut on the topic of asking for help if you've got any other areas that you need a bit of support with please let us know we're just