Learning to accept help more effectively is a skill leaders must hone. A VUCA world requires leaders to recognise and model interdependence visibly
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We love heroes. Our culture, at work and outside promotes hero-worship, and leaders believe they must be strong, visionary, inspiring and have all the answers. While this was more fantasy than reality even in the past, it is a dangerous myth for leaders to believe in the knowledge economy. Such misconceptions and attitudes can severely limit our effectiveness as leaders.
Why Leaders Need Help
The world of business is becoming increasingly complex and needs people and organisations to work together better than ever before. As a leader, if you are not open to seeking help from others and being influenced by others, it is very unlikely that your team is effectively delivering to expectations of your stakeholders
We live in a VUCA world.
The Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity that we increasingly face in every aspect of our business makes it impossible for any one person to effectively know everything that needs to be known to ensure decisions are rational and robust.
Technology is advancing relentlessly.
While this is greatly increasing our capacity for innovation and delivery, making exciting changes possible, it also makes existing knowledge, paradigms and even roles redundant. The new knowledge and skills required are likely to be more dispersed within the organisation
Globalisation
Globalisation means that our customers, suppliers as well as our organisation's delivery capability is geographically dispersed. Thus routine operations as well as project execution requires far more coordination and collaboration than before.
Why accepting help is difficult
In almost all cultures, the act of asking for help shifts the power dynamic. A person asking for help makes himself vulnerable while the person who provides help is seen as wielding greater power.
Social structures such as families and organisational hierarchies codify this into "norms". This makes it easier and natural for leaders to offer help to subordinates, but very difficult to ask for help from them. And it makes it extremely difficult for subordinates to offer unsolicited help -because it implies that the leader is not on top of his or her job.
An especially difficult situation is one where the team member is aware that her supervisor needs help, but the leader is unaware of the gap in his own understanding or unwilling to admit it.
Benefits of accepting help
As leaders, our willingness to seek help from others and be influenced by them is critical in ensuring better team and organisational results. Besides the direct impact on delivery and bottomline, when leaders are open to accepting help there are other collateral benefits,
- You create opportunities for others to demonstrate their capabilities and add value
- You allow others to experience the warm glow that accompanies giving
- You experience gratitude and its associated benefits
- Your vulnerability and the implied power reversal increases trust and makes your relationships stronger
How to Accept Help
As mentioned above, the biggest hurdle to effectively seeking help in an organisational setting maybe the prevailing discourse and social norms. As a leader, it is up to you to create a climate where it is easier for you and others to ask for and offer help.
Some of the steps that can help in bringing about such a shift include :
Work on your ABCs.
Work on assumptions, beliefs and conditioning that make it difficult for you to ask for and accept help from others. Pay attention to not just your conscious behaviours and response, but also ensure that your overall demeanour indicates your openness to being helped.
Create psychological safety.
Team members must feel that speaking up freely, pointing out mistakes of superiors and offering suggestions without being asked will not lead to bad outcomes for them personally
Dialogue vs Debate.
In most teams, the aspired ideal in individual and group conversations is robust debate. While debate is essential, over reliance on it can discourage contribution from team members whose personality or cultural background make it difficult for them to speak up because of the confrontation inherent in debate
Make it easy for others to help you
- Be transparent about your own knowledge and skills or lack thereof.
- Share your mental models and be open about your blind spots, and encourage your team to point out when they sense you are reverting to default
- Inquiry. While inquiry has been shown to be an effective tool in offering help, asking question such as "Is there something I am missing here?" or "What else must be considered here?' can help elicit useful information and offers for help
- Coach others on how best they can convince you
