Managers and leaders often need to seek out advice and assistance from others. When leaders ask for help, there are many potential benefits, including improved decision-making, increased creativity and enhanced learning on the job.
And let’s face it, in today’s rapidly changing and complex business world full of technological and competitive changes, leaders can’t be expected to be all knowing or have the solution to every organizational challenge.
Of course, there are also risks when a leader asks for help. Leaders may be concerned about damage to their own ego or appearing to be incompetent or weak. Leaders who seek help may also be worried about losing status within the organization.
My recent research with colleagues at Duke University and the University of San Diego suggests that these penalties are real, but only for men. We followed MBA students on leadership retreats where each person was selected to lead a team on a challenging task, such as backpacking in the desert or hiking up a mountain.
When men asked for help in a leadership role, they were viewed as less competent, while there were no negative effects for women who sought help.
So what can men (and women) leaders do to avoid the penalties from seeking help while reaping the benefits? Here are a few tips:
Seek advice, expertise; don’t ask for help
Most people like to be asked for advice. So rather than framing the request as something you can’t do, frame the request as a problem or situation you’ve been thinking a lot about and would like some input on.
Better yet, justify the request by explicitly noting the other person’s relevant expertise or knowledge that you want to draw on and learn from. Doing this takes the focus off of you as the requestor and boosts the others’ ego in the process. Because of this, the other person won’t be thinking about your possible lack of answers or competence, but rather about their own expertise.
This approach can actually increase, rather than decrease, perceptions of the leader’s competence.
Note a particularly difficult, unexpected challenge
This is a tricky strategy to incorporate when seeking help. Explaining that the request for help is necessary because of a particularly difficult situation or as caused by external forces (say a rival organization’s competitive threat rather than issues internal to the organization) can take the focus off the leader’s own competence and onto the task at hand.
This works only if the reason for the request is credible and genuine. Citing economic conditions that seemingly have no impact on your organization may backfire and lead to the other person questioning your ability.
Be ready to follow-up
It’s not only important to seek input from others, but also to actually listen to the other person’s advice and expertise. If you don’t follow or act on the advice, it’s important to at least explain your reasoning. Otherwise, the strategies described above may backfire.
Many leaders fear that negative evaluations may stem from seeking help. These risks, however, may not occur for many leaders and may even be offset by effectively framing the request for help.
Lebel’s research study on the influence of gender and asking behaviors on competence perceptions was published in the October 2015 issue of The Leadership Quarterly. Learn more on Lebel’s faculty page or email [email protected].
