'I've Also Learned to Reach Out for Help a Lot More'
This is a show of intelligence, courage and strength
Being in a confusing, difficult or painful time and not knowing what to do or how to best do it or maybe just wanting some expertise to lean yet not wanting to ask for it can be a hard situation. Some people naturally go to others, whether professionals or strangers, to ask for assistance. Other people struggle mightily to do so.
That’s for whom this article is written.
Vas Narasimham, pictured above, and the CEO at Novartis, gets it.
“I've also learned to reach out for help a lot more,” he recently communicated in an interview on LinkedIn. Notice, he says, he “learned to…” meaning it wasn’t some cognitive DNA, so to speak. It was his factory setting from birth.
Yet he didn’t let that unfamiliarity or discomfort stop him from learning, which almost all of us are capable of doing, don’t you think?
Next, he says, “to reach out…” That’s not something that we want to normally do but again, remember, that Narasimham said he “learned” to do it. He knows it’s wise, necessary and valuable.
Then, he says what he learned to reach out for: “help.” Who doesn’t want help when it’s needed and beneficial? Seems like a rhetorical question yet you might be surprised. Some people don’t want help.
They maybe didn’t get it growing up or they were taught to be self sufficient, or they fear being seen as less than if they ask or their ego won’t allow them to ask.
Keep in mind that if the word “help” makes you squirm and you don’t want to reframe it to something like, keep the progress going or getting unstuck or preventing or mitigating problems, then maybe the word “assistance” might be more palatable emotionally, psychologically or logically for you.
Notice that Narasimham doesn’t say he reaches out for help always. No one is suggesting someone do that at all. He says he does that “a lot more.”
That tells me he likely wasn’t ever reaching out, and suffering for it, or he was rarely asking.
Neither served him well or the people he was assigned and entrusted in leading. Now he and they — more likely than less likely — benefit a lot more often and in more significant ways than they did before when he wasn’t reaching out.
Michael Toebe writes “Reputation Notes” and is the founder and specialist at Reputation Quality, a practice that serves and assists successful people and organizations in further building reputation as an asset and responsibly, ethically protecting, restoring or reconstructing it.
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