September 9, 2024 • 12 mins
If you want to be trusted, create value, and ultimately advance in your career, you might be making a big mistake: not asking for help. In this episode, we discuss how easy it is to change this behavior and the impact it has on your career progression and your team's perception of you.
Learn the importance of seeking clarity, showing your work early, and taking feedback constructively. Discover how these simple actions can save you time, improve your work quality, and enhance your reputation. Host Art, a former founder with extensive hiring and project leadership experience, shares insights on how asking for help can lead to personal and professional growth.
Don't miss out on these valuable tips that can transform your approach to work and make you a more effective and respected team member. Tune in to understand why asking for help is a strength, not a weakness, and start applying these principles today!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So when it comes to your career, if you want to be trusted, if you want to create
value, if you want to ultimately get ahead and be promoted and given new responsibilities,
then the biggest mistake that you're probably making right now and that you
can change really easily is that you're not asking for help.
You're not admitting when you don't understand something or why it is that you're
asked to do something or you're not showing your work early and asking if you're on the right track.
(00:21):
So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about just
how easy it is to change some of those behaviors and we're We're going to look
at the impact that not asking for help is having on you and the amount of time
it takes you to get projects done and ultimately how far you'll go in your career.
Then we're going to look at it from the other side. We're going to look at the
impact that it's having on the people around you and the perception that they
have of you and how easy, again, it is to change that perception by just raising
(00:46):
your hand and saying, can you help me?
Can you help me understand this? Can you help make sure I'm on the right track?
If you're new to the team, by the way, my name is Art. I'm a former founder.
And over the years I've hired hundreds of people and I've led countless projects
and every single person that I've ever worked with, I let them know that I want
them to be successful and I want to help them. They just have to ask.
And when they don't, I know that it's going to impact us. It's going to add
(01:09):
more work to me. It's going to make the outcome less great.
And I don't want that. I want them to be successful. That's why I hired them.
That's why I work with them. Everyone that has ever hired you wants you to be
successful because it means they will be successful.
So you have to get over this fear of asking for help, thinking that it's going
to make you look dumb or make people think less of you.
It's not. It's only going to do that if you wait too long.
(01:30):
So the first thing that you can start doing right now is simply asking for clarity.
When you're assigned a project, task, anything, just make sure that you actually
understand what it is that's expected of you.
Understand why you're doing it. What's the goal here? Are we trying to attract
new customers? Are we trying to fix a bug? Are we trying to educate people?
Understand what the intention is. ask the questions, ask for help understanding
(01:51):
it, and make sure that you know exactly why you're doing the thing you're doing.
It'll make it so much easier. It'll remove the uncertainty of what it is that
you're supposed to do if you understand what the end goal is going to be.
The next thing you can do is just show your work early.
And this is probably the hardest thing for a lot of people to do because most
of us are trying to curate an impression of ourselves.
(02:12):
We think of life like Instagram, where we only want to present the best moments.
We want to do our work as well as we possibly can, and we want to show people just how amazing we are.
We want our first draft to be approved and pushed live.
We want people to be wowed by how detailed or how amazing we create our works, our designs, our code.
And so we're hesitant to show people our raw notes, what we're thinking,
(02:36):
what we're starting on, when we're not sure what the outcome's going to be.
But it's the absolute wrong approach.
If you want to make a difference, if you want to minimize how much work you
have to do, none of us want to work evenings and weekends.
If you want to shorten how long it takes you to actually do something and do
it right, show people your early work.
If you want to understand how to easily communicate your rough work and get
(02:58):
feedback and ask for help, here's the easiest thing to do.
The next time you're assigned a project, say to the person, okay,
great, here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to go away and for the next hour or two, I'm just going to write down
the raw notes that I have. I'm going to write down what I think the goal of
this project is, what the outline is, what I think I'm going to do.
Would you be willing to just look at that with me once I'm done and make sure
(03:18):
that I'm on the right track?
If you could do that it would be great because it'll save me time.
It'll make sure that all of the energy that I put into this is really aligned
to the goals that you have.
And it'll probably save you time as well because you'll only have to spend 10
or 15 minutes with me at the beginning and you'll know that I'm on the right
track. Is that okay with you?
By framing it that way people will understand that what you're going to show
them may not be very good. It may be completely off track, but they understand why you're doing it.
(03:44):
They understand that you're doing it to save them time, to save you time,
to make sure that whatever you're doing is as good as it can possibly be.
So do that and then actually follow through. Show them your work.
Show them the rough draft.
It may be scary because you're showing them something that's imperfect,
that doesn't present that curated version of yourself, but it's really going
to help you create alignment and make sure that whatever you're doing is going
(04:06):
to be right. And it usually means whatever you're doing is going to be easier to do.
And the third thing that you can start doing right now is actually asking for
help and then listening to what people tell you.
It's hard for a lot of us. Sometimes when you ask for help, you're told that
you don't understand or that you're doing it wrong.
And a lot of us take it as a personal affront, but it doesn't have to be that way.
If you want to get ahead in your career, if you want to become the person that's
(04:28):
assigning work instead of being assigned work, you need to accumulate knowledge.
So every time you ask for help, take the knowledge that you're given.
Use it to build this well of information, of experiences, of knowledge about
your industry, your product, how to get things done, how to maximize value and minimize effort.
And ultimately, you will become the expert. You'll become the leader.
(04:51):
You'll become the person in the room that makes the decisions.
And that's what we all want. We want to make more money. We want to succeed.
We want more responsibility, more reports, whatever it is.
You can have it, but it starts by admitting what It starts by showing a little
vulnerability and learning from the experiences of other people.
And I know I'm presenting managers as these wonderful people that want to help
(05:12):
you, want to see you succeed.
And for the most part, it is true. But of course, there's terrible managers
out there. There's people that want to belittle their team. There's people that want to micromanage.
I don't know how to help you with that. That's not what this is about.
Those people you sometimes just need to get away from.
But in general, people want to help you. They want you to succeed.
They love sharing the knowledge they have. They love showing their expertise,
their opportunity to show that curated
(05:34):
version of themselves as being the all-knowing, experienced person.
So ask for help and you'll get it because people like to do it. It's just human nature.
And those three things, just asking for help, asking for clarity up front,
showing your work and taking in the feedback you get are the three biggest things
you could do right now to make an impact on yourself and your work.
(05:55):
But I want to make sure that it actually hits home for you. And doing that sometimes
means seeing it from someone else's perspective.
So let's think about your manager or your team. We'll use me as an example.
I've been in this position a lot. I've assigned so many different projects and
things to people, and I've seen the same problems play out over and over again.
So think about the perception that someone would have of you if you don't ask
(06:16):
for help at the beginning.
They assigned something, they gave you a ticket, they had a task,
they hired you to do this particular thing, and they asked you to go and do it.
If you don't ask any questions, and then you come back and you've made a mistake,
they start wondering, why didn't they ask? Why are they so off base?
And that perception of you will stick. dick.
It starts creeping into the minds of the people that are on the management team,
(06:37):
that are on your team, and they start wondering, what are they doing?
Why don't they ever admit that they don't know that?
They keep saying yes, yes, yes, but then they keep making mistakes.
I don't know if I trust that person.
And that perception, it only compounds the longer that you go away and hide your work.
If someone comes to me after an hour and they say, here's what I'm thinking
I'm going to do for this project, or the code that I'm going to write,
(07:00):
or the article that I'm going to produce and they're way off base,
I don't judge them very much.
They've spent a few minutes, an hour on it. That's not a lot of time.
I get it. They just didn't understand right away. And I can help shape it into
whatever it is that I needed.
But now think about my perception of them or your manager's perception of you.
If you wait a week or a month before you even show them what you've been working
(07:21):
on, maybe you've been toiling over it, spending evenings and weekends,
and you think you've produced the most perfect thing that they have ever seen.
And they look at it and it's wrong.
Their perception of you is so much worse the longer it takes you to show work.
Because now they have to question what were you doing all that time?
Don't you understand? I thought you got it. Why didn't you ask for help?
(07:43):
So you had the same mistakes that you had an hour into the project,
but you've compounded the perception, the negative perception of yourself by
simply not asking for help or guidance or to ensure that you're headed in the right direction.
And the other thing I want you to think about is how much work you actually create for others.
This is a story that I've told many times before, but it's something that happens
(08:06):
a lot to leaders, to executives, to founders.
People are very afraid of wasting their time.
They want to make a good impression and they don't want to pull these executives
who they assume are so busy and they have so much on their plate.
They don't want to pull them into their menial tasks or their little assignments.
They think that they're doing them a favor by not involving them early.
But what actually happens is you create more work for your manager and you create
(08:29):
a bunch of bad options for us.
If someone has worked for several weeks on a project and it's wrong and they
give it to me to review, I really have about three different options and none of them are good.
If it's not the way that I need it to be, I have to consider when it's due.
Maybe it's something that has to go live today or tomorrow and they sent it
to me for a final review and I look at it and it's not right.
(08:50):
Well, one of the options that I have then is just to let it go and I'm disappointed
and I know it's not going to make an impact or have the results that I need for the business.
Music.
That's not good. That doesn't help the business. It doesn't make me feel or look good.
And it creates a bad perception of you because you're the person that delivered
something that's really of no value.
The next option I have is to rework it myself.
So now, instead of spending 15 or 20 minutes with you a week ago,
(09:13):
helping to ensure you're on the right track and trusting that you're going to
do whatever it is you do really well, the reason you were hired,
instead of doing that, I now have to spend an hour or two hours reading it.
Maybe it's a five page presentation or a 10 page document, whatever it is,
it's going to take me more time to review it because now I'm reviewing it as if it's the final work.
And if it's not right and it's due soon, I might have to do it myself.
(09:35):
And that doesn't feel good for me.
It's a waste of my time. And chances are I'm going to do a worse job or your
manager is going to do a worse job than you are because they're not the expert
in whatever it is that you do.
They probably haven't coded for years, so they don't write.
But they're going to do their best to try and tweak it or change it.
Even though it's got a lot of flaws, they're going to try to massage it into
something that's a little bit better.
(09:56):
And again, you're going to feel bad. You're going to feel they're a micromanager
or that you've done a bad job, and they're going to be disappointed in you and
the results where all of that could have been avoided if you had just involved them.
And the third choice, and I hate this one, is that I have to send it back to the person.
Even if there's only a day or two left, we're close to the deadline, I have to mark it up.
I have to tell them, you're not doing this right. You haven't followed the instructions.
(10:19):
You don't understand what we're trying to do here.
Please do it again. Here's some new notes.
And I know when I'm doing that, I'm going to break their confidence in themselves.
I didn't want that. I want them to be confident. I want them to be successful
because, again, I want to be successful.
And I need the people around me to do a great job for me to be successful,
for my company to succeed.
So those options, none of them are good.
(10:41):
And they all came from a place of the employee, of the person,
of you, thinking that you were doing what was right, that you were going to
impress everybody and that you were going to protect everybody's time,
but you actually have the opposite effect.
So think about that the next time that you're in a meeting, the next time that
something's assigned to you.
Recognize that executives have no problem saying, I don't understand.
What does that mean? Hey, can you teach me that? I think it'd be valuable for me to learn.
(11:04):
They do that because they don't have to worry about their perception anymore.
People already know they're an expert in sales and marketing and software development.
Whatever it is that they're doing, they've probably been been doing it for decades
and they already have some respect, some credibility.
So they have no problem saying, hey, I don't know what that means.
I'm the idiot here. Please tell it to me.
Explain it to me like I'm a two-year-old. And you need to do the same thing.
You need to start modeling the same behavior that you see in executives,
(11:27):
the good ones anyway, and admitting when you don't know something,
showing your work, being willing to take feedback, being willing to involve
people early because you recognize that it's going to make you better.
You're going to deliver better projects, and you're going to save time for yourself and for others.
That's it. That's how easy it is to just be someone that people want to work with.
(11:47):
Someone that they know is going to take feedback. They're going to ask for help when they need it.
They're not going to be stuck at a problem that you could have solved in 10 minutes for a week.
That's one of the most frustrating things that you can have on your team or
as someone that reports to you is knowing that you could have solved that problem
in a matter of minutes, but instead they wasted a week trying to resolve something
that you already knew how to do. or that they could have just asked for help on.
(12:11):
So the next time you're in any of those situations, just ask for help.
Try it out even in your personal life. When you don't know something, don't pretend you do.
Don't Google it on the side. Don't use ChatGPT. Just ask someone.
People want to help. People are...
Music.
So when it comes to your career, if you want to be trusted, if you want to create
value, if you want to ultimately get ahead and be promoted and given new responsibilities,
then the biggest mistake that you're probably making right now and that you
can change really easily is that you're not asking for help.
You're not admitting when you don't understand something or why it is that you're
asked to do something or you're not showing your work early and asking if you're on the right track.
(00:21):
So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about just
how easy it is to change some of those behaviors and we're We're going to look
at the impact that not asking for help is having on you and the amount of time
it takes you to get projects done and ultimately how far you'll go in your career.
Then we're going to look at it from the other side. We're going to look at the
impact that it's having on the people around you and the perception that they
have of you and how easy, again, it is to change that perception by just raising
(00:46):
your hand and saying, can you help me?
Can you help me understand this? Can you help make sure I'm on the right track?
If you're new to the team, by the way, my name is Art. I'm a former founder.
And over the years I've hired hundreds of people and I've led countless projects
and every single person that I've ever worked with, I let them know that I want
them to be successful and I want to help them. They just have to ask.
And when they don't, I know that it's going to impact us. It's going to add
(01:09):
more work to me. It's going to make the outcome less great.
And I don't want that. I want them to be successful. That's why I hired them.
That's why I work with them. Everyone that has ever hired you wants you to be
successful because it means they will be successful.
So you have to get over this fear of asking for help, thinking that it's going
to make you look dumb or make people think less of you.
It's not. It's only going to do that if you wait too long.
(01:30):
So the first thing that you can start doing right now is simply asking for clarity.
When you're assigned a project, task, anything, just make sure that you actually
understand what it is that's expected of you.
Understand why you're doing it. What's the goal here? Are we trying to attract
new customers? Are we trying to fix a bug? Are we trying to educate people?
Understand what the intention is. ask the questions, ask for help understanding
(01:51):
it, and make sure that you know exactly why you're doing the thing you're doing.
It'll make it so much easier. It'll remove the uncertainty of what it is that
you're supposed to do if you understand what the end goal is going to be.
The next thing you can do is just show your work early.
And this is probably the hardest thing for a lot of people to do because most
of us are trying to curate an impression of ourselves.
(02:12):
We think of life like Instagram, where we only want to present the best moments.
We want to do our work as well as we possibly can, and we want to show people just how amazing we are.
We want our first draft to be approved and pushed live.
We want people to be wowed by how detailed or how amazing we create our works, our designs, our code.
And so we're hesitant to show people our raw notes, what we're thinking,
(02:36):
what we're starting on, when we're not sure what the outcome's going to be.
But it's the absolute wrong approach.
If you want to make a difference, if you want to minimize how much work you
have to do, none of us want to work evenings and weekends.
If you want to shorten how long it takes you to actually do something and do
it right, show people your early work.
If you want to understand how to easily communicate your rough work and get
(02:58):
feedback and ask for help, here's the easiest thing to do.
The next time you're assigned a project, say to the person, okay,
great, here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to go away and for the next hour or two, I'm just going to write down
the raw notes that I have. I'm going to write down what I think the goal of
this project is, what the outline is, what I think I'm going to do.
Would you be willing to just look at that with me once I'm done and make sure
(03:18):
that I'm on the right track?
If you could do that it would be great because it'll save me time.
It'll make sure that all of the energy that I put into this is really aligned
to the goals that you have.
And it'll probably save you time as well because you'll only have to spend 10
or 15 minutes with me at the beginning and you'll know that I'm on the right
track. Is that okay with you?
By framing it that way people will understand that what you're going to show
them may not be very good. It may be completely off track, but they understand why you're doing it.
(03:44):
They understand that you're doing it to save them time, to save you time,
to make sure that whatever you're doing is as good as it can possibly be.
So do that and then actually follow through. Show them your work.
Show them the rough draft.
It may be scary because you're showing them something that's imperfect,
that doesn't present that curated version of yourself, but it's really going
to help you create alignment and make sure that whatever you're doing is going
(04:06):
to be right. And it usually means whatever you're doing is going to be easier to do.
And the third thing that you can start doing right now is actually asking for
help and then listening to what people tell you.
It's hard for a lot of us. Sometimes when you ask for help, you're told that
you don't understand or that you're doing it wrong.
And a lot of us take it as a personal affront, but it doesn't have to be that way.
If you want to get ahead in your career, if you want to become the person that's
(04:28):
assigning work instead of being assigned work, you need to accumulate knowledge.
So every time you ask for help, take the knowledge that you're given.
Use it to build this well of information, of experiences, of knowledge about
your industry, your product, how to get things done, how to maximize value and minimize effort.
And ultimately, you will become the expert. You'll become the leader.
(04:51):
You'll become the person in the room that makes the decisions.
And that's what we all want. We want to make more money. We want to succeed.
We want more responsibility, more reports, whatever it is.
You can have it, but it starts by admitting what It starts by showing a little
vulnerability and learning from the experiences of other people.
And I know I'm presenting managers as these wonderful people that want to help
(05:12):
you, want to see you succeed.
And for the most part, it is true. But of course, there's terrible managers
out there. There's people that want to belittle their team. There's people that want to micromanage.
I don't know how to help you with that. That's not what this is about.
Those people you sometimes just need to get away from.
But in general, people want to help you. They want you to succeed.
They love sharing the knowledge they have. They love showing their expertise,
their opportunity to show that curated
(05:34):
version of themselves as being the all-knowing, experienced person.
So ask for help and you'll get it because people like to do it. It's just human nature.
And those three things, just asking for help, asking for clarity up front,
showing your work and taking in the feedback you get are the three biggest things
you could do right now to make an impact on yourself and your work.
(05:55):
But I want to make sure that it actually hits home for you. And doing that sometimes
means seeing it from someone else's perspective.
So let's think about your manager or your team. We'll use me as an example.
I've been in this position a lot. I've assigned so many different projects and
things to people, and I've seen the same problems play out over and over again.
So think about the perception that someone would have of you if you don't ask
(06:16):
for help at the beginning.
They assigned something, they gave you a ticket, they had a task,
they hired you to do this particular thing, and they asked you to go and do it.
If you don't ask any questions, and then you come back and you've made a mistake,
they start wondering, why didn't they ask? Why are they so off base?
And that perception of you will stick. dick.
It starts creeping into the minds of the people that are on the management team,
(06:37):
that are on your team, and they start wondering, what are they doing?
Why don't they ever admit that they don't know that?
They keep saying yes, yes, yes, but then they keep making mistakes.
I don't know if I trust that person.
And that perception, it only compounds the longer that you go away and hide your work.
If someone comes to me after an hour and they say, here's what I'm thinking
I'm going to do for this project, or the code that I'm going to write,
(07:00):
or the article that I'm going to produce and they're way off base,
I don't judge them very much.
They've spent a few minutes, an hour on it. That's not a lot of time.
I get it. They just didn't understand right away. And I can help shape it into
whatever it is that I needed.
But now think about my perception of them or your manager's perception of you.
If you wait a week or a month before you even show them what you've been working
(07:21):
on, maybe you've been toiling over it, spending evenings and weekends,
and you think you've produced the most perfect thing that they have ever seen.
And they look at it and it's wrong.
Their perception of you is so much worse the longer it takes you to show work.
Because now they have to question what were you doing all that time?
Don't you understand? I thought you got it. Why didn't you ask for help?
(07:43):
So you had the same mistakes that you had an hour into the project,
but you've compounded the perception, the negative perception of yourself by
simply not asking for help or guidance or to ensure that you're headed in the right direction.
And the other thing I want you to think about is how much work you actually create for others.
This is a story that I've told many times before, but it's something that happens
(08:06):
a lot to leaders, to executives, to founders.
People are very afraid of wasting their time.
They want to make a good impression and they don't want to pull these executives
who they assume are so busy and they have so much on their plate.
They don't want to pull them into their menial tasks or their little assignments.
They think that they're doing them a favor by not involving them early.
But what actually happens is you create more work for your manager and you create
(08:29):
a bunch of bad options for us.
If someone has worked for several weeks on a project and it's wrong and they
give it to me to review, I really have about three different options and none of them are good.
If it's not the way that I need it to be, I have to consider when it's due.
Maybe it's something that has to go live today or tomorrow and they sent it
to me for a final review and I look at it and it's not right.
(08:50):
Well, one of the options that I have then is just to let it go and I'm disappointed
and I know it's not going to make an impact or have the results that I need for the business.
Music.
That's not good. That doesn't help the business. It doesn't make me feel or look good.
And it creates a bad perception of you because you're the person that delivered
something that's really of no value.
The next option I have is to rework it myself.
So now, instead of spending 15 or 20 minutes with you a week ago,
(09:13):
helping to ensure you're on the right track and trusting that you're going to
do whatever it is you do really well, the reason you were hired,
instead of doing that, I now have to spend an hour or two hours reading it.
Maybe it's a five page presentation or a 10 page document, whatever it is,
it's going to take me more time to review it because now I'm reviewing it as if it's the final work.
And if it's not right and it's due soon, I might have to do it myself.
(09:35):
And that doesn't feel good for me.
It's a waste of my time. And chances are I'm going to do a worse job or your
manager is going to do a worse job than you are because they're not the expert
in whatever it is that you do.
They probably haven't coded for years, so they don't write.
But they're going to do their best to try and tweak it or change it.
Even though it's got a lot of flaws, they're going to try to massage it into
something that's a little bit better.
(09:56):
And again, you're going to feel bad. You're going to feel they're a micromanager
or that you've done a bad job, and they're going to be disappointed in you and
the results where all of that could have been avoided if you had just involved them.
And the third choice, and I hate this one, is that I have to send it back to the person.
Even if there's only a day or two left, we're close to the deadline, I have to mark it up.
I have to tell them, you're not doing this right. You haven't followed the instructions.
(10:19):
You don't understand what we're trying to do here.
Please do it again. Here's some new notes.
And I know when I'm doing that, I'm going to break their confidence in themselves.
I didn't want that. I want them to be confident. I want them to be successful
because, again, I want to be successful.
And I need the people around me to do a great job for me to be successful,
for my company to succeed.
So those options, none of them are good.
(10:41):
And they all came from a place of the employee, of the person,
of you, thinking that you were doing what was right, that you were going to
impress everybody and that you were going to protect everybody's time,
but you actually have the opposite effect.
So think about that the next time that you're in a meeting, the next time that
something's assigned to you.
Recognize that executives have no problem saying, I don't understand.
What does that mean? Hey, can you teach me that? I think it'd be valuable for me to learn.
(11:04):
They do that because they don't have to worry about their perception anymore.
People already know they're an expert in sales and marketing and software development.
Whatever it is that they're doing, they've probably been been doing it for decades
and they already have some respect, some credibility.
So they have no problem saying, hey, I don't know what that means.
I'm the idiot here. Please tell it to me.
Explain it to me like I'm a two-year-old. And you need to do the same thing.
You need to start modeling the same behavior that you see in executives,
(11:27):
the good ones anyway, and admitting when you don't know something,
showing your work, being willing to take feedback, being willing to involve
people early because you recognize that it's going to make you better.
You're going to deliver better projects, and you're going to save time for yourself and for others.
That's it. That's how easy it is to just be someone that people want to work with.
(11:47):
Someone that they know is going to take feedback. They're going to ask for help when they need it.
They're not going to be stuck at a problem that you could have solved in 10 minutes for a week.
That's one of the most frustrating things that you can have on your team or
as someone that reports to you is knowing that you could have solved that problem
in a matter of minutes, but instead they wasted a week trying to resolve something
that you already knew how to do. or that they could have just asked for help on.
(12:11):
So the next time you're in any of those situations, just ask for help.
Try it out even in your personal life. When you don't know something, don't pretend you do.
Don't Google it on the side. Don't use ChatGPT. Just ask someone.
People want to help. People are...
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