20 Sep To get through life, we all need to ask for help — here’s how NOT to do it
via TED Ideas by Heidi Grant
Social psychologist Heidi Grant shares 4 common ways that we inadvertently make things weird for other people when we request their assistance. Read this before your next ask.
Asking for help isn’t just about what you say and do; it’s also about what you don’t say and do. In my research, I’ve found there are specific things you can say that can really backfire on you. Here are 4 of the most common ways that well-intentioned people screw up and make things weird for their helper when they’re asking for help.
Wrong way #1: Emphasizing how much the other person will enjoy helping
“You’re going to love it! It will be so much fun!” One of my collaborators has a friend who has a habit of phrasing requests this way. “Any chance you could help me repaint the living room? We can totally drink beers and catch up! Girl time!” she might say.
Or, “Hey, could you pick me up at the auto mechanic? I haven’t seen you in ages! Road trip!” It’s a testament to the strength of their friendship that it survives this kind of request.
Don’t ever try to explicitly convince someone that they’ll find helping you rewarding. While it’s true helping makes people happy, reminding them generally drains their joy out of helping. First, it reeks of control, undermining their autonomy. Second, it’s presumptive as hell. Don’t tell them how they’re going to feel — that’s for them to decide.
It’s OK for you to point out the benefits of helping if you can be subtle. But you must be careful not to pile it on and mix egotistic reasons with altruistic reasons, because this makes your manipulation noticeable.
In one study, just under 1,000 alumni who had never donated to their college were contacted by fund-raisers via email. They received one of three versions of the appeal: (1) egotistic: “Alumni report that giving makes them feel good”; (2) altruistic: “Giving is your chance to make a difference in the lives of students, faculty, and staff,” and (3) a combined appeal. Researchers found both the egotistic and altruistic appeals were equally effective, but the combined appeal? It saw donation rates cut in half.
Wrong way # 2: Portraying the help you need as a tiny, insignificant favor
One common tactic is to portray the help we need as a piddling, negligible, barely there favor. So, we might emphasize the lack of inconvenience, as in, “Could you drop these contracts off at the client’s? It’s practically on your way home.” Or, we might stress how little time it will take: “Would you add these updates to the database? It won’t take you more than five minutes.”
The thing is, by minimizing our request, we also minimize the other person’s help — and minimize any warm feelings helping might have generated in them. There’s also the risk that we’ve miscalculated the size of our favor, especially if the person does work we don’t fully understand. For instance, my book editor occasionally gets an email from an old friend asking her to take a look at his writing. It’s usually phrased as a small request, such as, “I think it’s pretty clean; maybe just give it a quick proofread? It shouldn’t take you very long!” Then, when she opens the attachment, the item is invariably a 6,000-word academic article. Oh, except for the time it was an entire book.
If you’ve been guilty of making this kind of ask, I don’t think it’s because you’re selfish. You’re just clueless. You have no idea of the hours of work you’re asking. But what you’re inadvertently doing is conveying that you think the work the other person does is easy, quick, trivial and not very taxing. And that’s not a great way to enlist help.
Chances are, you work every day with people whose duties you don’t understand that all, whether it’s IT, HR, compliance, sales or marketing. If you don’t quite get what goes into another person’s job, do not presume it won’t take them very long the next time you ask them for help…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE