The other day, I was feeling it.
I have a huge month ahead. Keynotes, events, clients, my program, The Boardroom Collective… lots of things happening at once.
All things I love. All things I can normally handle.
But this time, overwhelm started creeping in. Then came the self-doubt.
Can I actually do all of this?
I lost sleep for two nights trying to work everything out in my own head.
Then I called a friend.
I told her what was going on and she reframed the problem for me. She didn’t take anything off my plate. She didn’t magically solve my workload.
She simply helped me see it differently.
And it was like someone opened a release valve.
The stress dropped. Clarity returned. So did my energy.
And that night, I slept.
Why is asking for help so hard?
I’ll admit, I’m not always good at it.
There’s a part of me that thinks, I should be able to handle this.
And I suspect that gets stronger when you’re used to being the capable one.
The leader.
The problem solver.
The person people come to.
The one who gets things done.
Capability can become part of your identity. And without even realising it, I can handle this can become I should handle this on my own.
They’re not the same thing.
Research from Stanford and the University of Chicago found that we tend to underestimate how willing other people are to help us. Across a series of studies involving more than 2,000 people, those needing help underestimated people’s willingness to help and how positive helping would make them feel, while overestimating how inconvenienced they would feel by being asked.
That’s interesting, isn’t it?
We can spend an enormous amount of energy worrying about whether we should ask, what someone might think, whether we’re burdening them or whether we should simply be able to sort it out ourselves.
Meanwhile, the person we’re thinking about calling may be far more willing to help than we imagine.
Capability doesn’t mean doing everything alone
That phone call reminded me of something I know, but don’t always practise.
Sometimes we don’t need someone to solve the problem. We need perspective.
Someone outside the noise who can see what we can’t. Someone who asks a different question, challenges our thinking or simply helps us untangle everything that’s become tangled in our own head.
And asking for that doesn’t diminish our capability. I’d argue it’s part of it.
We talk a lot about self-awareness in leadership. Surely recognising when you’re too close to something to see it clearly is self-awareness too.
My friend didn’t change what I had ahead of me.
The keynotes were still there. The events were still happening. The work still needed to be done.
My workload didn’t change. The way I saw it did.
And that changed everything.
So, who do you call when you can’t see the wood for the trees?
Perhaps the more important question is…
Are you actually willing to call them?
