The Importance of Asking for Help
Everyone loves a hero. And everyone most certainly loves being a hero. But what people often forget is that we are only human. That’s not to say that there are those of us out there who can accomplish great things but we have to know our limits and respect those boundaries – those of ourselves and of others.
Early on in my leadership career, I failed to see those limits in my team members. That’s certainly not a slight on them, but rather on me. Often times, leaders with minimal experience will often view their team’s limits the same as their own (for the positive or negative). If you’re someone who puts in the 16 hour days, evenings and weekends you may expect that from your team. And then there’s the opposite – if you’re an 8:30-4:45 person like clockwork, you’ll expect that from your team as well. While the former is unhealthy right away, the latter can be damaging too. There is absolutely a healthy balance of respecting the work/home dynamic but also getting the job done.
Taking On Too Much
We’ve all seen this before – either with ourselves or with someone we’ve worked with. That go-getter who seems to attract far too many work assignments thinking that they are good enough at their jobs that they can handle the additional workload when the time calls. What we often see soon after is quality of work starting to suffer, personality and attitude become more and more negatively influenced and ultimately we start seeing failure to deliver on commitments.
Why do we instinctively not want to ask for help? Is it a sign of weakness? Possibly. Do we fear that others will notice and start to “brand” us as whiners who can’t get the job done? Sure. Are these fears irrational and unfounded? Absolutely. We have to be mature enough as professionals and comfortable enough in our own professional skin to reach out and ask for help.
Supportive Culture
With stress and the related health issues being a mainstream discussion topic there has never been more visibility to building a supportive workplace environment where workers are encouraged to feel empowered to ask for help when they feel they need it. Any successful company knows the value of well-rested staff that is responsible for the success of the organization. That’s not to say that people shouldn’t roll up their sleeves once in a while but regular, expected overtime because of unreasonable workload is not conducive to a healthy work environment.
At the end of the day your teams look to you for setting an example as well as the bar. If you’re pushing yourself to unreasonable limits, what messages will that send to them? It’ll likely spook or quietly intimidate them into pushing themselves beyond what is reasonable which adds unnecessary risk to your project that you are actually introducing yourself. We are looked upon as leaders and it is up to us to not only set a good example, but do what’s right for ourselves and if we do that, our team will most certainly follow.
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