CHAPTER 3 A WILLINGNESS TO ASK FOR HELP
He who is afraid of asking is ashamed of learning.
—Danish proverb
The best PMs are always asking for help. It’s not because they don’t know the answers, and it’s not because they don’t want to do things for themselves. It’s because they understand the power in asking questions, and they know that people—sponsors, team members, stakeholders—like to be asked to help and very rarely, if ever, say no when they’re asked.
Asking for help says to the people you’re asking that you respect their views and that they have a role in the project and a view that’s worthy of your consideration. It gives you a chance to voluntarily take yourself off your PM pedestal (if you were ever on one) instead of being knocked off it, and it establishes a collegial relationship with the person you’re asking. It’s just a good approach in general. Don’t ask questions, of course, if you have no intention of listening or responding to what you’re hearing; people will see through that kind of disingenuous approach.
PMs should know that they need everyone’s help and that if they’re not asking, they’re missing something. Which is why a common complaint of project managers—“As PM, I have all the responsibility to get things done, but none of the authority”—is, I think, somewhat misdirected. That kind of thinking displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the PM. The best PMs don’t have all the responsibility for project outcomes—rather, they share it effectively with people like the sponsor—nor do they really require all the authority to be successful. The best PMs—and this is probably true of all effective leaders—rarely exercise their positional power even if they can do so easily. Instead, they lead by influence and, certainly, by the will of those they’re leading. They ask for help a lot.
Making It Their Solution: Leading Others to the Answer You’re Looking For
Watch the most successful negotiators (and good PMs are nothing if not successful negotiators), and you’ll see that they’re really good at leading people to solutions that are in their own best interest while making it look as if the solution was the other person’s idea all along. Good negotiators make it easy for others to come to a conclusion the negotiator’s already reached. “I need your help,” they’ll say. “Here’s what I’m seeing. What are you seeing? What do you think we should do here?”
If you really do have a solid solution or answer in mind that makes sense objectively and that you can lay out in organized fashion, you can reasonably expect the person you’re asking for help will come to the same conclusion. The difference, of course, is that the other person will think that the conclusion was their idea, and their buy-in will then be that much stronger. It doesn’t really matter whose answer it is, as long as it’s workable; if it comes from one of your important project stakeholders, all the better. It’s a subtle art—just don’t be too obvious about what you’re doing; people will see through you right away if you are. And remember that this approach doesn’t work if you’ve got a really bad idea that you’re just trying to jam down someone else’s throat. A bad idea, or even a good idea lacking a logical presentation, just won’t fly, no matter who owns it.