Women at Work - All the Help We Can Get

0:00Emily, 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...

0:29feel like I never say no if somebody asks me for help. And I like helping people. And so I think I should give people the pleasure of 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.

1:00So 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.

1:27Her 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.

1:51So 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.

2:20I'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 it I think it was about something that you were writing, right? And you wanted some. Yeah. And I've actually, well, there were two things I reached out to you for an article I was writing.

2:38And then I actually asked you about a conference 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, with your information. Well, you know, it, I mean, I know the pain of that a little bit. It is one of those things not, it's actually not at, unlike the sort of challenge of.

2:59asking 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 The 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.

3:47that 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, that feeling of, is it okay to ask for help? How do I phrase this?

4:17Um, 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. Yes. 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 emphatic.

5:03by nature, right? I mean, there are those of us who aren't. And you probably know a couple of people who have seemed to have no problem at all imposing on other people all the time. But that's because they're not very good at perspective taking naturally. In fact, actually, what the research shows is that when 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.

5:33We're very quick to leap immediately mentally to how hard this will be for them. 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

6:08perspective take well about is the other side of helping, which is that it feels really great to give good help. So we don't actually think about that part of it, that when 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

6:58the 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.

7:27you 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 seven 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. 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.

8:17Let's talk about what that request actually looks like. Sure. So we've changed our mindset that this is not a lose-lose situation. Right. 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?

8:34Well, 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, she did a ton of research on this, 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. 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. 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. There's someone will say yes to you, or there's some common mistakes we make 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.

9:28That's just how people operate these days and the reason we do that we can come up with all kinds of like 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 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 knows because it feels more comfortable for them to say no to us. So you want to

10:30pick 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. This is sort of the nature of work. We communicate this way. OK, 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

11:17Any request for help feel personal, right? Either because it's a live conversation or because you're addressing just that person Yeah, 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. Yeah, I imagine that's true with a lot of people are in the situation right now where they're needing a job So they're reaching out to many people saying now, 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 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

12:07with 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, you know, 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.

13:04connected 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, you're not gonna tell me what it is you want from me.

13:17I'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.

13:45in early april so really when things were incredibly stressful i felt completely overwhelmed from a former colleague who said i'm 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 you know 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

14:23As 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 feels 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.

14:46Right? 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, do you have half an hour? We'd love to catch up. You probably would have just said, no, I don't have time to catch up with you. That's exactly what I would have said. 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

15:26you felt all day. That's right. It was probably the best thing that happened to be that week, to be quite honest. 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.

15:55I 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 are making a request of them with unrealistic expectations or a sense of an unfair demand, right? One of the ways I see that often when it comes to helping as well is when people, you know, kind of rattle off the laundry list of the things they want and you suspect that some of them they could be doing themselves.

16:22And 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, right? And 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.

17:02When 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 ask. 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 it's 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

17:53what 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 they're helping

18:47will help me, right? The effectiveness, the impact. When people can imagine the impact that they're helping. people 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. You know, 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

19:22was really rewarding and it keeps them coming back, right? 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 gonna create a relationship where 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.

19:45You'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.

20:14but 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 then 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 as things that are a bit fluid and that we're going to be kind 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,

21:12what 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.

21:26and I can't. By the way, I've had to do that with basically every book I've ever read, 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, OK.

21:43are 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 while 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, you know, 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 really had, and I was starting to feel really.

22:13overwhelmed 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. 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?

22:49for and 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 fault that 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. I don't know, again, my daughter is 14.

23:40When I offer unsolicited help to her about something, the look I get is that, mom, I can do it myself. I don't need your help. People 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

24:20other 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?

24:48Yeah, 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 it's like saying it's okay to have a Volkswagen parked on your chest just because somebody else has an 18-wheeler Like it's still not okay that you have a Volkswagen parked on your chest, right? 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.

25:43And 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

26:34and 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 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

27:20from 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.

27:46So 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?

28:13Great 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.

28:23You 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 around expectation setting. We had a certain set of goals that maybe we said at the beginning of the year and we need to revisit those because they're no longer realistic.

28:52Let 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 want to 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

29:44If 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 without 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 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.

30:38How 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 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.

31:10I'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, here, could you do just perhaps this part, right? So.

31:32Having 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. Live conversation, explain why you're not just...

31:53pushing 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, if they're 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 gonna make it more likely that they're gonna give you the help you need.

32:13Is 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's 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.

32:43to spontaneously do something nice or say like, hey, I just wanted to 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, oh, if you'll do this for me then, 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.

33:14So 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.

33:43So, 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 for 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.

34:13The 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.

34:35by 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. And we're always guessing. When we reset expectations, we're just doing our best guess.

35:04at what we're gonna 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 are, 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

36:02the 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 gonna be doing a good job at your job for a while or that you are not gonna 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 as education homeschooling experience that anyone's ever had.

36:32becoming 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.

37:11Life 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 professionals we ever were. That time will come.

37:34Again, 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.

37:51Yeah, the help may not be there. You know, if you 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'd 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. I'd love to hear what you think about how we can help women in our lives right now.

38:36This 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. 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.

39:20As 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.

39:49I am so glad and I had a wonderful time and I think it is a topic that that is really important for people to 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 for the 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. That was really insightful to me and gave me permission to ask more of that help. And in fact, the night after,

40:48I interviewed Heidi, I did ask my family. 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 gonna be short with you, not be able to help you with homework, 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. We're in our annual review season and one of the things Really, I'm trying to make a point of saying to the people who I get to work with is, you know, don't, don't hesitate to ask for a little extra time or to reprioritize your assignments because, you know, you're teaching your kids 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.

41:48So 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.

42:18Some 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 like work can be very quantifiable, but like mental health isn't as tangible and like when you're under Additional stress. It's like everything becomes harder. It's like your work is gonna 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 health piece is not, you know, help me not fall apart. The health piece is, listen, I've got too much on my plate right now.

43:17Can you help me reprioritize or can I lateral some stuff to you? Mm-hmm. 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...

43:46Like 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.

44:09and thinking that's right and thinking that's 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 ever 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 had actually have it every now and then because I forget about it But last night I was getting really stressed out about something I was 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 this is

45:02First 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.

45:30I sort of helped myself on this one because I had to identify the source of the strain. Right. Yeah. Helping yourself. I love that. Yeah. That's our show. I'm Emily Caulfield. I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Amy Bernstein. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Cursey, Maureen Hope, Adam Buchholz, Rob Eckhart, and Tina Toby Mack.

45:57So 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.

46:20HBR's Boston office is slowly, very carefully letting in a very limited number of people. At this point, I've done one quick fly-by 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. Okay, so while we ourselves haven't actually gone back to the office for real, we want to hear from women who have.

46:46So 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.