Do you need help with anything? Yes. That’s it; that’s the answer. If your answer is no, then either you are a supreme being or you just don’t subscribe to the growth mindset mantra. Everyone needs help at some point in their lives and all it takes is a simple question, “is there anything I can do to help you?”.
If you are in a more senior role and have the ability to mentor others, then that simple question is a powerful one for you to use. There are a lot of open questions about how best to approach being the most helpful, so let’s think through all of that together.
1:1s with Management, Leadership
There is a common misconception that asking for help means that you are inadequate at your role. While I am sure that there are some valid reasoning behind that, it is usually not the case. In fact, I would think that your manager thinks about the best ways to make your life as efficient as possible. If not, now is your chance to raise any flags for help to find any ways to help.
Help From Your Manager
Let’s take a look at what this may look like. During your 1:1 with your manager, they ask you the question, “is there anything you need help with?”. If you have anything that is top of mind for you, raise them now. If you cannot think of anything at that moment in time, you can work through any concerns you may have together. If you are more of a prepper (that’s me!) and want to set aside some time to think that question through, let your manager know that you’ll get back to them after you gather your thoughts; remember to follow-up in a future 1:1!
Now, let’s look at the following example.
manager: What can I help you with?
you: Hmmm…good question! I am picking up this new project, do you know who I can reach out to to find out more about the details of this XYZ existing implementation?
This one is pretty straightforward with an easy response. It’s something that you do not currently know, but you want to find out. Managers are good with building connections and understanding the lay of the land, so things like this are great.
What if your problems are a bit more involved?
you: We have a lot of features the team is working on and we now have customer triage we need to help out with; I need help with prioritization here.
Prioritization can be tough! But raising this with your manager is a good idea since they also want to be sure your time is being used effectively. Remember that your manager will want not only priorities in order, but also to drive for clarity and alignment. So, if things like this are unclear to you, ask for help!
Help From Your Skip-level, Execs
You may find yourself in a 1:1 with folks further up the chain. If you were looking for help, just remember that skip-levels and above will typically not have the most time to give. So if you were looking for help with some issues within the organization, be prepared with tentative solutions. This can be as simple as something like, “I have noticed a knowledge gap between teams. In previous roles, we had more communications paired along with documentation, do you think we can have something similar here?”. This is a good way to raise issues up; now leadership is aware, but also you have given a decent recommendation on how we can possibly move forward.
Mentorship: Your Turn to Be Helpful
I am sure as you were reading through you may have been thinking about working this into your conversations with your mentees. I am sure some of you already have and that’s great! For those of you that have not, give it a go.
There might be some sort of sense of responsibility that you need to know everything in order to be helpful. While it does feel nice to be able to navigate an issue with ease, that is not the case every time. But how can you help if you aren’t a subject matter expert at a problem your mentee is having? I would say that this is a good opportunity to find the right person and work together with them. You aren’t directly helping with the problem, but you are modeling a good behaviour of finding someone who is a domain expert. Facilitating that conversation itself is a good skill to teach and by building this bridge, I am sure you get to learn as well!
Help Yourself
Now consider everything you’ve read thus far. On the extreme opposite ends of things, it’s quite possible you would have spent lots of time working on the wrong things if you hadn’t asked your manager for help with prioritizing. Or if you hadn’t asked your mentee what they needed help with, you would need to pry for things to teach them just based off of observation. So, do you need help with anything? I am sure we all need a little bit of help every now and then!