As a manager or leader, people look up to you to make the decisions and more often than not lead the team as you deliver on customer solutions.
In all of this however, we often forget that we also sometimes need help, guidance or assistance ourselves. Sometimes this is not as easy as just picking up the phone, sending an email or just plain asking for help and this is where it gets interesting. You are going to be one of two types of people – the 1st one will think “I do not need any help, I know exactly what I am doing” and the other will be “I do need help sometimes” for the people who realise that they cannot go at this leadership thing alone, I applaud you, carry on asking for advise and help and you will eventually end up on top.
For those of you who think you don’t need help, let’s just see about that shall we? So most of the time when people do not want to ask for assistance, it is because they fear that they might be perceived as incompetent, less knowledgeable or just plain stupid. This is in fact sabotage and you will inevitably end up being perceived as the very thing you were afraid of – incompetent, a substandard leader etc.
So the next time you have the feeling that you need some advice, don’t hesitate to be open and honest about it and ask for help, it will not just show that you are in fact human, but it will also show that you can think outside the box and that you obtain your information from more than one source, more specifically not just your own internal source. The best managers and leaders out there are the ones that ask the most thoughtful questions and are constantly looking to improve their knowledge in order to be a better manager for their people
Difficult decisions are going to be made, and you will not get all of them right, but if you asked for help or advice and ensured that you got as much information as you could, you will at least have had the benefit of learning something new in the process and your mistake can then be chalked up as a win rather than a loss
Ignorance is bliss as they say, but unfortunately there is no such thing for a manager or leader. You need to constantly look for information that will assist you in making better decisions to lead your teams better, there is no such thing as a stupid question, and you can never know it all or even enough.
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