My Thoughts
Stop Being a Martyr: Why Most of Us Are Terrible at Asking for Help (And How to Fix It)
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Nobody taught me how to ask for help properly until I was 42 years old. Embarrassing? Absolutely. But I'm betting 80% of you reading this are nodding your heads right now because you're just as hopeless at it as I was.
Here's the thing that'll make you uncomfortable: asking for help isn't a sign of weakness. It's actually a bloody advanced skill that separates the amateurs from the professionals. Yet somehow, we've all been conditioned to believe that struggling in silence makes us heroes. Bollocks to that.
I spent the first two decades of my career drowning in tasks I could've delegated, problems I could've solved faster with input, and stress that could've been halved if I'd just opened my mouth. The breaking point came during a project in Sydney where I was working 16-hour days, my team was burnt out, and our client was getting antsy. My wife finally said, "Why don't you just ask someone for help?" Revolutionary concept, right?
The Psychology Behind Our Help-Phobia
We're terrible at asking for help because we're wired to see it as admitting defeat. In Australia, we've got this cultural thing about being self-reliant – probably comes from our convict heritage or something. But here's what I've learned after training hundreds of managers across Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth: the best leaders are the ones who know exactly when and how to ask for assistance.
The real reasons we don't ask for help:
Most of us think we'll look incompetent. Wrong. You know what looks incompetent? Failing at something you could've succeeded at if you'd just reached out. I've seen brilliant engineers crash projects because they were too proud to admit they needed support with stakeholder management. Madness.
Others worry about being a burden. This one kills me because it assumes the worst about people. In my experience, most professionals actually enjoy being asked for their expertise. It validates their knowledge and builds relationships. When someone asks me about stress reduction techniques, I don't think "what a pest" – I think "finally, someone who values what I know."
The Art of Strategic Help-Seeking
There's a right way and a wrong way to ask for help. The wrong way is what I call "disaster dumping" – showing up in someone's office in full panic mode expecting them to save you. The right way is strategic, respectful, and makes the other person feel valued.
Here's my framework that actually works:
Step 1: Be Specific About What You Need
Don't say: "I'm struggling with this project, can you help?" Do say: "I need 20 minutes to walk through my communication strategy with the board. I value your experience with difficult stakeholders."
See the difference? The second approach tells them exactly what you need, how long it'll take, and why you chose them specifically. People respond to clarity and genuine compliments about their expertise.
Step 2: Timing Matters More Than You Think
I learned this the hard way. Never ask for help when someone's clearly stressed, rushing to a meeting, or dealing with their own crisis. The best time is usually early in the week, mid-morning, when people have settled into their rhythm but aren't yet overwhelmed.
Exception: genuine emergencies. But 90% of what we think are emergencies actually aren't.
Step 3: Make It Easy to Say Yes
Come prepared. If you need someone to review a document, send it beforehand. If you need advice on managing difficult conversations, have specific scenarios ready. Don't make them work harder to help you.
The Reciprocity Factor
Here's something most articles about asking for help get wrong: they focus on the asking but ignore the giving. You can't just be a help-seeker; you need to be a help-giver too. I keep a mental ledger (not in a petty way, but strategically) of who I can help and how.
When Sarah from accounting helped me understand the new expense system, I made sure to recommend her team for a process improvement award. When James from IT sorted out my laptop issues, I connected him with a contact who was hiring. It's not tit-for-tat; it's building a network of mutual support.
The 70-30 rule: Aim to give help 70% of the time and ask for it 30% of the time. This might sound backwards, but people are more willing to help those who've helped them or others.
Common Mistakes That Make People Avoid You
I've seen these blunders destroy relationships faster than a poorly planned restructure:
The Serial Helper-Seeker: You know the type. They ask for help constantly but never seem to learn or grow from it. They become that person everyone avoids in the corridor. Don't be that person.
The Credit Thief: They get help, succeed, then forget to mention anyone who assisted them. Career suicide in most organisations. Always, always acknowledge help publicly. When I implemented a new time management system that improved our team's productivity by 40%, I made sure everyone knew it was built on advice from three colleagues.
The Unclear Communicator: They ask vague questions and expect mind-reading. "Can you look at this?" isn't a request; it's a puzzle.
The Power Dynamic Problem
Let's talk about something nobody wants to admit: asking for help gets weird when hierarchy is involved. Asking your boss for help feels different from asking a peer, and asking a subordinate feels different again.
Asking Up: Frame it as seeking their strategic insight, not admitting you can't do your job. "I'd love your perspective on this approach" works better than "I don't know what to do."
Asking Down: This is trickier. You need to be careful not to appear incompetent to your team, but you also need to tap into their expertise. I often frame it as collaborative problem-solving: "I'm working through this challenge and would value your input."
Asking Sideways: Usually the easiest, but don't assume peer relationships don't have politics. They do.
When Asking for Help Backfires
Not all help-seeking is created equal. I've seen people damage their careers by asking for help inappropriately. Here are the landmines:
Never ask for help with something that's clearly your core responsibility without first attempting it yourself. If you're the marketing manager, don't ask someone else to write your marketing strategy. But asking for input on your draft? That's smart.
Don't ask for help from someone who's obviously struggling themselves. It's like asking someone drowning to throw you a life ring.
Avoid the expertise mismatch. Asking the finance guy about creative design problems isn't strategic; it's lazy research.
The Follow-Up Game
Here's where most people screw up: they get the help, say thanks, then disappear. That's not how you build lasting professional relationships.
Always follow up with results. Always. When someone helps you solve a problem, circle back and tell them how it worked out. When someone gives you advice, let them know whether you took it and what happened.
This isn't just courtesy (though it is that); it's strategic relationship building. People who see the impact of their help are more likely to help again.
Making Help-Seeking Part of Your Brand
The most successful people I know have made asking thoughtful questions part of their professional identity. They're known as people who seek input, value expertise, and build on others' ideas. This isn't weakness; it's leadership.
But here's the contradiction: while I'm telling you to ask for help more, I'm also telling you to be strategic about it. You want to be known as someone who asks great questions, not someone who needs constant assistance.
The sweet spot is being known as a collaborator who brings people together to solve complex problems. That's a reputation worth building.
The Cultural Shift We Need
Australian workplace culture needs to get better at this. We're great at the "she'll be right" attitude, but terrible at systematic collaboration. We need to stop seeing help-seeking as failure and start seeing it as intelligence.
Companies like Atlassian have figured this out. They've created cultures where asking for help is normalised, expected, and rewarded. The result? Faster problem-solving, better innovation, and happier employees.
Look, I get it. Changing how you approach help-seeking feels vulnerable. But here's the bottom line: in a world where knowledge is distributed and problems are complex, the people who can effectively tap into collective intelligence are the ones who'll thrive.
Start small. Next week, identify one challenge you're facing and one person whose expertise could help. Craft a specific request. Follow up with results. Watch what happens.
Your career will thank you for it. And so will the people whose expertise you value enough to seek out.
Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is admit you don't have all the answers. That's not failure – that's wisdom.