Assetmap Blog Company blog on how social capital is transforming business, culture and social change

The Most Easily Forgotten Networking Truth: To Get What You Need, You Have To Ask

I spent the first few years out of college designing programs for undergraduates who wanted to change the world. Between that and editing the Social Entrepreneurship blog on Change.org, I had a pretty good relationship map of the social impact space, and was in a position to help my students and friends connect with many of the people, organizations and resources they were most interested in. This was always a favorite part of what I did, which is probably why I’m now designing software to enable this connection to happen systematically and at scale.

But over the last 5 or so years I’ve noticed something interesting. If I created a list of the people who, theoretically, I should have most wanted to help – my closest friends and colleagues – and then compared that list against the list of who I had helped, there would be very little overlap. If, on the other hand, I looked at the list of who had asked for help and the list of who I did help, the correlation is almost perfect.

The point is that, in general, we help those who ask us for help. We know which of the resources and connections in our networks are valuable to others only when we know what they are looking for. Starting with information about what people need is simply the only efficient way to allocate social capital. To get what you need, you have to ask.

There are massive inefficiencies in the exchange of information about needs and resources – some of which technology can solve. But for some people, the more important problem is the psychological barrier. People who tend to not want to ask for help often struggle with feeling like a burden, and get uncomfortable feeling like they’re benefit exclusively without the ability to offer anything more than their gratitude. Ironically, the same people who don’t want to ask are often incredibly engaged and available when people ask them for help. Giving, for them, is more comfortable than getting.

For those folks, a few things are worth remembering:

1. Sharing connections and resources is a reciprocal exchange; it’s just not transactional. People help you when you ask because you are strategically valuable to them, because you have previously or are likely in the future to help them, because they just plain care about you, or because, simply, they want to be a connector with a brand for helping. Social capital is a Karmic system and even when you’re getting, you’re participating in the system.

2. In general, people are both more willing and more able to help than we assume. They’re more able because everyone has so much more social capital than they could ever use, and they’re more willing because it’s both strategic and genuinely emotionally rewarding to help.

3. The best way to feel more comfortable asking for help is to strive every day to be a person who is constantly available for helping others. This is not about collecting favors, but about building a personal brand as someone who can be counted on by their peers and colleagues.

At the end of the day, out professional networks are only as valuable as our ability to use them to get the support we need. Each of us has more to give, and each of us has more to receive from the people and groups that care about us. Learning to ask for help is the central skill necessary to unlocking that opportunity. The implications are not just individuals finding more of what they need, but an across-the-board transformation in what people can achieve.