Encourage Help-seeking in the Workplace

When you’re in an environment filled with competitive individuals, it’s hard to be the odd one out–the person who doesn’t know what they’re doing. You feel like everyone expects you to know all the answers, and if you don’t, you must be the incompetent one. Then, you start to worry that your colleagues will think you don’t deserve your position. 

Stop right there. It’s okay not to know everything, and in fact, admitting you don’t know everything should be normalized in the office

What You Don’t Know Can Be Learned 

Every person in the company came from a different place and studied in a different school. The circumstances that led to you having that job differs from that of your colleagues. It is not possible to know precisely what everyone else knows, and this doesn’t make you any less skilled. The good thing about workplaces is the variety of people can be used to everyone’s advantage. When you admit you don’t know how to do one thing, you can get help from people who do. Try and learn it by yourself or pretend you know what you’re doing, and it might lead to disaster, which will impact everyone. 

What You Don’t Know Can Be Delegated 

There are some parts of business operations that no one expects you to know, but they will still try to ask if you do to save money. If you hold a managerial position, you might even be guilty of asking employees if they know how to fix specific problems so that you can save time or not have to go through the process of requesting for services or repairs. It might not be a big deal when you need to have your laptop updated with the latest operating system, but it’s taking precious time away from employees who have other tasks to do. You have the IT department to delegate this task to, and it’s part of their job description. Similarly, instead of asking the in-house maintenance team to tackle electrical problems despite their lack of training, you should delegate this task to Utah electrical contractors so that the issue can be resolved safely and correctly by people who have the right training. 

What You Don’t Know Might Not Be Part of Your Job 

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When your employer asks you to do one thing for them, you have a high chance of saying yes because you don’t want to disappoint them. You don’t want to lower your chances of getting a promotion or a salary increase either. If you’re asked to do something that’s not part of your job, this doesn’t make your actual job go away. This means you’re putting additional tasks on top of those you have to do, and your productivity might suffer in the end. Saying no to your employer once will be better than having a consistently poor performance for them to evaluate when the time comes. 

Employees should not be afraid to admit they need help to figure new tasks out. There’s a high chance someone else in the workplace is willing and able to help, but you’ll never know until you ask.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.