I often talk about coaching as an investment in yourself. You're investing time, energy, and resources into building the kind of life you want.

But I've been thinking lately about another kind of investment--welcoming others’ investment in you.

My clients take great satisfaction in helping others. They talk about the pleasure it gives them to mentor a colleague or help a young person.

But often these same clients don't like to seek out help. For example, perhaps a client is developing a small business, and she needs some feedback from others on the products or services she plans to offer. When I suggest that she run her ideas by a small group of friends, she may be hesitant. I get it: sometimes I'm also reluctant to ask folks for help.

Sometimes we even decline other people's offers of help, assuring them that "I've got this"--even when we could really use the assistance.

I think there are several reasons we are reluctant to seek or accept help. Sometimes we fear that asking for help will be seen as a sign of incompetence or weakness. We don't want to signal that we are unable to do a job on our own. That fear may be rooted in past experiences where someone might have refused to help us or used our need for help against us. Communicating a need can make us feel vulnerable to negative judgements about our competence.

We're also hesitant to be a burden. Women in particular are socialized not to put anyone “to any trouble.” Americans are steeped in a culture full of messages about the importance of rugged independence.

Experience has taught me that most of the time, people are willing and eager to help. I'll give you a non-workplace example. I am a short person--a bit over five feet tall. Supermarkets and hardware stores routinely put things on shelves well beyond my reach. For years, I tried climbing on the bottom shelf to get what I needed (a safety risk!). If I couldn't climb on the shelf and there was no store employee in sight, I sometimes did without the product I wanted. But somewhere along the way, I decided to ask strangers for help. After all, almost everyone in the supermarket--employee or shopper--is taller than me. And people are glad to help. Never once has anyone rejected my request to hand me a can of soup or the stain remover. In fact, usually we have a pleasant exchange that brightens my day.

I’ve had similar experiences at work. When I asked for help--on a reasonable timeline with a task of limited scope--I usually got it. For example, I once used research from psychology in the introduction to one of my books. I wanted to be sure that I was interpreting research from an unfamiliar field correctly. I asked one of my psychologist colleagues to review that section of my draft, and she responded with enthusiasm. Her advice helped me correct a couple of errors and sharpen my writing. I think she found it satisfying to help me and gratifying that I valued her opinion and her expertise.

Not too long ago, I asked a group of trusted friends of diverse ages to weigh in on a title I was considering for a piece of writing. None of them were experts on the field, but they were all members of the audience I was trying to reach, and I wanted to know whether a title would attract them or turn them off. I called them my "girlfriend hive mind."

Most of the group--women my own age--loved my title. A few found the subtitle clunky and spent some time mulling over alternative suggestions. But two--women a generation younger than me--made a link between my proposed title and a rather infamous novel published about 20 years ago. They were completely turned off. I'm so glad I asked for their help. They helped me realize that my working title risked turning off a large chunk of my potential audience. But what surprised me most was how eager the entire group of busy women were to help and how much time they invested in giving me feedback.

Research backs up my experience, showing that our fears about asking for help are often misplaced. For example, in a 2015 study published in Management Science, researchers found that people who seek help with difficult tasks are usually perceived as more competent than those that don't.[1] Knowing when to ask for help and then seeking it out sends the message that you want to do the best job possible.

Stanford University psychologist Xuan Zhao says, "most of us are deeply prosocial and want to make a positive difference in others’ lives." She cites work by Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki and a colleague that shows that helping others in need seems to be an intuitive response.[2] Her own work found that people feel happier after conducting acts of kindness.[3]

In short, people like investing in others by helping them. I encourage clients to strategically ask people for help and to accept others' offers of help.

What about you? When were you surprised by the way people were willing to invest in you by helping you?

[1] Alison Wood Brooks, Francesca Gino, Maurice E. Schweitzer (2015) Smart People Ask for (My) Advice: Seeking Advice Boosts Perceptions of Competence. Management Science 61(6):1421-1435.

[2] Zaki, J., & Mitchell, J. P. (2013). "Intuitive Prosociality." Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(6), 466-470.

[3] "Asking for help is hard, but people want to help more than we realize, Stanford scholar says," Stanford Report, September 8, 2022, https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2022/09/asking-help-hard-people-want-help-realize