Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:48: The helper's high

00:02:57: Idea for action 1: share what help you need 00:04:22: Idea for action 2: close the help loop 00:05:48: Go-to guru 00:06:25: Relevant podcast episode 00:00:00: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And you're listening to Squiggly Careers podcast.  This episode is part of our Skills Sprint Series.  We've recorded 20 episodes, each less than seven minutes long, that we hope are going to help you to build some career development momentum.  In every episode, we talk about a Squiggly Skill, what it is and why it matters, share an idea for action each, and give you a go-to guru and a podcast episode so you can learn more.  And we want you to turn your Skills Sprint into a learning streak.  And so, for everyone who completes a 20-day learning streak, we'll be offering you a free Five Skills to Succeed in a Squiggly Career virtual workshop in September.  If you post about your progress on social and tag us @amazingif, and we'll be in touch to tell you more.

Helen Tupper: And this sprint is all about the topic of asking for help, because we know it is a really important skill in a Squiggly Career, because nobody succeeds by themselves.  The more support we have from the people around us, the further we can go and the faster we can get there.  But lots of people struggle with getting the help that they need, me being one of them.  And there's all kinds of reasons for this.  Sometimes it's because people think that when they're asking for help, it's a sign of weakness. 

Sometimes it's because, and I think this is probably more me, is because I have this sort of relentless desire to get it done myself.  I'm like, "If I just work a bit harder and a bit longer, I can get it done".  And then I realise it's taken twice as long as it should have done, and it's not as good as it could have been.  It's normally when I realise that I should have asked for help sooner.  And sometimes it's because people don't want to be a bother.

There are all kinds of reasons why people find asking for help hard, but it is such an important skill to help you be at your best in a Squiggly Career.  And Sarah, from your perspective, you don't find it as hard as I do to ask for help.  So what are you doing differently?

Sarah Ellis: I don't know if I do anything differently.  I think I just know that I need help, I think, and I'm very happy to need help.  I also think it's useful to ask the question, "How do you feel when you're asked for help?" 

So Helen, if you were answering that question, someone in our team or someone you've worked with before came to you and said, "Oh, Helen, I could really do with your perspective or some help on…", generally how does that make you feel?

Helen Tupper: Nice, I care, I care and I want to help people, so whenever someone is confident to ask for help, it makes me very comfortable to try and help them.

Sarah Ellis: And that's often described as the helper's high by scientists, because when we help other people we feel useful and valued and flattered, and I think that feel-good factor often helps me overcome any fear of asking for help, because I do think, "Well, as long as I put some effort into my ask and do it in a thoughtful way and be specific, I'm not being a burden.  Actually, I'm giving somebody the opportunity to feel really great, because I know that's how I feel when I ask for help as well". So, I think part of it is just the sense of myself of knowing that I just don't know all of the answers and I will need help along the way, and I think I'm very accepting of that. 

And also getting over that barrier of, "Oh, well, is somebody going to judge me?"  I just think, "Well, no, I'm going to help somebody feel good about themselves". So my idea for action on asking for help is to share what kind of help that you need.  So, I think there are loads of different ways that we can help each other and sometimes help can get in our way because it sounds like a cry for help.  But maybe you need support, and support might sound more like just listening; we just need somebody to listen, to understand, to be empathetic. 

We might sometimes need a sounding board, so maybe I've got an idea, which wouldn't be that unusual, and I want to run it past some people.  And so I'm like, "Oh, what do you think of this?  I'm thinking a bit about this role or this project, and I just want to run it past, you know, to get different people's perspectives". 

That's maybe you need a sounding board, or boards, plural.  Or maybe you need solutions, so maybe you're stalled or you feel a bit stuck. I think these three S's, support, sounding board, and solutions, has been helpful for me both in terms of thinking, who do I go to for help, but also how am I most helpful, because I think people are naturally often good at one of those, maybe a bit more than the other.  And so, I've got a friend called Laura, for example, who's brilliant, who is an amazing support person.  She's just an incredible listener. 

You know, just someone who never interrupts, just quietly listens, and just makes you feel better from spending time with her.  And then I've got other people who are just great sounding boards.  I think I'm a good sounding board for other people because I love generating ideas.  And so this helps you to be specific, I think, so that it gives you, again, more confidence in your ask.

Helen Tupper: My idea for action is about closing the help loop.  So, Sarah mentioned the helper's high, it's like the little boost in our brain we get when people ask us for help.  But what is even better for our brains is when somebody comes back and lets you know how the help that you have given them has made a difference to their development. 

So, let's say Sarah gave me some feedback on a presentation I was doing and then I went back to Sarah a week or two later and said, "I just wanted to let you know that as a result of you giving me that feedback, I did this thing differently in this meeting that I was doing with a stakeholder, and they gave me a round of applause at the end and it made me feel really good, and I wouldn't have had that if it hadn't been for the feedback that you gave me".

When I close the help loop and I'm really specific about the benefit, that's actually an even bigger boost for that person's brain.  It makes them feel extra useful and it means they're more likely to help me in the future, so I win, but it also means they're more likely to help other people too.  So, you create more of a culture of people helping people when we close the help loop more.

Sarah Ellis: And you know, I recently had somebody WhatsApp me and do exactly this.  So, I think they'd listened to some of our podcasts and they'd got a big presentation on stage, and she let me know she'd listened back to a couple of our podcasts and they'd been really helpful.  She'd smashed her presentation which will be all down to her and a tiny bit to do with maybe some of the ideas that we gave her. 

But that honestly made my week. 

I felt so good as a result of that, and it also made me think, "Oh, do you know what, it sometimes does feel hard to find the time to help people, but it's all worth it because look at the difference that we can make.  So, a brilliant example of doing that. Then, our go-to guru here on asking for help is Amanda Palmer. 

So she wrote a brilliant book called The Art of Asking.  You can also watch her TED Talk.  And what's interesting about Amanda is you're borrowing brilliance from someone in a very different world.  So she's incredibly creative, she's in a band, she does performance art, she's really interesting to follow on Instagram. 

She's not really in the business world as such, but she talks a lot about having to basically ask the general public for money.  And I really like this idea of kind of nobody has a monopoly on wisdom, ask loads of people for help, ask as many people for help as you can and you will be a lot better because of it.  So, maybe check out her work. If you want to listen to an episode of our podcast to learn a bit more, number 110 is all about How to Ask For Help.

Helen Tupper: Thank you for listening to the Skills Sprint, we hope you found it useful.  We would love for you to subscribe so you don't miss any of the sprint episodes in this series, and also to let us know how you are getting on, tagging us in your posts.  But that is all for this episode, so bye for now.

Sarah Ellis: Bye everyone.