Why You Don't Ask Your Colleagues For Help (Even When You Need It) And Why You Should

Co-workers who display supportive and cooperative behaviour tend to develop high-quality social connections, improving individual and team performance.

But there's an obstacle to reaping those benefits: people often react negatively to being helped.

Professors Mark Bolino and Phillip Thompson conducted a series of studies to understand how that dynamic plays out at work.

Published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, their research involved close to 240 employees in various industries. The qualitative study asked respondents to explain why they would or would not accept help from a colleague.

The research duo identified five key reasons that employees avoid being helped by their teammates:

1. ? ? They prefer to be self-reliant and complete their work on their own.

2. ? ? They want to protect their image.

3. ? ? They don't want to feel obligated to return the favour.

4. ? ? They don't trust their co-workers' motives.

5. ? ? They (secretly) believe that their co-workers are incompetent.

The researchers then took their findings to a larger sample. A separate (quantitative) survey asked more than 500 employees how much they agreed with the various reasons for not requesting help. Here's what they found:

• Nearly two-thirds said that they preferred to finish their work without assistance. Over half of these respondents agreed that not asking for help could make them seem to be "high potential" employees.
• Almost 20% said that they usually declined offers of assistance to not owe their co-workers favours.
• Nearly 10% said that their co-workers were "out for themselves."
• About 8% thought that their colleagues lacked the competence to help finish tasks.

Some respondents were hesitant to accept help even when they felt they were on the verge (or in the middle of) burnout.

If you are unwilling to accept help when you need it, you undermine your own performance and your team's effectiveness. Managers have a huge responsibility to address this problem.

Research shows that employees look to their leaders to determine who is trustworthy and who isn't.

To build their team's trust in each other, managers ought to demonstrate their faith in their team by delegating challenging assignments, offering ownership of big decisions, and giving direct access to sensitive information or valuable stakeholders.

Since giving help and receiving it go hand in hand, managers should create an environment where assisting one another is encouraged and recognised.