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How To Get Help Solving Any Problem You’re Facing with Dr. Wayne Baker & Larry Freed

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In this episode we share how to ask for what you want, get the help you need to succeed, and look at the evidence-based lessons for how you can get more of what you want with our guests Dr. Wayne Baker and Larry Freed. 

Wayne E. Baker is an American author and sociologist on the senior faculty of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. He is best known for his research in economic sociology, and his survey research on values, where he documented Americans’ core values. He writes in both academic and popular media on this theme and is often invited to present his findings across the U.S.

Larry Freed is the co-founder and former CEO of ForeSee, the leader in customer experience analytics. While at ForeSee, Larry worked with many of the leading companies of the Fortune 500 and was a frequent speaker at many industry events. Larry then founded 2nd Stage Partners where he advised early-stage and growth-stage technology companies. Larry is the author of Innovating Analytics: How the Next Generation of Net Promoter Can Increase Sales and Drive Business Results and Managing Forward: How to Move From Measuring the Past to Managing the Future. He is currently the CEO of Give and Take, helping companies increase knowledge collaboration, employee engagement, and business results.

  • Reciprocity Ring - giving and receiving help from other people. 

  • No one wants unsolicited help. The process must begin with unsolicited help. 

  • People are afraid to ask for help:

    • They don’t want to look dumb. 

    • They don’t think anyone can help them. 

    • They don’t know WHO to ask. 

  • Reducing the stigma of asking for help is KEY - but it’s also essential to make it EASY

  • Givers outnumber the people that ask for help about 2.4x to one based on data from the Givitas platform

  • How to reduce giver burnout 

  • Help comes from places that you would NEVER expect. 

  • The concept of “generalized reciprocity” is more powerful than specific reciprocity. 

  • 85% of the time, the people you help aren’t the people who help you. 

  • “SMART” Requests are more likely to get answered:

    • Specific requests. Specificity triggers people’s memories. Generic requests are less likely to be helped. 

    • Meaningful - “Why” are you making the request?

    • Action - ask for something specific to be done. 

    • Realistic - within the realm of possibility. 

    • Time - what’s the deadline?

  • 2 Competing models for why people give

    • Reputation - helping so you’re perceived well by others. 

    • Gratitude & Paying it forward for the help received.

  • Gratitude is a MUCH more powerful motivator for why people help (vs trying to improve their reputations). 

  • Only 10-20% of people say thank you when they are helped. 

  • The incredible lesson from “Kidney Chains” - giving the gift of life. 

  • Acquiring “ambient” knowledge is very valuable knowledge. 

  • What should you do if you’re afraid to ask for help?

  • 3 Methods for Better Asks

    • The quick-start method

      • “I’m currently working on _____"

        • “And I could use ____"

      • “My biggest challenge is ____"

        • “And I need _____"

    • The goal envisioning method

    • Visioning

  • Celebrate the people in your organization that are ASKING for help... that’s the harder part.

  • The leader should model the behavior they want in others. As a leader, you have to be willing to make a request and be the chief help seeker. 

  • The evidence should convince you… if you’re a taker.. that you will be more successful if you give. 

  • If you want to maximize your effectiveness and your performance, you need to give and take. 

  • How do you avoid giving burnout? 

  • Homework: Start by asking yourself what you need and what you are trying to accomplish. Practice asking. 

  • When you ask, you give someone else the opportunity to be a giver. It’s not a burden when you ask for help, you’re giving them the gift of helping you. If you don’t ask, you’re not enabling other people to be generous. 

  • It’s a responsibility to ASK for help - it’s a required, essential part of the whole process. 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

This week's episode of The Science of Success is brought to you by Best Fiends.

Best Fiends is a 5-Star rated mobile puzzle game with over 100 million downloads. I’m not someone who is traditionally a mobile game person but I have to say I’m a HUGE fan of this game and it’s a great way to challenge yourself when you’re on the go, waiting in line, or doing some relaxing.

The games developers and team are constantly updating with new themes and levels so the game never gets old or less challenging. This really keeps you on your toes in a fun way as you need to utilize different characters and strategies in order to succeed. What may have gotten you to a certain point in most cases won’t get you to the next.

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The game is great, their team is great so go check it out now and start playing today, I’ll see you on the leaderboard! 

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:11.8] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than five million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

In this episode, we share how to ask for what you want, get the help you need to succeed and look at evidence-based lessons for how you can get more of what you want with our guests, Dr. Wayne Baker and Larry Freed.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

In our previous episode, we heard the incredible story of how our guest went from a bricklayer to working with some of the most powerful and influential people in the world, and the amazing lessons that he learned about making things happen along the way with our previous guest, Steve Sims.

Now for our interview with Wayne and Larry.

[00:01:37] MB: Wayne E. Baker is an American author and sociologist on the senior faculty at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. He's best known for his research in economic sociology and his survey research on values, where he documented America's core values. Larry Freed is the Co-Founder and former CEO of ForeSee, the Founder of 2nd Stage Partners and the author of Innovating Analytics: How the Next Generation of Net Promoter Can Increase Sales and Drive Business Results and the book Managing Forward: How to Move from Measuring the Past to Managing the Future. Larry is also currently the CEO of Give and Take.

Wayne and Larry, welcome to the Science of Success.

[00:02:18] WB: Thank you, Matt. Glad to be here.

[00:02:20] LF: Great to be here, Matt. Thanks.

[00:02:21] MB: Well, I'm really excited to have you back on, Wayne, and I'm excited to have you on the show as well, Larry. You guys have put together a really interesting project and I want to get into the science behind it and some of the research, because one of main focus is really the reason that this show even exists is to take science data, research evidence and make that into really practical, implementable, actionable things in people's lives. You're doing that every day and that's what I find so interesting about what you're up to. I'd love to start out with the science of giving. Why do we give? Why don't we give? What is the impact on us?

[00:03:01] WB: Yeah. I can trace the idea back 21 years when we created the reciprocity ring. It's an activity for teams, or groups in which people ask for and give help to one another. We created it as a giving activity, a generosity activity. We learned very early on that getting people to help and to give seem natural. People really liked doing that. The real problem was getting people to ask for what they needed. You can't give unless you know what another person needs. What we discovered through the reciprocity ring and then the research that we have conducted since is that the key to giving and receiving is the request. That's a catalyst that drives the whole process. Not what I expected, but that's what the data show.

[00:03:48] LF: Givers will give if you make it easy for them to give and they need that and they also obviously need someone to ask, because no one wants unsolicited help. We all get that from time to time and we're never really happy about it. If the process starts with the person asking for help and that really is the key and then what we want to do is make sure that we create an environment where we're encouraging that process to continue, both on asking for help side, but also on the giving side and we want to protect against generosity burnout and things like that.

[00:04:20] WB: Yeah, I can add a bit to that. Larry, you mentioned that no one likes unsolicited help. My 18-year-old who is finishing high school remotely here could attest to that. He doesn't like any unsolicited help from me at all.

[00:04:32] LF: It's a common trait that we all run into with lots of family members.

[00:04:37] MB: Yeah. That's a great insight. I mean, it comes back to that one of the most interesting things, Wayne, about your work that I find so intriguing is that it wasn't getting people to give that's the problem, it's actually the opposite, which is getting people to ask for help. You wouldn't think that that would be the issue and yet, that's really what the challenge was.

[00:04:56] WB: Yeah, it was really a surprise. I'm driven by the evidence and by the data and then it was just really clear that that was the case. Part of our research has been to identify and then circumvent, or overcome some of the obstacles or the barriers to asking. A very common one is that people are reluctant to ask, because they are concerned, or they fear that they'll be perceived to be incompetent, or weak, they can't do their job, they're uneducated. There's new research that's come out that says as long as you make a thoughtful request, people will think you are more competent, not less. That's one of the many barriers.

One other one I'll mention briefly is that we don't ask sometimes, because we think no one can help us. When we use a lot of the activities that Larry and I have developed and others, sometimes people will take me aside and say, “You know, I don't want to ask because I know no one here can help me.” My answer is always the same. You never know what people know, or who they know until you ask. When they ask, they're always surprised because they discover that there are all kinds of resources out there somewhere in the network, but they need a mechanism to ask and then to start the movement, or circulation of those resources through that network.

[00:06:11] LF: To add onto that, one of the other challenges in asking is knowing who to ask. The reciprocity ring was a great example of when you bring a group of people together, they don't have to direct it to any one individual. They don't need to know the person that might have the right answer. They don't have to spend all that time asking John, John sending a nod, [inaudible 00:06:28] go to Sally. Sally can't help, then he go to Bob and maybe Bob helps.

When you can ask a group of people, it becomes a lot more efficient. It also I think reduces the risk of that individual. They don't feel like they're taking up one person's time. They're making it easier. They're hitting 10, 15, 20 people at a time in a reciprocity ring and Givitas, lets you do that with hundreds and thousands of people.

One of the things that we see is that reducing that stigma of asking for help is really key, but also is to make it easy to ask for help, especially when you don't know who to ask. An interesting stat from our platforms that we see is that the givers will outnumber the people that ask for help about 2.4 to 1. The key is getting those people to ask.

[00:07:09] WB: It's a really good point, Larry. One of the benefits of posting your request or your ask to an entire group is that it eliminates, or at least reduces give or burnout, because you're not going to the usual suspects, the same people, but rather you're casting a wide net.

The other advantage is that you discover that help comes from places you would never expect. I remember when I was writing my latest book that I used Givitas quite frequently to post a request for say, a new example, or a fresh example of something, or a practice that would illustrate these principles, and it was amazing. I got connected to people from all over the world who I never would have met.

One of my favorite ones was a person who is an HR director for one of the aboriginal corporations in Alaska, someone who was not someone I would meet in my normal travels and yet, it was really, really helpful. You never know where the help will be. A tool like Givitas really enables you to in a sense, search the world for the person that's got the contact, or the resource you need.

[00:08:18] MB: There's two concepts that I want to drill down on a little bit. One is and we talked about this in your previous interview, Wayne, but I want to make sure that listeners who might not have heard that understand what we're talking about. Can you give a little bit of background on what a reciprocity ring is and some of the findings that have come out of using those?

[00:08:35] WB: Sure. Glad to. When we say reciprocity, we often think about what we call direct reciprocity. Matt, I help you and you help me and that's great. We would want that to happen, but there's a more powerful form of reciprocity. We call it generalized reciprocity. Larry helps me and of course, I'm more likely to help him to pay back that help, but I'm also grateful for the help that I received and I'm more likely to pay it forward and help you, or help someone else and the chain goes all the way around.

We had that concept in mind, that generalized form of reciprocity and said, how can we create an activity that would allow people to experience this and to actually benefit while they had that experience? We came up with this idea of the reciprocity ring. There's a very particular recipe. We train people how to run it. There's a poster and materials that go with it and so forth. It's going to sound simpler than it actually is. But essentially, everyone makes a request to the entire group and they spend most of the time trying to figure out how they can meet other requests that people have.

You get to make a request and then you're spending most of your time helping other people meet their requests. What we find is about 85% of the time that the people you help are not the people who helped you. Rather, it's that more indirect or a generalized form of reciprocity. In brief, you could think about it as a structured, or guided facilitated activity for asking for and giving help that really brings out all of the resources that exist in a group.

[00:10:10] MB: I love that stat that 85% of the time the person who helps you is not the person that you helped. When we look at our lives more broadly with that lens, it really shines light on the fact that you may never know where help is actually going to come from.

[00:10:26] WB: Oh, absolutely. One of my favorite ones was a senior engineer in a large manufacturing company had a request involving some complex problem he had with a metallurgical process. Now I had no idea what he was really talking about, but he asked. He said, “Look, I need to talk to an expert in this particular metallurgical problem.” Help came from a 22-year-old admin who had recently been hired by the company. You would think, “Well, how would that person be able to help? She was not an engineer.”

She said, “Well, my dad is the world's expert in that problem and he just retired. My mom has been encouraging him to spend more time outside of the home.” She's able to tap her network and connect her dad with this engineer. Together, they solved the problem.

[00:11:15] LF: If you take that and think about when you're doing it in a face-to-face environment, it's remarkable how powerful that network and how far that network can reach up; 20, 25 people that you're with and the people that they know. Now say you’re in an online reciprocity ring, or what we call Givitas and you're dealing with 200, 500, a 1,000, 2,000 people and how much power you have. You really get that multiplicative impact in terms of that reach, which is phenomenal.

[00:11:46] MB: If you hit such a big group of people, at some point does it start to break down in terms of it becomes almost too anonymous to really be able to understand and help people with their problems? Or have you found that it's actually the opposite and the larger network really ends up creating a lot more value for people?

[00:12:03] LF: I think it's the opposite in many ways. The key thing is is that we also want to balance that generosity burnout. Selfless people often will say yes to everything and they get sucked in this time and they can't really do their own job and get their own things done. Or a typical social network lures you into that social network and you spend two hours on it bouncing around and watching videos and all kinds of crazy stuff these days and you don’t realize where the time went.

Givitas is really structured in that same way the reciprocity ring is. In many ways, it's an online manifestation of the reciprocity ring. You have that structure, so it makes it really easy. We use the phrase, be a giver on five minutes a day, or five minutes a week. When you look at a typical network, or a community forum, or listserv, you see topics posted. Sometimes people are posting. Sometimes they're bragging, sometimes they're making a joke, sometimes they're commenting on things that aren't relevant. It's hard to make sense of it all and it gets really, really noisy really fast.

We create smaller communities. It's not open for everybody. It's an invited group of people, but still can be in the thousands. The beauty is is there some structure to it. You know when a request is made, you know when someone makes an offer or help to it. It makes the process of going through the items that much quicker and easier and it really is about that efficiency and again, givers will give when you make it easy and givers will give because they want to be recognized for it and they want to be shown thanks and gratitude. We can do all that in the platform, which is makes it really, really powerful.

[00:13:34] WB: Yeah, I can add to that. I think larger is better. What we've found is that there's a tipping point, a critical mass, and it's generally a larger network works better and better. We've also found that it's helpful to have an affinity, or a common topic or interest. Give you a couple of examples, there's a Givitas community for people in HR, human resources, people who are in HR, or have an interest in that. There's another for women at work, one on people analytics, one for associations, another for non-profits. People have a common interest or that affinity.

What we've found is that people are just really, really helpful. I think of it as the kindness of strangers, that people are really willing. I'm still amazed that some of the help that has given, for example in that HR ring, where someone would post a request for something that's pretty complicated HR issue, or challenge that they have. That's been addressed, or solved in other companies, but they don't know where, but they find it through this tool. People will say, “Oh, here's my 20 slide PowerPoint deck of how we address that problem,” and it's really quite amazing. It's a large network that really makes it go.

[00:14:47] MB: I'm also curious and there's a couple other things I want to dig into too, but what percentage and you may not have exact metrics around this, but what percentage of asks, or problems, or challenges go either unanswered, or don't get resolved, or don't really get forward progress on goal they're trying to get help with?

[00:15:08] LF: In a Givitas platform, in the reciprocity ring it's almost what? 99.50% or more get some help and all the ones I've seen, I don't think I can think of maybe one request and nobody was able to offer help on. In the platform, we actually see similar kinds of numbers. It's generally 98%, 99.50%. It's also interesting, because on average we'll see three and a half to four offers of help for each request. A request still has to be a good request. Sometimes when you don't get help, it's because your request was too vague, it wasn't specific enough, there was no realness to it. There's a whole methodology and Wayne is the expert in this, to really make it a good request and that's part of it.

Once you make that, then you get that request out there. When you've got a broader network, you're more than likely to get help. The beauty is is when you've got a group of people trying to help, you can build on what each other's knowledge is. You don't even need to have one person that has the whole answer. You might get part of the answer from one person and another part from somebody else. Then a third person weighs in and makes a comment and says, “This is right on, but one more thing to think about.” Now you've got really the community helping to solve that problem. The beauty is it just takes a couple of minutes. People are happy to do it and we just get incredible response that way.

[00:16:26] WB: Yeah, what we've found is that a request that is well formulated is more likely to get a response, even if it's a challenging or difficult request. The acronym that we use is a SMART request, which is different from a smart goals; the criteria a little bit different. I'll go through them very quickly. The S is for specific and Larry mentioned that already. Quite sometimes, people make a general request thinking that they're casting a broader net, but it's hard to respond to a really general request. It's a specific request that triggers people's memories of what they know and who they know. The S is for specific. The M is for meaningful. That's the why of the request, really critical do that.

I've done some statistical analysis with a colleague of mine on thousands of these requests and we find that those where people have left off the why, or the meaningful part are less likely to get a response, because people don't really understand what's behind the request. The Y is really important. A is for action. You're asked for something to be done. The R is for strategically realistic. Now we encourage big requests, stretch requests, small requests, as long as it's real, but it's got to be within the realm of possibility.

Then finally, T is time. What's the deadline? Again here, a very specific deadline is much more motivating to people than a general request. If I said, “Oh, sometime by the end of the year,” people will put it – I mean, I've got post-its on my desk here that are those kinds of requests. I'll do this when you get to it. Well, I'm not likely to get to it. If I knew that you needed something in a week, I'm much more likely to respond, because I know you need it much more urgently.

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[00:19:29] MB: I love the specificity and all of these different components of making a request that's actually going to get answered, because you have so much data from the platform that actually shows quantitatively, here are the kinds of requests that get positive feedback, get tracks and get answers and here are the kinds of requests that struggle, or that don't.

[00:19:48] LF: It really plays out. If you ask, “Hey, I'm looking for a new job,” no one can really help you. But if you say, “Hey, I'm looking for a job in this field. This is the experience I have. I want to do this in the next two months and I want it to be in one of these two cities,” people have a chance to help. It's just so important to drill down into that area that what you really need. Again, it's about making it easy to ask for help, but also make it easier for the givers to give help.

[00:20:16] WB: I can add a little to that with what we've learned from some of the research that we've published. Ned Buckley and I used a lot of Givitas data and analyzed thousands and thousands and thousands of requests and offers. We were interested in two different explanations about why someone would give and why someone would help and we ran a horse race between these two different competing explanations.

One is that I'm more likely to help in order to give a good impression. It's all about impression management, so people will think I'm a generous person and therefore, will help me in the future. It's a reputation thing. The other explanation, the other horse in the race is that I'm more likely to help, because I'm paying it forward out of gratitude for help received. It's a very different motivation. We didn't know which way it was going to go, but we had all of this data and we did this very sophisticated statistical analysis control for other factors.

What we found is that the stronger and the longer-lasting effect was gratitude for help received, so there was some reputation, or impression management going on, but mainly people helped others who hadn't helped them, because they were paying it forward, because they were so grateful for the help that they had received. I found that one of the most interesting findings from my research.

[00:21:37] MB: That's great. I love that finding. It's funny, because in many ways, the second-order effect of that is that the more you help people down the road, the more help that they're going to give to others and almost an endless cascade of an upward spiral, if you will, of positive giving and helping.

[00:21:56] WB: Absolutely. You can think about it as not only resources flowing through the network, but positive emotions and even positive energy flowing through the network as well.

[00:22:09] LF: When you can build in the gratitude to it as well, right? First of all, when you see other people help, you're encouraged to participate and help. There's a little bit of maybe call it peer pressure, but that's one way to think about it, or it's just, “Hey, they're doing good. I'm going to do good.” Most people get a good feeling when they help others. There's all kinds of research that shows you feel better when you're helping other people.

Then the gratitude being shown back, someone saying thank you, we appreciate that, we're grateful for it. Really goes a long way to encourage you to do it again. I saw some research a while back and it talked about that on average when people are getting help, it's 10% to 20% of the time, they're saying thank you. It's remarkable how low that number is. When we can raise that up to 50%, 60%, 70%, 80% it really creates this, I like to think of it as a cycle of generosity. You help people, you see other people helping, you want to get into that, you want to be part of that and it just expands the network so far and so powerful that the help is always there. Again, if you follow that gratitude, it's really, really an encouraging aspect to continue to be that giver.

[00:23:16] MB: One of the great examples of this outside of the data you have from Givitas is a classic example and we talked about in our last interview, Wayne, of the kidney chain. I'd love to just hear that, again, explained really briefly, because to me that's such a great demonstration of the power of gratitude and paying it forward and how it can really create a positive impact.

[00:23:36] WB: Yeah, the kidney chain is truly, truly amazing. One of my favorite ones, maybe because I live here in Michigan was started by Matt Jones, another Michigander, who was thinking about how could I really do something of great value to another person? He said, “You know, I've got two kidneys. I can live just fine with one. I'm going to look into donating one of my kidneys to a stranger.” You can understand donating a kidney to a family member, that thing. He said, “No, I want to donate it to a stranger.” He actually had to undergo an evaluation to make sure that there's motivation for this, but it was true altruism.

He arranged to do that. The person who received that kidney, that person's life was saved as a result of receiving that kidney. Now that person was married to someone who would have donated his kidney, but they weren't compatible blood types or whatever. He said, “You know, but what I'm going to do is that I'm going to pay it forward and I'm going to donate one of my kidneys to another stranger.” Then the stranger who received it, one of that person's relatives did the same thing. It was this kidney to kidney to kidney, this whole stranger chain of people giving the gift of life through donating kidneys. Some of these kidney chains are really, really long now.

There are some hospitals who actually have created a mechanism to allow people to do this, because we know there's always a shortage for human organs. They're really quite amazing to see, this is one of the most vivid illustrations of true human generosity in a kidney chain.

[00:25:15] MB: It comes back to that same concept of one act of giving. It has the potential to be a chain reaction. The thing that’s stopping that giving from being unlocked is not a willingness to give, it's a willingness to ask.

[00:25:30] WB: It's absolutely right. What I think about is there are four types that we've shown in our research. We've developed an assessment that will assess your propensity to give and your propensity to ask, or to request. The best place to be is what we call the giver requester. Now that's someone who is generous, who freely gives, who gives without expectations of return and they will make requests when they have a need. They do both. They're very well regarded for their generosity and they're the most productive, because they get the inflow of answers, questions, resources, things that they need, that input in order to be successful.

Another type that we see is probably the most common type is the overly generous giver; the person who gives a lot, but doesn't ask for what they need. That's where burnout occurs. The remedy to that is twofold. One is you need to put boundaries on giving, so you don't over commit your resources, or overtax yourself, but you also need to make requests. If you've been helping a lot of people, there's a lot of people out there who want to help you in return, the opposite of the overly generous giver is the selfish taker. They have no problem asking, but they don't give very often.

What we found in the reciprocity ring and Givitas is that if you have takers in there, they will still give, because both of these are transparent, so you know whether someone's giving or not and that's one reason why these tools work so well is that even the selfish taker will give when it's transparent.

The rounded out, the fourth type is what we call the lone wolf. In some ways, it's the most tragic, or the saddest of the four types, because they don't give, they don't ask. They're pretty disconnected from the whole world. Just got their head down and trying to do their work. They're not very successful, because you really do need input from other people to truly be successful.

[00:27:22] LF: Yeah. The power of the exercise and the experience, getting those takers to participate and you could argue that they may be doing it for the wrong reason, but they're not doing it necessarily out of the goodness of their heart. Nonetheless, they're sharing information, knowledge, experience and helping other people and that's what really counts. They may be doing it because everyone sees them do it, because others are doing it they don't want to be left behind, they don't want their reputation tarnished. To some extent, you can keep score.

We have metrics and analytics around who's giving, who's helping and so on. That encouragement to get the takers to participate and help others really helps the whole community so much. Without the reciprocity ring or without Givitas, if these people are left alone working in a cube somewhere, it doesn't happen. When you can bring them together in these communities, you can start to get that value and let it be shared amongst the participants.

[00:28:15] WB: Larry, that makes me think of another advantage that we've observed and there's a lot of science to back this up, is that even with people when they go into the tool and let's say they're not doing anything, maybe they're lurking a little bit, they're still learning and they're acquiring what is called ambient knowledge, is that you get to see who knows what, you get to see the network that's out there as well and that's all really useful knowledge to be accumulating. There are those secondary benefits by accumulating that ambient knowledge by just observing what's going on.

[00:28:51] LF: You not only learn from what other people are saying, you start to get more confident that you also can make that request. I mean, starts to change people's attitudes and behaviors. There's a huge stigma about asking for help and it sometimes is mind-boggling that people are afraid to ask for help, but everybody is. It's that exposure and they don't want to show they're weak. You think about most corporate worlds, people are afraid to ask for help because they're going to be looked at like they don't know what they're doing.

The way it should be looked upon is you're willing to ask for help, you're willing to raise your hand. That's a sign of strength. It's a sign of strength, because you're putting the project you’re working on, the customer you're supporting, the company you're working for in front of your own ego. Then you start to when that works and you're willing to ask and people help you, now you're the perfect employee. You are doing what's right for the organization, for your customer and everyone's able to help each other.

It has a huge bottom line impact on the business, on people's success, on people's careers. As a participant, you start to feel that the organization is there to help you not to find your mistakes and punish you and get rid of you, but to help you be successful. It just builds and it's this cycle of generosity that people start to really reach their potential, in many cases even exceed their potential.

[00:30:08] MB: Really interesting insights. I'm curious from both perspectives, let's take and I know there's mixes and matches and people that have each of these characteristics, but let's say for people who aren't asking enough, how can they ask more and how – and we've already talked a little bit about how to make better asks, but how can they ask more? How can they overcome that fear, that shame, that uncertainty around asking for help? On the other end of the spectrum, people who are takers, what advice or feedback would you have for them about why they shouldn't be such a taker, or why they should give more?

[00:30:40] WB: Let me address the first part of that, which is how can you encourage or enable people to ask more. There's a process for doing this. There's four steps to it. The first is that you need to sit down and think about your goals. What are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to accomplish? Oftentimes, people will make a request and they haven't thought it through and they end up getting a resource they really don't need. Begins with the objective. What's the goal?

Then the second part is to say, “Okay. If I've got that goal in mind, what resource do I need?” There, we encourage people to think very broadly. It could be information, ideas, expert advice, referral, a connection, a report, financial resources, whatever is that you would need, but think about what are the resources I need to accomplish that goal, then the third part is to make a smart request and we already talked about what a smart request means.

Then the fourth step is to then, “Okay. Who am I going to ask? Am I asking a particular person? Am I going to ask in a group? Am I going to use Givitas to post to a large network of people?” You need some thought, you need some preparation to figure that out. Yeah, I could also say that there are three methods that I write about these in my book, which is there's the quick-start method, the goal articulation method and visioning.

The quick-start method as the name implies is a very quick way of figuring out what are you trying to accomplish and what's a resource you might need? It's a series of incomplete sentences and you need to fill in the blanks and I'll just tell you two of them now. Think about how you would fill in these blanks. I am currently working on and I could use. If you could fill in those two blanks, you get a sense of what you're trying to accomplish and a resource that you need. Or if you say, one of my biggest challenges now is, and I would benefit from. Sitting down and thinking about that will help you think about that goal and the resources that you need.

I've used this quick-start method with executives. Quite frequently, give them about 10 minutes and they fill out these incomplete sentences and they get a really good sense of what is it that they need. The goal articulation method takes longer, but essentially it means in each of domains of your life, could be personal life, fitness, your spiritual life, it could be work, career, profession, whatever it is. What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? What resources that you need?

Then visioning is very powerful. It takes the longest. It's creating a narrative, a written description in vivid inspiring detail of that life you want to have, say three, five years from now. If you could write that out in that vivid detail, say, “Well, that's what I want. That's who I want to be, even that's where I want to live,” well there's a lot of goals in there and you need a lot of resources. What we've learned is that if you've written it down, if you've shared that written vision with other people, people will start helping you right away. As if the vision is a request itself.

[00:33:36] LF: I'll give you another real-life example. We were working with a large technology organization. There was a bit of a culture issue at this company. I'm not going to name the name of it. One of the great ways to get any community, or any organization to get over that stigma of asking for help is to have the leaders ask for help. On a company, it's the leaders of the company, or the division, or we have a community where it's maybe followers of a thought leader. If you can get that fouled leader to make that request, everyone is inspired to also make a request.

It can be a formal leader, or an informal leader. You're talking about big companies with big political structures. It gets hard for those people sometimes to ask for help. Sometimes they’re the worst about it. We actually created a polling feature, so that they could look to get input to make it a little easier for them to take that step in and ask for help. Instead of asking for how to solve a certain problem, they may ask for their sales team for input on which of the following three things are your biggest challenge to hitting your quota this quarter? It starts the process rolling. Leading by example is a great way to help reduce that stigma.

Then the other I think really important aspect of it is to celebrate the people that are asking for help, recognize them and celebrate it. Our first instinct is to celebrate the people that offered the help, which that's important as well, but we want to celebrate the people that have made the ask, because that is the harder part. Other people see that celebration, they want to be part of it too. They see that it's a positive experience that you didn't know what you were doing and you were willing to raise your hand and ask for help as opposed to a negative experience.

[00:35:13] WB: Those are such important points. It's very important for the leader to recognize and acknowledge not only those who help, but those who are willing to request and to ask. A leader should do both. Another point just to reinforce something that you said is that the leader should be the role model of the behavior that they want and other people. If the leader is not willing to make a request for what they need, it's harder for everyone else to do it. The leader needs to make a request as well, to be what I sometimes call the chief help seeker. That's another role for the leader is to be the person who will use the poll function, ask a question that way, or come right out and make a request. By doing that, they're modeling the behavior that they want in other people.

[00:35:56] LF: Showing a little vulnerability, that none of us know everything. Let's look for the group to help us where we can and make everybody stronger and better.

[00:36:06] MB: Great insight. I love the idea around leaders leading with their own behavior and being willing to ask for help. Such an important insight. I want to come back to the other side of the coin too. If you're a taker, why should you change your behavior?

[00:36:22] WB: It's an interesting question. I think the evidence should convince the taker that they could be much more successful if they also give. If they realize that by giving and being generous and even if they're doing it for impression management or reputation building, they're still giving, they realize if they do that that they will be more successful. People will be more likely to help them. I think it's partly education. It's also practices. Giving them tools or routines in which they could do both. They can give and they can ask. Yeah, I think the evidence should convince people that if you want to maximize your effectiveness, your creativity and your performance, you want to do both.

[00:37:05] LF: I have a saying that I didn't make up. I think Edward Deming was the first person that said it. You can't manage what you don't measure. It's so important to have metrics around that, because now you can demonstrate to these people. You know who's asking for help, you know who's giving help. Now you can start to really give them the evidence there that this is what's going on. When they see that other people are doing it, takers often want to be a superstar. They don't want to share because they feel like it's them against their peer, instead of them against the competition.

Jack Welch was a great leader. His theory was and it was right for that time that you take the bottom 10% of your organization, you get them out and you get them to somewhere else in the company where they can be successful, or you get them out. It sent a message to people that it wasn't about doing your best, it was about doing better than your peers. That reinforces this idea of being a taker and not being a giver.

You roll the clock forward and when Adam came out with give and take and the reciprocity ring, what changes the dialogue and now it's about you can be a giver and be successful. That's so powerful. It's really been a transformation through my career in the 80s and 90s. It was looking at guys like Jack Welch who was incredibly successful, but modeling that. I remember one of my first mentors gave me the book The Art of War and kill or be killed. That's not the way it has to be.

We can help each other and still be successful. The metrics and the measurements also help you really identify who those takers are. By those being visible, you can encourage them that there is a better way and get them to participate.

[00:38:41] MB: That's a great distinction between doing your best, versus doing better than your peers, because you can often confuse yourself and think that maybe those are the same thing, but the reality is that there's a really big distinction between those two.

[00:38:55] LF: Yeah. It's the team that wins. We see great examples of that in the sports world. It really applies to the community, to the business. I mean, if we think about what people are going through today with COVID-19 and the challenges that it's facing, and it's helping each other that gets us through it and makes us all successful. It's actually really interesting. We've seen a huge increase in the number of requests as a result of what's going on in our platform.

I was looking at this data earlier today, 25% of the requests made in our platform since beginning of March have had the word COVID, corona, or pandemic in it. Even when we have these horrible situations that we're in, we can get help from our peers, our neighbors, our colleagues, our community and we can also help them and that really becomes a powerful tool.

[00:39:45] MB: How do you avoid giving burnout?

[00:39:49] LF: Making it easy to be a giver. There's a lot of different strategies that I've heard and I think some of them are really effective. It depends a little bit on your personality, I think how well you can do it. Some people say, spend a certain amount of time every day and focus on that. Others will say, spend just one day a week, part of one day a week, compartmentalize it and get all your given out in that one period, so you feel better because you see the magnitude of it.

I've always personally struggled with that. The flood of e-mail you're just dealing with it as it comes in. It's so easy to take a request that comes in to Wayne's point earlier, if it's not specific, if there's no deadlines, it sits in my inbox and I forget about it. I wake up one night at 2:00 in the morning realizing I never answered that person.

If we can create an environment where it's easier to be a giver and I think that has a number of components in it. One is when it's directed to a network, anybody can help out. You don't always have to be that one person. The fact that you can see what other people have done, you're not recreating the wheel.

The worst feeling in the world I think as a giver is when you spend your time, you offer that helping you're really thoughtful about it and you may be making an introduction and the response is, “Oh, I've already solved that problem.” Understanding the status of a request. It's just, it still need help. When we do all those things, we can start to make it a lot more efficient. That's one of the ways to really help with that burnout.

People have to also balance it. The idea that when we can use the network, harness that collective intelligence of the network, it takes the burden off of any one person and then network is able to contribute and help. By helping, you also become a better person, because not only do you feel good, but you sometimes will learn that material, or learn that information and even get a little bit better at it, because you had to articulated to somebody else.

If you always go to the expert, you get the same answer all the time and the experts burnt out. If the expert can help one person and they can help somebody else, you start to get more innovation that it can happen as well.

[00:41:47] MB: For people who want to start asking for help more frequently, or giving help, what is one action item, or concrete piece of homework that you would give them to start implementing this in their lives?

[00:42:04] WB: Yeah. I would say to pause, perhaps at the beginning of the day when you get up, get a cup of coffee, start your computer is to pause for a few minutes and think about, “What am I trying to accomplish today? What are my objectives? What are my goals for today?” Actually write them down. Then from that, I think quite naturally it flows, “Okay. Well, what do I need and then what do I need to ask for in order to accomplish that goal? Or at least make some progress on that.”

I've known people that have established that as a daily habit, usually in the morning. They say it's been really, really helpful to do that. It only takes a couple of minutes, but it clears your mind, focuses you on what you're trying to accomplish, what you need and that makes a lot easier to ask.

[00:42:52] LF: Practice can help as well. I think when you’re giving and helping others, we've seen from a lot of people in our communities, we'll ask them, “Hey, you've offered help to six people. How come you haven't request?” “Well, I don't do that.” I think when you think about the help you're giving and you can actually try to take that and say, “Now, I'm going to give someone else the opportunity to be a giver, because I'm going to make an ask.” It's another way to give value and benefit to somebody else is let them be a giver.

I think if you turn it around that way for certain people, the people that just naturally don't want to ask for anybody, they don't want to burden anybody, it's not a burden when you ask for help. It's actually enabling them to be a giver and that's a different perspective on how to look at it.

[00:43:33] WB: If you're not asking, you're not enabling other people to be givers, to be generous. That it's a duty or a responsibility to request. It's not a burden. Most people are delighted to help. Sometimes it's very easy for a person to help, even though the benefit might be very big to you as the requester. You really should think about it as a required essential part of the whole process itself is asking, as well as giving.

[00:44:01] LF: If you're a leader, let's say you're running a group, 10 people, or a 100 people, or a 1,000 people and you want to create this collaborative, generous community that's helping each other, most leaders think I'm there to solve everybody's problem. Sometimes even if you know the answer, if you can ask the crowd to help you and they start to solve that problem, they're energized. They feel good about it. They want to give to their colleague. That's how you create that teamwork. It's another way of leading by example.

[00:44:28] MB: Wayne, you brought up another really good point a second ago, which is in many ways, making a good ask really starts with self-awareness and beginning with what do you need help with? What are you working on right now and what are your goals and priorities? Because if you don't even have clarity about that, then you can't formulate well-articulated SMART ask, then you may not get the help that you ultimately want.

[00:44:53] WB: Absolutely. If you think about – if you did that at the beginning of every morning, “Okay, what am I trying to accomplish today?” What you're doing is creating a vision of success for yourself. That's what you're trying to accomplish today, here's the resources you need and you're going to request them, either directly from someone, perhaps through LinkedIn, e-mail, through Givitas, through another platform is that you're creating that vision. That's what a successful day is going to look like.

If you think about the opposite, sometimes and I have to say sometimes I fall into this myself, I turn on my e-mail, I see all the stream of e-mails. I start answering those e-mails and a couple hours goes by and I realized, that was important, but I really didn't set aside time to focus on what I'm supposed to be accomplishing today. It's really important to do that. It enables you to perform at a much higher level, if you do that on a regular basis, if you make it a habit.

[00:45:43] MB: Yeah, I love that. Even just checking in for a few minutes at the beginning of the day. What are your goals and is what you're doing aligned with those goals? If you just did that, you're going to see a massive impact over time on how you spend your time and ultimately, the results that you create.

[00:45:59] WB: Absolutely. You can think about it in your personal life too. It's not just in your work life, but what are you trying to accomplish with your family, with your relationships, with your community, with different groups you might be a part of? If you think about it, it doesn't take very long to do it, but if you can develop that habit, it can be extremely powerful.

[00:46:18] MB: For listeners who want to learn more about Givitas, who want to get involved, who want to make some asks and get help, where can they find more information and get into this online?

[00:46:30] LF: We've created a handful of communities that are free for anybody to participate. Wayne mentioned a few of them before. There's a group of HR leaders. There's a group of association leaders. There's a group for non-profit leaders. We've also created a group for listeners of your podcasts, so the Science of Success. If you go to givitas.com/free and Givitas is G-I-V-I-T-A-S, you'll see a list of those and one of them is the Science of Success Podcast Community and people can join. They can help each other and ask questions of those audiences and start to put all of these ideas into practice and learn how to do them in that community and then they can take into the other parts of their life.

[00:47:11] WB: I can attest as a participant in several of those communities, they are extremely effective. I've found them so effective for the work that I've been trying to do when I've been writing my latest book. It is so easy to help. Every morning, I'll look through and say, “Okay, here's the dozen requests that have come in.” I said, “I can help on that one.” I click, I do it. It doesn't take much time at all. I realized that day, I actually was able to help someone and oh, by the way, I got some help too.

Another resource I can give is the website for my new book and there's a lot of free resources. I mentioned an assessment. That is a free assessment you can take through the website. The nice thing besides being free is that it will give you a comparison of your results to the population of people taking the assessment and the URL for that is the title of the book, allyouhavetodoisask.com. If you go to there, you can find that and many other free resources. Those really support and augment all we're trying to do with Givitas and the company that Larry is leading.

[00:48:16] MB: Well, Larry, Wayne, thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing your research and the work that you've done. It's so great to see you putting this whole framework into practice and really helping people ask and helping people get help.

[00:48:30] WB: Thank you, Matt. It's been a pleasure to be on with you again.

[00:48:33] LF: Great speaking with you, Matt. Thanks a lot.

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