Last week I shared a lesson I learned from Professor Skinner about curiosity, and this week I want to share another lesson Professor Skinner taught me about being humble and asking for help.

It’s another day in Professor Skinner’s class and this time she tells us that she has a problem we need to solve as a team.  She hands us a collection of pieces that we are supposed to put together to form another shape.  It’s like the picture.  You have triangles, squares, rectangles, etc. and it’s supposed to make something bigger.  The deal is that as soon as you solve the problem you are free to go.  She hands out the pieces and the teams begin to feverishly work to figure this out.  Minutes go by and no one has figured it out.  After 20 minutes or so, Professor Skinner says something like, “You can ask for help, but you’ll lose some points.”  Everyone is stubborn, refuses her offer, and continues working on their own. 

Finally, my group and a couple of the other groups ask for help.  When they do Professor Skinner gives them an additional piece she had been withholding.  That’s right.  The entire time we had been working she had been withholding a piece of the puzzle.  #theultimateSkinnerflex  The lesson of the day was that you need to be humble enough to ask for help.  Those points we “lost” didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, because asking for help enabled us to finish.  Those points symbolized whether or not we could swallow our pride and be brave enough to ask for help.

Think about work for a moment.  How often are you afraid to ask for help because you are afraid you’ll be penalized in some way?  In the grand scheme of things would it be better to “lose” a couple of points and perform or do it all on your own and not achieve success?

The challenge: Be humble and brave enough to ask for help.

Bonus 1: This month marks 9 years of blogs.  Thanks to all of you for reading and sharing.  It means a lot to me.

Bonus 2: I feel I’ve turned asking for help into a superpower.  One of my mantras is that someone smarter than me has already attacked this problem, so I should learn from them first.  I can’t tell you how much asking for help early and often has helped me accelerate in my learning and performance.  #thehumblehustle

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry