Women at Work - All the Help We Can Get

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

Women don’t always feel entitled to ask for help at work — even when we need it the most. But Heidi Grant says asking has psychological benefits for you and your colleagues. She explains how to approach your request strategically and why lending a hand to others can be good for you too.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. Emily, what kind of help have you been needing or asking for lately? Like, can you remember a time in the past few weeks that you've needed help and asked for it? That's a good question. So I feel like it has been hard for me to wrap my mind around the help that I've needed lately. I can't always think of specific things that I can ask people for, and I don't feel like I normally ask for help if I need it. And I also feel like I never say no if somebody asks me for help. And I like helping people. being able to help me sometimes too, but it is hard for me sometimes to even figure out

what I can push off my plate or how I can get somebody else to help. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Bernstein. I'm Emily Caulfield. And I'm Amy Gallo. So many obstacles can come in the way of us asking for help at work. Whenever I'm hesitating, I push through my discomfort by reminding myself that people want to help one another. It's human nature. Plus, getting cooperation and support from colleagues is how people perform better, develop faster, and progress in their careers. I've learned that from our guest, Heidi Grant, a social psychologist

who specializes in the science of motivation. Her book, Reinforcements, is about all the good that comes from asking for and giving help at work. And yet, the stress the pandemic has added to my life and my colleagues' lives just complicates my sense of how much is too much, what's okay to ask for, and even what I deserve. Heidi says a lot of women are feeling overwhelmed by their workload and alone. So it's this horrible thing where we've sort of never needed more help than we do now. And as a group, we are the least likely to actually feel entitled to that help. To make it through this pandemic, we're going to need all the help we can get. Heidi and I talked through how to figure out what you actually need

and then the right ways to ask your colleagues to lend you a hand. Heidi, thank you so much for joining us today. It's great to be here. I'm very excited. Yeah, and I don't know if you remember this, but I reached out to you for help a few years back. Do you remember this? I remember that. I think it was about something that you had spoken at because I was about to speak at it and I wanted help negotiating the price. And you were so generous with your information. Well, you know, I mean, I know the pain of that a little bit. It is one of those things. It's actually not unlike the sort of challenge of asking for help.

The sort of the challenge of kind of being able to articulate what you think you're worth and, you know, what your time is worth. I mean, that negotiation is the similar kind of thing where we feel very vulnerable and it's hard to do. So I had a lot of empathy around the challenge of that for sure. And also there's this thing I talk about when it comes to helping that I think is often overlooked, which is that people want to be effective when it comes to giving help. They want to give good help. Nobody wants to give help that doesn't land, that kind of like doesn't actually do what it's supposed to do.

And so when you ask for help from someone who's been through something very similar, you know, how I approach that is with a lot of confidence. Like I know how to help Amy with this because I've actually been through this. So that makes us more eager to help when we're actually coming from a place of feeling like we have knowledge, experience that increases our confidence. So I think that's one of those cases where you happen to hit the right person because I knew that struggle all too well myself. Well, thank you.

And it's funny you say you answered it with confidence or you felt confident about helping because I really was torn up about how to write that email and how to send it. Which is something I've been feeling, you know, that feeling of is it okay to ask for help? How do I phrase this? Is this an imposition? I think that was a big question for me. That feeling is something I've been having a lot of lately, particularly since the pandemic began. And I've just been so overwhelmed. And as you can

imagine, at HBR, we're just getting flooded with pitches and, and articles, and I just simply have much more than I could possibly do. And it's also really hard to ask my colleagues for help because they are in the same position. So I'm curious, that anxiety that I'm feeling, is this a normal part of the process of deciding you need help and asking for it? For most of us, I think, yes. I mean, most normal humans are empathetic by nature, right? I mean, there are those of us who aren't, and you probably know a couple of people who seem to have no problem at all imposing on other people all the time. But that's it comes to asking for help, we perspective take a little too much and in fact, a little too narrowly. So we are very quick when we're thinking about asking for help for someone or support of some kind, we're very quick to leap immediately mentally to how hard this will be for them. Right.

With the additional burden, like you said, the imposition this will be, and that immediately causes all of these feelings of guilt. And in fact, it often feels like it's a lose-lose situation because either I'm going to ask for support and they're going to say no, which is going to be embarrassing and leave me sort of feeling vulnerable, or they're going to say yes, and then I'm going to feel terrible about the fact that they're doing this thing for me when they're so burdened. So we perspective take a little too much in that specific way. What we don't actually perspective take well about is the other side of helping, which is we ask people for help and we're thoughtful about how we do it and who we ask for help from, we're actually creating opportunities for people to feel amazing. Yes, it might involve a little more effort on their part. It might be a little bit of

an inconvenience, but generally that is outweighed by the potential benefits to them. So we think of asking for help as a lose-lose. It is actually a win-win because if you do it well and you think about how you do it and you think about who you're asking, you are actually going to create a situation where both of you benefit. I'm curious about your experience, Heidi, with the pandemic and this increased need for help. Has there been something that you've had to ask for help that was unusual for you? And did you go about it any differently? I think one of the forms of help that people are needing most right now, and more than ever before, is creating boundaries, right? So many of the people I work with, and particularly the women, are needing to do things like say, you know, I am not going to be available, you know, from 8 to 12 because that is when my kids are in school and they're virtual, you know, and they're, you know, 7 and they're not going to sit in front of their computer without a lot of chaperoning.

Or just also having to take like sort of mental health time. Sure. without a lot of chaperoning, or just also having to take like sort of mental health time. For me, it's been less about asking other people to do things for me and more about me saying no. And the kind of help therefore that I've been needing is empathy and understanding around why I'm saying no, right? Having to say to people, I need you to understand and respect that I am not going to be available in these ways. I'm going to need to take this time. And that is a form of help seeking. And it's a really important form of help seeking that we ask our colleagues, we ask our friends and family to respect the time we need to do things when we are under so much stress.

Let's talk about what that request actually looks like. Sure. So we've changed our mindset that this is not a lose-lose situation. This is a win-win. We know help can take many different forms. So what makes it more likely that someone will actually say yes to our request? Well, you know, it's interesting. First and foremost, people are just more likely to say yes than we realize. And there's been some great studies on this.

Vanessa Bonds, who's a professor at Cornell, there's been some great studies on this. Vanessa Bonds, who's a professor at Cornell, she did a ton of research on this and along with a number of her colleagues. And really, if you kind of wanted to put a number on it, we are about twice as likely to help as we think we'll be, right? So in other words, if I ask for help from somebody, they're about twice as likely to say yes as I think. So that's huge already, right? We're already just wildly underestimating the odds that other people will say yes, but there are some things you could do to make it a little bit more likely that someone will say yes to you or there's some common mistakes we make, right? When it comes to asking for help. I think in this day and age, one of the most important ones to focus on is literally the medium in which we ask for help. Typically,

we ask for help by sending someone an email or a text. That's just how people operate these days. And the reason we do that, we can come up with all kinds of reasons we do that, but the real reason we do that for the most part is it's more comfortable for us as the askers to not have that conversation live, right? I can just send you an email and then kind of hope for the best, or I can send you a text message and hope for the best because it's not a live interaction. Unfortunately, that's like the worst thing you can do because it turns out live interactions are vastly more likely to lead to someone saying yes. Again, some of Vanessa's work shows that in one study, people were literally

30 times more likely to say yes if they were asked in a live in-person conversation to help rather than via an email. Is that because it's just easy to send a text saying no or an email saying no? Exactly. So the exact reason we want to ask for help that way, right, that it feels more comfortable for us is the exact reason we get more no's because it feels more comfortable for them to say no to us. Right. So you want to pick up a phone or get on a video call. It's going to be much more likely you're going to get a yes. And then people always say, well, I have to do it over email.

You know, this is sort of it's the nature of work. You know, we communicate this way. Okay, that's fine. But then the other mistake we make is we send group emails. So we'll email 20 people hoping that one of them will help us with something. The problem is they see that there's 19 other people that this is addressed to. And then you have what psychologists call diffusion of responsibility, right? This isn't being directed to me specifically, it's being directed to all of us and probably one of those other people is going to say, yes, so I don't have to do this, right? So you don't want to make somebody feel like they're just one in a crowd that is being asked for help. Make any request for help feel personal, right? Either because it's a live conversation or because you're addressing just that person and you're explaining to them why their help specifically is the help you need.

Those things dramatically increase the chances someone will actually say yes. I imagine that's true with a lot of people are in this situation right now where they're needing a job. So they're reaching out to many people saying, you know, I'm on the job market. Here's my resume. Right. So the idea of having to send an individual email to everyone you want help from sounds overwhelming, but you're saying it's just far more effective. It is far more effective. And you can copy and paste.

Like if you have written something that you kind of want to send to people, what I usually recommend is you can have the bulk of the email or whatever the message is, be the consistent, but it's good to start with something that's personal to the person you're addressing, that connects in some way. So it makes them feel like this is a conversation between two people who know each other. And I will say, actually, it's funny in the context of the job search, a lot of us are hitting up everybody we know on LinkedIn to see who may know of something. And I will say one additional thing that gets in the way of getting help is that we often approach that the wrong way. We'll do something like reach out to someone and say, hey, it would be great to connect. Let's jump on a call or let me pick your brain or

hey, let's grab a coffee. And immediately that person knows you want something, but they don't know what it is. You are so much better off just directly stating what it is you want to talk about. I'm really interested in talking about if there's any opportunities in your company. If there are, would you be willing to jump on a call and talk about it? And then somebody can tell you, yes, no, sure. But I know what it is you want. I will tell you, I'm connected to a lot of people on LinkedIn and I routinely ignore requests to pick my brain or chat, even though I feel bad about it. But it's like, if you're not going to tell me what it is you want from me, I'm really not going to have this conversation because I

don't want to be in a position where I'm forced to say, I really can't help you with that. It's much more respectful and less threatening to people if you just say upfront what it is you're looking for. And then maybe they can say, well, I can't help you, but actually I know someone who can. I mean, it's just in your best interest to really be upfront about what it is you're going to ask about. People are much more likely to try to be helpful in that case. Yeah. You're reminding me of an email I got in early April. So really when things were incredibly stressful, I felt completely overwhelmed from a former colleague who said, I'm looking for a job. It's a horrible time to look for a job. Would you be willing to spend a half an hour just talking through what I'm looking for and see if you have any leads?

She was very specific about the request. And I'll admit, when I got the email, I was like, I don't even have a half hour. I can't do this. And I still did it because I really respected her. And I actually thought she'd be a valuable asset to any organization she went to work for. And it was one of the best conversations I had in the early days of the pandemic, because as you pointed out, I felt so helpful.

I was able to suggest two places she looked into. I was able to make two introductions for her. It was great. As much as I didn't want to do it, she made it easy. And then that made you feel effective, right? Yes. It doesn't improve your mood or your sense of well-being or your sense of self-esteem to help. It improves it to give effective help, right? That's when we feel awesome. And so it's so great

that the way that person asked you for help set you up for success. And I think if she had reached out to you and said, Hey, Amy, let's, you know, do you have half an hour? Would love to catch up. Right. You probably would have just said, no, I don't have time to catch up with you. That's not a thing. Right. So in many ways, people believe that it's sort of pushy to say, this is what I want, that it comes across as demanding. It doesn't, it comes across as clear. And now I can kind of say, all right, you know what? Even though I don't have a lot of time, I do know I am in a position to potentially help you with this. And then you end up, that was probably the best you felt all day. That's right. It was probably the best thing that happened to me that week, to be quite honest.

Right. Yeah. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work.

Hey listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor, Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Mudupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. I want to ask you about something that I tend to do in an email when I request help, which is that I give that person a clear out. So I often end with the, I know you're so busy,

so I understand if this doesn't work, or I understand if this isn't your area of expertise. I'm curious, does that undermine my request? I think in general, no. I think it's actually a good thing. And I do that too. And I think that it feels respectful. People really don't like to feel like you're making a request of them with unrealistic expectations or a sense of an unfair demand. One of the ways I see that often when it comes to helping as well is when people kind of rattle off the laundry list of the things they want and you suspect that some of them, they could be doing themselves and they just don't want to. So they're asking you to do it. And that's very, very off-putting, right? That's another common way. So what I usually tell people is if you're asking someone for help for something that let's say they know a lot about and you don't know how to do it,

maybe like there's a new software, a new program that you're using as a part of your role. And so you want to ask someone to kind of walk you through it. It's great to say, I've been trying to do this for hours and I just can't get it. Would you be willing to help me? Now you've clearly conveyed that it isn't just, I can't be bothered with this. It's I actually did try and I'm actually just struggling. Yeah. The other thing I think, and you mentioned this earlier, but when I'm thinking about the requests that I've gotten that I've been happy to help with

is when the person's been really clear about why I'm the person they asked. Oh, yeah. Right? Like it makes me feel useful, effective, even special. Yes, it is exactly that. It's exactly the right way to think about it. It increases the chances you're going to get a yes.

It also increases the quality of the help you give. And that's another piece of this that is worth kind of acknowledging that often people will say yes much more often than we think they will. But they won't necessarily give you their best help, right? Very often we give people the minimum amount of help we feel we need to give to either kind of get it off our plate or absolve us from guilt or, you know, not damage the relationship, but it's the minimal help, not the maximum help. And what you just talked about about making in the request for help, making it clear why this person is really uniquely able to help you, that's increasing the chances you're going to get maximum help, right? That they're going to even like help you in ways you didn't actually

even consider because that really creates that positive sense of self-esteem that's going to want them to like kind of go the extra mile. So it's both about getting a yes, but also like getting a really good yes. Yeah. I would almost rather get a no to my request than the half-hearted yes, right? Than the minimum. Exactly. Because often you end up chasing that help, right? It's like people like forget to give you the help. That is why it's worth taking a moment when you're about to ask for help to think about, okay, how can I be very specific about what I'm asking for? How can I make this person feel like it's really about them and the unique help they can give me? And how can I help them to understand how their help will help me, right?

The effectiveness, the impact. When people can imagine the impact that their help will have on you, they're much more likely to actually give it and to give the best help they can give. And so that piece around effectiveness, I always harp on a bit because it is one of the things we neglect. We ask for help, but we don't explain how it will be helpful. And then we fail to follow up. That's a huge thing. If you ask someone to do something of significance for you, you need to follow up with them to let them know the impact that it had, because that's the moment they're going to feel

like it was really rewarding and it keeps them coming back. So that's a resource you can tap into again and again, because this person knows every time I help Amy, I feel great about the fact that I helped Amy. And so it's going to create a relationship where, you know, that is a resource you can go to. And the follow-up is really, really important. And again, something we neglect. And we don't do that for people nearly as much as we should. You're reminding me there are a few people I need to email and follow up with.

I want to talk through some of the obstacles that many of us feel when we're asking for help. In particular, at this moment, if I think back on the last several months, one of the biggest obstacles for me has been knowing what I need help with. I know I'm drowning. I know I'm overwhelmed. I know that as a working mom, I'm not going to be able to do all of this. But I just don't even know what to ask for. Do you have any advice on figuring that out? Yes. It's actually one of those things where you really actually have to take a little bit of time. And by the way, this is very similar to goals as well, that

we often set goals for ourselves and don't realize that goals are something that need to be continuously updated because we get new information, circumstances change, and we need to be thinking about our goals, not as things that are set in stone, but at things that are a bit fluid and that we're going to be kind of checking in on and reevaluating all the time. That's actually the healthy and effective way to pursue goals. And the same thing is true when it comes to help because help really is a part of how we reach our goals, right? And so it is taking a little bit of time to actually even just reflect on, okay, let me look at my gigantic to-do list. Let me identify some of the things that are stressing me out the most and ask, simply just

pause to ask myself the question, what are some aspects of this where I could get some help, both in the form of, could I reset expectations, right? So that's first and foremost, ask yourself, could I go back and say, you know, I thought that I was going to be able to deliver on this by X date and I can't. By the way, I've had to do that with basically every book I've ever written, much to the chagrin of my editor. Like, you know what, I'm going to need to reset expectations here. But to be able to go back and perhaps sometimes just reset those expectations a little is really important. And then also to say, okay, are there components of this that someone could help me with? I actually had to do that around my house because with my children home now, there are many upsides,

but one of the downsides is, wow, the house is a mess much more than it used to be. Because now you have all of these people who are here all the time. And I used to have some respite during the day where no one was messing anything up. And now things are getting used more. There's more garbage, there's more dishes, there's more everything. And I was starting to feel really overwhelmed by all of that until I actually stopped and I said, okay, I'm doing all this stuff. What are some things that I could be actually telling other people that it's their responsibility to do or asking for more help with? But it is the pause. It's like you actually have

to pause and do that because in the moment, how many times do we all say, you know what, I'll just do it myself. It would take too long to explain. Yeah. That's, oh my gosh, every day. Every day we do that, right? So it is actually maybe setting aside time, like blocking a half hour on your calendar for that each week where you just say, okay, what's on my plate for this week? And what, if anything, could maybe I ask for some support for? And really just going through it. Then everything starts to surface what those potential sources of help could be, but we just don't take the time to even ask ourselves that question. Right. Part of what can make us feel like we don't have support is that we operate under a kind of very, the technical term for this in

psychology is illusion of transparency. We feel like our needs and our thoughts and our feelings are obvious to other people because they're obvious to us. And nothing could be further from the truth. Even the people who know you well, who see you every day, don't know what's going on in your mind. Don't know that you are feeling a need for help. But the other piece is we forget sometimes how dangerous it is to offer unsolicited help. You know, I don't know. I have, again, my daughter is 14. When I offer unsolicited help to her about something, the look I get, you know, is that mom, I can do it myself. I don't need your help, right? People, you know, can be offended by offers of help. And we all forget that that's something that sometimes

keeps other people from offering help to us, right? If they don't know we want it, they don't want to risk offending us by offering it. So you really do have to articulate your needs. And then you will often find there are lots of people in your life who will help you if you just articulate your needs, right? You got to do that first step. Right. Let's talk about another obstacle because one of the other things that's held me back from asking for help in the past few months has been the realization or the reality that everyone around me is also completely overloaded. And in fact, I was talking to a friend who just has way too much on her plate. And I said, you need to talk to your boss. And she said, but my boss has even more on her plate. So how do we make sense of that? How

do we get over that obstacle, particularly at this moment? Yeah. You know, my mother likes to use this expression. Whenever I say I shouldn't be complaining about this because other people have, you know, X, Y, and Z. She loves this expression that it's like saying it's okay to have a Volkswagen parked on your chest just because somebody else has an 18-wheeler. It's still not okay that you have a Volkswagen parked on your chest. It's still uncomfortable. And that idea that we compare ourselves to other people and then use that as a way to sort of say, oh, I don't deserve help because, look, everybody is stressed. Look, everybody is stressed. Everybody does have a lot on their plate.

We actually all collectively succeed more if we are all asking one another for help because you're just one piece in that puzzle. So, yes, if you ask for help, that may create something extra that that person has to do, but you know what you also just did? Made it easier for that person to ask you for something. And maybe it would be easier for you to do that thing than it would be for them, right? It is why we work in teams. The reason we work in teams is so that we can collectively strength share, so that we can kind of take advantage of what everybody is good at and then put that together in the most efficient way rather than everybody kind of having to struggle through everything on their own. Also, there's another important point of this, which is when we do our work every day, we

are tapping into, all of us, our self-regulatory tank. There's only so much energy you have to engage in self-control. And that's tapped into, by the way, not only when you're kind of resisting temptation, but also when you're making decisions. Really anything cognitively effortful taps into that reserve. One of the great things about helping and asking for help is that anytime we do something that we find intrinsically rewarding, that we enjoy it for the sake of doing it, it actually replenishes that. There's actually research that shows that we kind of put gas back in the tank when we do something that we find inherently enjoyable and rewarding and meaningful. And help is that kind of thing. So I bet the day you helped your friend talk through, you know, her options in terms of applying for new jobs, even though that was

effort, you left that conversation feeling lighter, feeling more energetic, feeling like you had more gas in the tank to do everything else you had to do that day. So it's not a like zero sum game where if I help someone, I'm taking away necessarily from what I can do for myself. Sometimes by helping someone else, I'm actually replenishing my energy to be able to tackle the things I need to do on my plate. So we shouldn't be thinking of it as, oh, if you help me, you lose. It's actually not that kind of thing. It can be actually really energizing to enable helping in other people. And then mutual helping is just wildly successful in the long term.

What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. So Heidi, I want to give you a couple scenarios and I'd love to hear how you would advise someone in this scenario to ask

for help. So let's imagine that online school is taking up tons of someone's time. They're not sleeping. The kids are sick. Then they're sick. They're hardly getting any work done, and they're out of paid time off. But they've got to get through the rest of this year. How do they ask for help? Great question. I think you have to ask for help in the rest of this year. How do they ask for help? Great question. I think you have to ask for help in a couple of different directions. So first and foremost, there's the professional and you want to really go to your manager. You need to go to the person who's actually assigning you work and have a very frank conversation about what your life is like. What I am finding is that, and there are going to be exceptions to this, I know, but what I'm finding is that in general, people are incredibly receptive to those conversations and want to find a way to make it possible for you to continue to be

effective. Again, it's about expectation setting. We had a certain set of goals that maybe we set at the beginning of the year, and we need to revisit those because they're no longer realistic. Let me ask this though. When you go to your boss, do you say, I need help? I think when you go to your boss, you want to be as direct as possible and not shy away from literally using phrases like, I need help. I need support. This is too much for me. The more honest you can be about the severity of your situation, the more likely you are to get the right level of help. If we go to our bosses and we just sort of say, you know, I'm having a bit of a tough time. Well, then your boss who is not psychic is going to think you're just having a bit of a tough time, right? So we only have to do a little bit of adjusting in order to help you. I think it's very, very important to be honest about the severity of

the situation that you find yourself in. And in fairness to your boss, it is helpful to them if you go into the conversation with a proposal. I am going to propose that we adjust this goal in this way, or I'm only going to be able to work during these hours, and therefore I need to take this project off my plate and that project off my plate. It's not really fair to go to your boss with a, I'm drowning, I need help, and then expect them to have all the answers because you're the one with the specific knowledge of exactly what you're able to give. So go to them with a proposal. Be very candid about the severity of the situation you're in and how you're able to give. So go to them with a proposal, be very candid about the severity of the situation you're in and how you're feeling. And that's going to be most likely to result in you actually getting the help you need. Right, right. Okay. All right. So let me give you

another scenario. You're planning to present at an all-staff meeting on Tuesday, but you are back-to-back between now and then and don't have time to prepare the presentation or slides. How do you ask a colleague who is also part of the project to help you prepare the slides even though you know you're the one presenting them? So you want to – and first again, first of all, I would try to have this conversation live. I know you're back to back, right? But if you can have the conversation live, it's much more likely to yield the response you want. Beginning with a respectful acknowledgement that your colleague is probably also very busy and may not be able to do this is a really smart idea. And then I would just lay all the cards on the table. I'm back to back and this is why none of these things can be canceled or moved.

And I still really want to give this presentation and this is the exact help I need, right? So here's how far I've gotten with it. Here's what I'm asking you to do. Here's how long I think it will take you to do that. If you can't do all of that, could you do just perhaps this part, right? So having in mind some flexibility

is always a good thing because people can't always give us the exact help we want. So sort of what's plan B, if you can't do the entire thing, would you be able to perhaps just handle this portion of it? And then you can think about, okay, how will I solve for the other part? But I think that's, what's really key, you know, Live conversation, explain why you're not just pushing work onto another person. This is something you really wish you could handle yourself. And here's why I can't handle it myself. And here's the exact thing I want you to do. That's the combination that's more likely for that person to say yes, even if it means

that they have to move things around in order to help you. That's what's going to make it more likely that they're going to give you the help you need. Is it helpful to offer something in return for the help? So like, could you say, well, I'll let you do part of the presentation if you're able to pull the slides together? Is that helpful? You know, in general, no. There are some versions of that that can be okay. It's okay to say, look, you know, I will definitely owe you one. I would love to return the favor at some point in the future. That kind of thing is okay because that's just sort of signaling gratitude. It's okay. It's actually great after they help you to spontaneously

do something nice or say like, hey, I just wanted to like, you know, buy you a coffee or buy you lunch because I'm so grateful that you did that. In general though, promising a reward when you're actually asking for the favor tends to undermine motivation because it makes the relationship, and by the way, this is a mistake we make all the time. We think, you know, oh, if you'll do this for me then, you know, and then I'll do this for you in return. And we feel like we're sweetening the pot. And what we're actually doing is turning our relationship from a relationship into a transaction. So very often when we offer rewards, we actually make it easier for people to turn us down because then they'll just say, well, I don't really care about, or I don't really want to present there. So I'm going to say no. Right. And you made it about the transaction, not about the relationship. So I say, hold off on promising anything and just actually do something

really nice for the person after they've helped you. That's going to be experienced as gratitude rather than as a transaction. Right. Okay. Let me give you another situation. Okay. So you aren't meeting your goals. The people around you are noticing or you least suspect they might be noticing. Your manager has been really lenient when you've asked to reset expectations because of everything going on, but you aren't going to be able to get the work done even with the reset expectations. Who do you ask for help? And is it okay to admit that you're not going to be able to get your work done? You know, I think it's absolutely okay to admit. It has to be, right? The truth always has to be okay to get your work done? You know, I think it's absolutely okay to admit it has to be

right. The truth always has to be okay. If you are at your limits, then you have to admit that. And I would say that your manager or your boss is the right person to begin that conversation with because it's okay to ask for help. It's a great thing to ask for help. But if the expectations that are on you are still more than you can actually achieve, that's a problem that isn't going to solve itself by temporarily reaching out to help from colleagues, because it's still going to be the case that going forward, you probably have expectations on you that are just too high. So it's going to be a chronic problem. So that's really important to address with your boss directly. And to even say, I appreciate the adjustments that were already made. I'm very

grateful for them. I thought they would be enough. Honestly, they're just not. And here's a description now of the current situation I'm in, right? And we're always guessing. You know, when we reset expectations, we're just doing our best guess at what we're going to be able to do. But we have to be willing to continue that conversation. Right, right. So what if the help that you need to do your job, you know, childcare, elder care, isn't available to you or you can't afford it? This is a great question. At the end of the day, there's sort of two pieces to that. There's the real logistical challenges of these things, and then there's the psychological challenges of these things.

The real logistical challenges are, in a way, the most difficult because there are certain things that have to get done. I know many people who are having to resign or take leaves of absence from their job with a lot of personal hardship associated with that because they literally have no choice but to be home with their children. That's a non-negotiable and they don't have another way to do things. There's a psychological piece to that though. And that's

the one that I think I'm probably the best position to help people address, which is how you end up feeling about that. How you end up feeling about the fact that you had to take a leave of absence or that you frankly are not going to be doing a good job at your job for a while or that you are not going to be the perfect parent and your kids may not get all their assignments done on time and things may be a bit of a mess and this may not be the best education, homeschooling experience that anyone's ever had and about becoming okay with that. I think that's really important. That is a work-life issue for women across the board, that we have expectations of being amazing mothers and amazing partners and amazing professionals.

And often those expectations of ourselves are not realistic. I think there's the expectations the world has of you. And then there's the expectations you have of yourself that you imagine, by the way, that the world has of you. That's the piece that we can all do something about. We can all set our expectations a little bit differently. My favorite kind of example of this is just sort of, you get a B in a class, right? Is that good or bad? Well, it depends on whether you thought you were going to get an A or you thought you were going to get a C. And life is like that. Whether or not we are failing is largely about what we expected of ourselves in the first place. And we all have to reset expectations in this incredibly difficult time and get okay with the fact that we are not going to be our best selves. We are not going to

be the best parents we ever were. We're not going to be the best parents we ever were. We're not going to be the best professionals we ever were. That time will come again. There is light at the end of the tunnel and you'll get to live that life again, but it's not going to be right now. And getting okay with that is a really big part of the psychological piece of this that I think we could all be working on. Yeah. And part of that, I guess, is also accepting the help may not be there. Yeah.

The help may not be there. Yeah. The help may not be there. If you can even get up the gumption to ask for it, there may not be anyone to ask. And then again, you have to say, you can only do what you can do. You can only do what you have in terms of the resources available to you. And making peace with that and recognizing that's not your fault. Those are just the circumstances you find yourself in is a big part of your wellness journey during this very difficult time. I like to give myself a mantra for a week or a day when I'm struggling. And I can't tell you how many times I've used I'm doing the best I can in the past few months. Yeah. I'd love to hear what you think about how we can help women in our lives right now. This is a time in our lives when we would actually do well to do a little spontaneous check-ins. Hey, how are you doing? Is there anything I can help you with?

That is a gift that you can give other people. People don't necessarily have a right to expect you to do that, but if you're able to, I think that's a great idea. And I would say when you offer help, it can be easier on that other person to offer specific help, right? So often we say, hey, can I help you? And people will go, no, no, no, I'm fine. But if instead you were to say, hey, I know you're preparing for that presentation. Would you like me to take an initial crack at those slides? And then you can maybe just edit them afterwards and that'll save you some time. That offer of help is much more likely to get a yes because you didn't, you know, as we talked about earlier, sometimes we don't know what help to ask for. So if you're going to offer help to someone, try offering to do something

specific for them. And that's going to make it much easier for them to imagine how helpful that would be and then to say yes to it. So I think taking a little bit of time to say, what way could I help this person? Let me make a specific offer. That's going to feel more respectful and it's going to be easier for them to say yes. Heidi, thank you so much for talking with me today. It was very helpful. I am so glad. And I had a wonderful time. And I think it is a topic that is really important for people to embrace right now. So thanks for the opportunity to share it. One of the things I was really glad that Heidi mentioned and that I've been reflecting on, especially as someone who's felt very overwhelmed, like many of us in the past few months, is that the kind of help I need is not someone to actively do something for me. But the type of help that Heidi was talking about around asking people for grace or patience or understanding.

And that that's a form of help, right? That was really insightful to me and gave me permission to ask more of that help. And in fact, the night after I interviewed Heidi, I did ask my family, you know, I said, I need to ask for your help. And your help is just patience that I feel really stressed out and I'm probably going to be short with you, not be able to help you with homework, you know, do these things during this time period. It will be short, but I hope you can understand. And I just need your help in being patient with me. You know, we're in our annual review season. And one of the things I really am trying to make a point of saying to the people who I get to work with is, you know, don't hesitate to ask for a little extra time or to reprioritize your assignments.

Because, you know, you're teaching your kids at the dining room table, and you've got a thousand other things on your plate that you didn't have on your plate a year ago. So the main concern here is that you not fall apart. We're all stretched too far. We're stretched too much. So it's up to you as a smart person to put up your hand when you need your assignments staggered a little more. It's really great to know that there are managers out there like you who feel that way and are willing to give people a little bit of extra breathing room. Some of like the things that I've come up against over the last like few months have not been super tangible.

Like mental health isn't as tangible as quantifiable. Like work can be very quantifiable, but mental health isn't as tangible. And when you're under additional stress, it's like everything becomes harder. It's like your work is going to take a little bit longer. You might not feel as sharp. You might not be able to handle some of the responsibilities that you previously had. So just a thought about that. I think a lot of what we've been talking about all along has to do with mental health. It's recognizing that you're just stressed out, you're closing in on that breaking point. And the help piece is not, you know, help me not fall apart. The help piece is, listen, I've got too much on

my plate right now. Can you help me reprioritize or can I lateral some stuff to you? Mm-hmm. Well, and even to Emily's point about being tangible or intangible, sometimes the help, I mean, I would love to have another editor who I could hand 10 edits to right now, but that's not realistic. So what is the help I need to take care of my mental health? And maybe it's just, like you said, Amy, maybe it's help reprioritizing. Sometimes it's just help of normalizing how I'm feeling. Because it's so easy in this virtual world to sit in your home office, at your kitchen table, wherever you are, thinking, I'm so behind. I'm so overwhelmed.

I'm not doing my job as well as I could be. And thinking that's, right? And thinking that it's just you and so sometimes the help is just having like can we have a quick 10 minute chat and yes so I can hear what you're going through yeah because you know I can tell you none of my colleagues who I've chatted with in the last six months is like I'm doing great I'm the most productive I've ever been so it's been it's always helpful to have those quick conversations about what's going on with you. Here's what's going on with me.

And just a thought about that, what you're saying, because it, oh my God, it's like you're inside my head right now. But I had this breakthrough. I actually have it every now and then because I forget about it. But last night I was getting really stressed out about something. I had wanted to turn around by the end of this week, and I just haven't been able to do it. And then I realized, you know what? First of all, the stress is totally self-imposed. I sent a note to the person for whom I was doing this particular thing

and said, listen, sorry, I've kept you waiting this long. I just need you to be a little bit more patient with me. And I will do my best to get this to you in the next two weeks. And all of a sudden, it's like my shoulders dropped, my head stopped pounding. I sort of helped myself on this one because I had to identify the source of the strain. Right. Yeah. Helping yourself. I love that. Yep. That's our show. I'm Emily Caulfield. I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Amy Bernstein. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hope, Adam Buchholz, Rob Eckhart, and Tina Tobey-Mack. So because the audio studio at the office isn't large or well

ventilated enough for us to record safely in, we're going to continue recording from home. Me from a spare bedroom in my parents' house. Me from my home office, where I'm staring out the window at my neighbor's driveway. And me from inside a closet, because my 13-year-old daughter told me my gear was cluttering her bedroom. HBR's Boston office is slowly, very carefully, letting in a very limited number of people. At this point, I've done one quick flyby

just to collect stuff I need at home. And I've only been on the outside of the building. I went in once to get a new laptop. Woohoo! Okay, so while we ourselves haven't actually gone back to the office for real, we want to hear from women who have. So give our producer Amanda a call at area code 617-783-7843 and leave a message with your name, what you do for work, and what you're liking about being back in the office and what you're not liking.

We'll include some of the messages in an upcoming episode. I can't wait to hear those messages. Me too. I wonder what it's like to be back in an office right now.