If you want to be a successful professional in today’s tough business environment, you’re going to have to be willing to ask for help—and know how to do it. Indeed, asking for help in today’s rapidly changing and complex workplace has been found again and again to increase learning, foster creativity and enhance change as well as organizational performance. A great deal of research has revealed that seeking help can contribute very positively to one’s success. Yet, seeking help, especially by men, is often viewed as a sign of incompetence. And so, paradoxically, when leaders engage in these very useful behaviors of vulnerability, many are fearful of threat or embarrassment, believing that their skills and abilities as leaders may be questioned.
Why this frustrating paradox? And what can be done about it? An extensive summary of previous research as well as two studies by the authors, Rosette, Mueller and Lebel, in the December Leadership Quarterly, confirm the issue, explain the roots of the paradox and point to some resolution...