Asking for help can feel awkward.
Accepting or receiving help can make us feel even worse. 
So we put it off, and maybe we don’t do it.

Take a minute and silently answer the following questions:

1. How do YOU generally feel after you help someone?

2. Have YOU learned a thing or two after you help someone?

3. Have YOU strengthened your connection or relationship with someone after you helped them?

4. Are YOU more willing to ask them or someone else for help after you’ve helped someone?

I’m going to venture a guess that most of you answered the above questions with some version of: good (valued, helpful), yes, yes, yes. 

Trust me, I don’t know your answers to be true because I’m clairvoyant. I know them to be true because I’ve been in the human behavior game longer than a minute. 

Humans, at our core, are helpful creatures. Yet, our behaviors tend to follow predictable patterns.

  • We like to offer help, yet we generally don’t like to ask for it. 
  • We like to give help, yet we generally don’t like to accept it (especially if we haven’t asked for it or haven’t realized yet that we need it).

So…how can we get out of our own way and Hurdle the Help Turtle?


Asking and Accepting Help (a low-stakes approach):1. Don’t Steal Someone’s Joy – If you answered that YOU generally feel good, valued, helpful, smart, like a team player, or useful, to the first question above, why would you want to steal those feelings from someone else? Say yes when someone offers you their contribution. You don’t have to take it if you don’t like what they tell you, but at the very least, you provided an avenue for someone to strengthen their relationship with you. Never a bad thing.

2. “I’m Thinking About…” – If you truly are allergic to asking for help, enter the conversation with “I’m thinking about…changing jobs, addressing the direction we’re headed, reducing our headcount, etc…. Do you have thoughts to share before I go further?” This approach is noncommittal on your part, yet the conversation has begun and you’re either going to receive news you can use or a referral for someone else with whom to chat next.

3. Leave the Scorecard in the Clubhouse – There is nothing worse than inadvertently insulting someone who has just provided you assistance or the generosity of their helpful guidance. Yet we do it all the time when we keep score with phrases like “I owe you one,” or “I’ll pay you back,” or “Now what can I do for you?” Again, going back to the first question above, I would bet the farm (which I don’t own) that none of you answered that question with “Great, now they’ll owe me one!” with maniacal laughter and ominous finger tapping following suit. I guarantee there is no need to keep score, so don’t do it, and don’t offer any other phrase besides “Thank you.”

I understand it’s difficult to ask for or receive help, but not all goals can be attained alone. If those are the goals you’re seeking, you need bigger goals. (Maybe that will be a future Thought Partner.) For now, be generous with those who want to be generous with you.