All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success

by Wayne Baker Narrated by Wayne Baker, Jason Culp

Overview

A set of tools for mastering the one skill standing between us and success: the ability to ask for the things we need to succeed.

Imagine you're on a deadline for a big project, and feeling overwhelmed. Or you're looking for a job, but can't seem to get your foot in the door. Or you're dying for tickets to a sold out concert, and all your leads have gone cold.

What do these problems have in common? They can all be solved simply by reaching out to a colleague, friend, or wider network and making an ask.

Studies show that asking for help makes us better and less frustrated at our jobs. It helps us find new opportunities and new talent. It unlocks new ideas and solutions, and enhances team performance. And it helps us get the things we need outside the workplace as well. And yet, we rarely give ourselves permission to ask. Luckily, the research shows that asking-and getting-what we need is much easier than we tend to think.*

Here, Wayne Baker shares a set of strategies-used at companies like Google, GM, and IDEO-that individuals, teams, and leaders can use to make asking for help a personal and organizational habit, including:

¿ A quiz to identify your asking-giving style
¿ SMART criteria for who, when, and how to ask
¿ “Plug-and-play ” routines that make requests a standard component of meetings
¿ Mini-games that incentivize asking within teams
¿ The*Reciprocity Ring, a guided activity that allows people to tap into the giving power of a network

Picking up where the bestselling book*Give and Take*left off,*All You Have to Do Is Ask*shows us how to ignite the cycle of giving and receiving by asking for the things we need.

This audiobook includes a*bonus PDF with assessment questionnaires and a goals worksheet.**

Advance praise for All You Have to Do Is Ask

“Asking for help and support has been a key to my success. Wayne Baker expertly shares how everyone can do it.”-Shellye Archambeau, former CEO, MetricStream, and board director, Verizon and Nordstrom
*
“Wayne Baker shares the formula for driving personal, organizational, and social change by tapping the power of our teams and networks for help. This insightful book is a must-read for anyone seeking practical and proven solutions to make our workplaces and world a better place.”-Noel Tichy, professor, University of Michigan, and author of Judgment and Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Over the past fifteen years, Wayne Baker has taught me one of the most important lessons of my career: The biggest barrier to generosity is not that others are unwilling to give, but that we’re afraid to ask. In a book that’s simultaneously engaging, evidence-based, and practical, he shows how we can become more skilled at making requests and more comfortable with receiving help. His advice will put you in a better position to achieve your goals and build stronger relationships along the way.”—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

“Simple and eye-opening, this invaluable book by Wayne Baker shows us how individuals, teams, and organizations alike can tap the huge hidden potential available to us anytime through the powerful act of asking for help. Very useful!” —William Ury, co-author of the bestselling Getting to Yes, author Getting to Yes with Yourself

“Gives readers stories they can relate to and tools they can apply to get and give help that will make their lives more productive and their jobs more satisfying. It shows why human communities remain important in the digital age, and how leaders can cultivate positive organizational cultures that help people succeed.”—Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor at Harvard Business School and author of Think Outside the Building

“Sometimes our most powerful ideas are the simplest. Wayne Baker has grounded the power of reciprocity in a book that is loaded with simple, research-based insights and strategies.  All You Have to Do Is Ask provides useful advice for helping readers get more of what they want at work and in life. An absolute must-read and follow!”—Len Schlesinger, Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School

“Asking for help may be one of the hardest things individuals have to do. Yet it is critical to our success. Expert Wayne Baker creates a compelling case for why we need to leap past this internal hurdle, for when we do, the miraculous can emerge. Based on years of grounded research on generosity, reciprocity, and organizational networks, All You Have to Do Is Ask provides the practical nudges necessary to overcome our bias for self-reliance.”—Michael J. Arena, author of the bestselling Adaptive Space and former chief talent officer, General Motors

“In his new book, Wayne Baker shares the formula for driving personal, organizational, and social change by tapping the power of our teams and networks for help. This insightful book is a must-read for anyone seeking practical and proven solutions to make our workplaces and world a better place.”—Noel Tichy, professor, University of Michigan, and author of Judgment and Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173453419
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	01/14/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

Just Ask and Miracles Happen

Jessica was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do. She is a generous person by nature who had volunteered, as she often does, to help a stressed-­out colleague. This time, it was a recent hire at the IT firm where they both worked who was inexperienced with the company’s customer relationship management (CRM) system and had fallen behind. Jessica knew the system inside out, so she offered to take over a data-­entry task on her colleague’s behalf. But what started as a simple favor for a colleague in distress soon grew into a colossal headache for Jessica.1

“The additional workload didn’t seem overwhelming when I agreed to help,” Jessica told me, “but I quickly realized how time-­consuming it was.” She began coming into the office early, staying late, and working through lunch to keep up with her existing job duties. She became resentful of the rest of her team for going out for lunch, or leaving work at 5:00 P.M. “I was even resentful when people stopped by my office to catch up!” she said. “A fifteen-­minute conversation with a coworker meant fifteen minutes I wouldn’t be able to spend with my family that evening.”

Jessica needed some help of her own. But she never asked for it. “I assumed that my other team members had full plates also, so I continued to labor through the workload,” she explained. “I didn’t know how important it was for me to raise my hand and ask for help. I assumed that it was the responsibility of my manager or coworkers to notice how much extra work I was doing and offer to help shoulder the load.”

As Jessica’s desperation grew, she saw only one solution: quit. And that’s what she did. Looking back on her situation, she realized that the problem was never her job or her employer, it was her own failure to ask for the help she needed to get her work done. “I will never make that mistake again!” she said.

Like Jessica, so many of us are reluctant to ask for help when we are overwhelmed. When I ask audiences what it takes for them to ask for help, most people tell me they only speak up once they reach their wit’s end.2 “I ask for help only when I can’t figure it out for myself and I’m totally desperate,” they say.

If that statement describes you too, you aren’t alone. And yet, giving voice to our needs and requests has so many benefits. It makes us more effective at our jobs. It leads us to new job opportunities—or new talent for job openings. It helps us better adjust to new circumstances. It enhances learning and boosts creativity. It elevates team performance and improves operational efficiency. Moreover, studies show that when we do make a request, even total strangers are significantly more likely to grant it than we assume. Asking for help is often the one simple act standing between us and success. But, the thought of actually doing so can be terrifying for so many of us.

It’s critical to understand that help rarely arrives unasked for. In fact, studies show that as much as 90 percent of the help that is provided in the workplace occurs only after requests for help have been made.3 The explanation is simple. People can’t help you if they don’t know what you need, and they don’t know what you need until you tell them. When we don’t ask for what we need, the costs are enormous. Research shows that failure to ask for help costs Fortune 500 companies billions of dollars each year.4 And the costs in our own lives—at home, work, and everywhere else—are much greater than most of us realize. Not asking for help is one of the most self-­limiting, self-­constraining, even self-­destructive decisions we can make. Without the help and assistance of others, we don’t receive the resources that we need to get our work done, to solve problems, and to fulfill our missions in the world.

When We Ask, Miracles Can Happen

Cristina is the youngest of three children. Her parents doted on her from the time she was born. So, as you can imagine, they were devastated when they discovered that something wasn’t quite right: her head wasn’t developing properly.5

It turned out that the joints in her young skull had fused too early. A baby’s skull is made of five major bones held together by joints, or cranial sutures, composed of fibrous tissues. If you’ve felt a soft spot on a baby’s head, then you’ve touched a space between the bones where the sutures intersect. These flexible sutures allow a baby’s brain and head to grow. Cristina’s cranial sutures closed prematurely, preventing normal development. This rare condition is called “craniosynostosis.” Left untreated, it results in a permanently misshapen head and distorted face, which likely means a lifetime of ridicule and social isolation. And the condition carries a high risk of developmental delays, learning problems, blindness, seizures, or even death.

Specialized surgery could correct the shape of Cristina’s skull and allow her brain to grow and develop normally. But in Romania, where Cristina’s family lives, finding a specialist who could perform this rare and delicate surgery was a long shot. Without a miracle, this little girl’s future was in jeopardy.

It so happened that Cristina’s aunt, Felicia, who lives in France and works at INSEAD, one of the world’s premiere business schools, had volunteered to facilitate an activity called the “Reciprocity Ring” as part of the new-­student orientation program. You’ll learn more about the Reciprocity Ring in Part II of this book, but for now, think of it as a guided group activity that allows participants to tap the collective knowledge, wisdom, and resources of a large network to obtain things they need. All incoming MBAs at INSEAD participate in the activity.

As part of her training, Felicia participated in two rounds of the Reciprocity Ring. The first round was for personal requests, the second for work-­related requests. Initially, Felicia didn’t know what to ask for in the first round. But she mustered the courage to ask for the one thing that could reverse her young niece’s fate: an experienced pediatric cranial surgeon who knew how to remedy craniosynostosis.

That day, an adjunct professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD named Dr. Thomas Hellwig also was being trained to run a Reciprocity Ring. At the time, Dr. Hellwig worked as a psychotherapist and pediatrician at Necker, a children’s hospital in Paris, and when he heard Felicia’s heartfelt request, he knew he had to help. So, he responded with an offer to assist, which led to a connection to Dr. Eric Arnaud, a surgeon at Necker and Marcel Sembat (another children’s hospital in the area), who was a seasoned specialist in the very procedure Cristina required.

After a flurry of email exchanges and phone calls, Cristina and her parents flew to France, where Cristina had the surgery at Marcel Sembat to correct her condition. It was a success, and today Cristina is thriving. I keep a picture of her on my desk as a testimony and a reminder of the tremendous power of asking for what we need.

I have thousands of stories like Cristina’s—perhaps not as dramatic, but just as unlikely. Or I should say seemingly unlikely. When we give ourselves permission to ask, we unlock human generosity and miracles happen.

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