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Self-Managing People Are Smart about Asking for Help

94 points by gvb 9y ago

johncole 9y ago
I could have used this advice 10 years ago. This is a great article to pass on to folks new to the working world. I don't know what other working environments are like, but I appreciate people that keep the venting to a minimum. You can easily frame yourself as the complainer, deserved or not, if you use this one too much.
- city41 9y ago
  Venting to your manager seems mostly counterproductive to me. I'd argue rather than vent you should at the very least identify the problem and potential solutions. Even in scrum, when doing a retro, they don't call them "negatives" but "deltas", implying don't just complain, look for a solution.
  - arti-fact 9y ago
    Exactly. If venting can be converted into identifying a problem and looking for a solution, then it can a good thing. Venting often? There may be a larger issue to tackle here.
rb808 9y ago
"Every Olympian has a coach" I like to do things by myself, but the quote above I heard a few years ago and really changed the way I think about asking for help.
mixmastamyk 9y ago
Definitely need to remind myself to ask more questions, but not lazy ones, thanks. But "ask" is a verb, not a noun, sheesh.
- burkaman 9y ago
  It's also a noun, both in common usage and in dictionaries.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    I see it's a British commonwealth thing: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ask http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ask Still it sounds like business executive jargon such "spend," also a turnoff.
- mcrad 9y ago
  We have found that calling a specific request or requirement as "the ask" allows for everyone to take credit for the results, if desirable.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
You should think about the cost of asking for help before you actually do it. Or ask it in a medium that allows for an async conversation. Take a measure of how others ask questions or ask where most of the discussions take place (I have only been in face-to-face driven places but it's not hard to imagine Slack-driven places). On most days, this will be fine, but getting tunnel vision and not being aware of what's happening and asking silly javascript questions during important deployments or production work will rub people the wrong way. Your colleagues are not there to simply serve the "smartest and most talented people that just know how to ask questions".
haburka 9y ago
This is great advice for both managers and employees alike! I was told this a long time ago, "good employees come to managers with solutions, not problems." It has propelled me to be a self-managed person and it really puts me in a place of making quality contributions to the good of the company. I think this is especially important in development because if you ask for help whenever you get blocked, your coworkers have to solve all of your hard problems! This means that you don't relieve any pain from your team. However, if you instead say, "I have 3 possible solutions, what do you think about them?" , or "can you tell me the way you'd do this?" , then you can deal with the hard problems without taking up too much of your coworkers time.

94 points by gvb 9y ago

I could have used this advice 10 years ago. This is a great article to pass on to folks new to the working world. I don't know what other working environments are like, but I appreciate people that keep the venting to a minimum. You can easily frame yourself as the complainer, deserved or not, if you use this one too much.

city41 9y ago
Venting to your manager seems mostly counterproductive to me. I'd argue rather than vent you should at the very least identify the problem and potential solutions. Even in scrum, when doing a retro, they don't call them "negatives" but "deltas", implying don't just complain, look for a solution.
- arti-fact 9y ago
  Exactly. If venting can be converted into identifying a problem and looking for a solution, then it can a good thing. Venting often? There may be a larger issue to tackle here.

rb808 9y ago

"Every Olympian has a coach" I like to do things by myself, but the quote above I heard a few years ago and really changed the way I think about asking for help.

mixmastamyk 9y ago

Definitely need to remind myself to ask more questions, but not lazy ones, thanks. But "ask" is a verb, not a noun, sheesh.

burkaman 9y ago
It's also a noun, both in common usage and in dictionaries.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  I see it's a British commonwealth thing: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ask http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ask Still it sounds like business executive jargon such "spend," also a turnoff.
mcrad 9y ago
We have found that calling a specific request or requirement as "the ask" allows for everyone to take credit for the results, if desirable.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

You should think about the cost of asking for help before you actually do it. Or ask it in a medium that allows for an async conversation. Take a measure of how others ask questions or ask where most of the discussions take place (I have only been in face-to-face driven places but it's not hard to imagine Slack-driven places). On most days, this will be fine, but getting tunnel vision and not being aware of what's happening and asking silly javascript questions during important deployments or production work will rub people the wrong way. Your colleagues are not there to simply serve the "smartest and most talented people that just know how to ask questions".

haburka 9y ago

This is great advice for both managers and employees alike! I was told this a long time ago, "good employees come to managers with solutions, not problems." It has propelled me to be a self-managed person and it really puts me in a place of making quality contributions to the good of the company. I think this is especially important in development because if you ask for help whenever you get blocked, your coworkers have to solve all of your hard problems! This means that you don't relieve any pain from your team. However, if you instead say, "I have 3 possible solutions, what do you think about them?" , or "can you tell me the way you'd do this?" , then you can deal with the hard problems without taking up too much of your coworkers time.