Getting Comfortable with Asking for Help at Work
How to ask for support, respect other people’s time and feel more comfortable being on the receiving end.
Asking for help at work can feel surprisingly awkward, especially when you are used to being the person everyone else relies on. Understanding that hesitation, making a clear request and learning to accept support can make everyday working relationships easier, with less time spent struggling privately over something a colleague could help you resolve.
You have been looking at the same spreadsheet for forty minutes. Two totals refuse to agree, the instructions appear to refer to an earlier version, and someone along the corridor probably knows exactly what has happened. You could ask them, although you would first have to admit how long you have spent trying to work it out. So you open another tab.
There is a particular discomfort in needing help with something you feel you ought to understand. Perhaps you have been doing the job for years, recently taken on more responsibility or acquired a reputation for being reassuringly capable. A straightforward question begins to feel like a small public examination of whether you deserve that reputation.
Meanwhile, the person you are considering asking may simply remember that someone changed the spreadsheet last Tuesday.
10 top tips for asking for help at work
- Identify where you are stuck. Before approaching someone, put the difficulty into a sentence. A missing piece of information, an unfamiliar process and an unmanageable workload each call for a different kind of support.
- Choose someone with relevant experience. The colleague who uses a system every day may be better placed to help than the most senior person in the room. Think about who knows this particular task.
- Ask while there is still room to respond. Allow time for the other person to finish what they are doing, suggest an alternative or arrange a conversation before your deadline becomes their emergency.
- Explain what you have already tried. A brief account helps someone understand the problem and avoids taking them through steps you have already completed. Keep it useful and proportionate.
- Be specific about the help you need. You might want a demonstration, a document, an introduction or someone to work through one difficult step with you. Say which would help.
- Give an honest indication of the time involved. If you suspect the task needs half an hour, allow for that. A supposedly tiny favour that expands indefinitely can become frustrating for both people.
- Make room for a refusal. Offer flexibility where possible and accept a clear answer. A colleague should be able to decline without having to produce an elaborate defence of their diary.
- Ask to understand the process. When appropriate, take notes or practise the step yourself while someone explains it. Leave with something you can use when the same situation arises again.
- Thank them for something specific. Saying that their explanation helped you complete the report gives them a clearer sense of their contribution than a hurried, general thank you.
- Notice recurring requests. If the same difficulty keeps returning, consider whether you need training, clearer instructions, a change in priorities or a conversation about who is responsible for the work.
Why asking can feel like such a big admission
For someone who takes pride in being dependable, needing assistance can feel unexpectedly personal. The immediate problem may concern a booking system or an unfamiliar procedure, while the private worry is about how other people will see you afterwards.
It is also easy to imagine the inconvenience in considerable detail. You picture the interruption, the sigh, the extra work and the conversation your colleague might have later about how you should have known the answer. Their possible enjoyment of helping rarely receives such an elaborate rehearsal.
Research suggests that our expectations can be overly pessimistic. In a series of studies published in 2022, psychologists Xuan Zhao and Nicholas Epley found that people seeking help underestimated others’ willingness to assist and how positive those helpers would feel, while overestimating the inconvenience they would experience. The research involved scenarios, recalled experiences and live interactions among adults in the United States.
Those findings offer a reason to question an automatic assumption that asking will be unwelcome. They cannot tell you how a particular colleague will respond during a particularly difficult afternoon, although they suggest that the response you are imagining may be harsher than the one you receive.
Think about the last time someone asked you to explain something you knew well. Perhaps you enjoyed being useful, appreciated being trusted or were pleased to save them the trouble you once went through yourself. Your colleagues may experience some of that same satisfaction when you approach them.
A request someone can answer
Return to the spreadsheet. By now, you have decided to ask, but the wording still needs a little thought. “Can you help me with this?” leaves your colleague guessing whether you need a quick explanation or someone to spend the afternoon rebuilding the report.
A more useful request gives them enough information to make a decision: “I’m reconciling the monthly figures and these two totals differ. I’ve checked the date range and duplicate entries. Could you spend ten minutes showing me where this sheet gets its figures? I need to finish by Thursday afternoon, so I can work around your diary before then.”
The person now knows what you are trying to do, where you have become stuck and what you are asking of them. They can agree, suggest a better time or tell you that someone else understands the spreadsheet more thoroughly.
You can be equally clear when the help you need concerns capacity. If there are more tasks than you can reasonably complete, explaining the competing commitments gives a manager something concrete to work with: “These three pieces of work are due on Friday, and I have time to complete two properly. Can we agree which takes priority and what happens to the third?”
In both situations, a clear request makes the practical decision easier. It also saves you from giving a lengthy account of why you feel embarrassed to be asking.
An apology has a place when you have interrupted someone or created avoidable work, but repeatedly describing yourself as hopeless can make the conversation more uncomfortable, because the other person may feel obliged to reassure you before getting to the task.
Give them a chance to understand what you need, then listen to the answer.
Accepting the answer, including a yes
A refusal can sting when you have spent an hour persuading yourself to ask. You may be tempted to interpret a busy diary as a judgement of your abilities or your relationship with the person.
Keep the response in proportion to what was actually said. Someone who cannot help today may still be willing another time. Someone who lacks the relevant knowledge may be saving you both a frustrating conversation. If they decline, thank them for letting you know and consider another route.
There is also a responsibility on the person asking. Earlier research by Francis Flynn and Vanessa Lake drew attention to how easily requesters can overlook the discomfort people experience when refusing a direct request. A friendly tone helps, and so does allowing someone time to check their workload. If you manage the person you are asking, be particularly clear about whether the work is optional and what should move if it needs doing.
Receiving a yes can bring its own awkwardness. You may rush to promise an extravagant favour in return, insist that you have wasted their morning or try to take over before they have finished explaining.
Allow the help to be useful. Pay attention, ask a follow-up question where necessary and check that you have understood. If they have set aside ten minutes and the task is growing, pause to discuss whether they have time to continue.
Afterwards, a specific acknowledgement is usually enough: “That explanation helped me find the error and finish the report. Thank you for taking the time.”
If their contribution helped a wider project succeed, acknowledge it appropriately when discussing the work. You can also remain attentive to opportunities to support them in future, without promising something you cannot realistically provide. Everyday cooperation becomes easier when people can give and receive help without negotiating a repayment after every exchange.
How your team responds to questions
Some reluctance to ask comes from experience. A colleague may previously have mocked a question, a manager may have treated uncertainty as incompetence, or someone’s offer of support may have come with repeated reminders of the favour.
Working conditions influence whether people speak up. Amy Edmondson’s study of 51 teams in a manufacturing company found an association between team psychological safety and learning behaviour. Psychological safety describes a shared sense that people can take interpersonal risks, such as raising a concern or acknowledging uncertainty, without expecting humiliation.
That leaves organisations with practical responsibilities. People need access to training, clear expectations and reasonable opportunities to ask questions. Repeated dependence on the same helpful colleague can also reveal a problem with how knowledge and workload are distributed.
If you are usually the person being asked, your response helps establish what happens next time. You can explain what you know, suggest a suitable time or set a limit courteously. When a question keeps recurring, consider whether a short guide or a shared demonstration would make the answer available to more people.
For the person receiving support, repeated difficulty provides useful information too. Perhaps you need more practice, perhaps the instructions are unclear, or perhaps a task has quietly become your responsibility without the time or training to do it.
The next opportunity to practise will probably arrive in an ordinary moment, with an unfamiliar task on your screen and someone nearby who has encountered it before. You can explain where you have reached, ask whether they have time and give them room to answer.
Perhaps they will need to come back to you after lunch. Perhaps they will point you towards someone else. Or perhaps they will pull up a chair, recognise the problem immediately and mention that someone changed the spreadsheet last Tuesday.