Heidi Grant Interview. Ep 49

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing position and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode forty nine. We think we're planning on that at least it's July. We're recording this in June, but a lot of people are figuring out their summer childcare. Like you know, this is when summer is always a good time for reevaluating lots of things because the schedule tends to be a little bit different. And Sarah, you recently had something that you are trying to reevaluate. What's what's going on just involving trip childcare? Right? Yeah, So we had initially planned on bringing our nanny on our trip, but then kind of things fell into place where it made more sense to allow her to take more of her vacation during that time, because otherwise we kind of end up in a tough spot where, you know, I'd rather have it later on where I have some days off where she's off, versus anyway, it just made best use of her vacation time, if that makes sense. So we decided that actually it made more sense to you know, just for the few things that we'd like to do as adults, perhaps to try to find some childcare. So my current task is to like go on care dot com and or talk to Josh's cousin who lives in Portland and find maybe an eager college student that wouldn't mind doing like a couple of nights during the week and maybe some daytime because I specifically want a massage during this trip and that is not something I want to try to bring the kids to. Yeah, so that's a little bit different. I know some people have done like the whole vacation nanny route, where they've hired someone to just go with them on the whole trip. I think if we were going to just one place, that would have been something I would have considered, so that that way our current nanny could use her vacation days, but then we'd have some help or even like bring a family member, although my sister would be the great contender for that, but she has a very inflexible job because she owns a business, so that that doesn't work very well for us. But yeah, the vacation childcare is sort of our separate task. Do you guys do anything special for trips or have you looked at your babysitting portfolio recently? Well, we've certainly tried to. I mean there are yes, various like sitter services in different locations that we've we've used. You know that hotels sometimes have contracts with sitters. There are people that have have been screened, and especially if they're like, you know, only just staying in your hotel room with the kids. I mean, it seems like relatively low risk situation. You know, we've certainly had had nanny's come with us on and that's usually been a great option. You just have to make sure you have separate rooms or big enough house or things like that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's always summer is a good time for thinking about this. We have two other sitters other than our nanny that we've been using sort of on and off. I would kind of like to make sure I keep giving them some hours, but that that evolves thinking through it ahead of time, and you know that I'm asking for weekend stuff and so you know, sometimes they're a little bit less available too. So it's almost this thing like I need to make sure they're still getting hours so they stay interested in us, as opposed to you know, we just don't and then people aren't ever available because they have other options, right because I get another steady job. That makes that makes sense. Yeah, it's really quite a portfolio situation. It's one of those things that you don't know going in, like, oh, how you manage this of like keeping people interested in sitting for you? And then you know, people move in and out of your life, or they get other full time jobs or they leave the area. But yeah, no, I if people are listening to this, probably is the good. Use this as a trigger to think about it, like what is my sitter portfolio as I'm looking forward to the coming school year, Also like do I have everything in place? Because you know, certainly you could start looking for people now. It's a good thing to think about. Yeah, college students, are you know a little bit more eager too as the year is starting, perhaps to sign up for things, although that has a that's also double edged sword, because if they're really excited and they're like, oh, yes, I want to make money in the new school year, but then they realize they're more busy than they thought, then that that sometimes can implode around finals time. I kind of learned that the hard way a couple of years ago, which again is why I definitely appreciate the portfolio approach, because then if you lose one person, you still got your others. And I will say, I'm not practicing what I preach right now because we really just only use our nanny and one other very nice and very reliable woman. But I think I just need at least one more on the roster so I can feel a little bit more covered covered exactly well. We are excited to welcome Heidi Grant to the podcast today. One of the major themes of Best of Both Worlds is that martyrdom is totally overrated and asking for and expecting help is the secret to a happier life. And Heidi is actually an expert on asking for help. Her new book, Reinforcements talks about the research on asking for assistance and what works and what doesn't. Heidi is also a working mom herself. So Heidi, we're really excited to have you here. Can you please introduce yourself to our listeners. Sure, I'm very excited to be here, So again, Heidi Grand Professionally, I'm a social psychologist by training. I'm the chief science Officer at the neuro Leadership Institute, and I also work at Columbia University as an associate director of the Motivation Science Center. As you said, I I'm also a mom. I have two kids. My daughter is twelve and my son is ten, And I'm really fascinated. I think you know all of the books I write and the work I do, with the research I do, I'm always looking looking for those places where the science of human behavior tells us something that shows us where our intuitions might be wrong. So you know, some of my earlier books are about goal setting and motivation and where we sometimes blame our failures on the wrong things. And because we blame our failures, you know, to reach certain goals on the wrong things, we have a hard time than adjusting and using the right strategies. My last book was about how we often don't come across the way we think we are to other people and how to use strategies to bridge that gap. And this book, as you said, is really around what I think is probably one of the places where our intuitions are the most terrible for some reason, and that is sort of asking for help, understanding the likelihood that will get help from other people, Understanding how to ask for help in a way that makes it really rewarding to help you. There just seem to be a lot lot of gaps for between how all of us, myself included, approach this and what really the research says is true. So it was an exciting topic for me to dig into because I think, you know, there, you know, there's there isn't really one of us out there that doesn't need more help than we're getting, and so to try to bridge that that gap for people is a lot of fun to do. Yeah. Well, was there anything in particular that sparked your wanting to write this or over research you'd done over the years. Yeah, you know it. I had done some research in this space and knew quite a bit about it. But I think, you know, I'm just as guilty I certainly was up until I really started digging into the research to do this book, just as guilty as everyone else of being resistant to asking for help. You talked about how you actually you admitted that you hate it. I hate it, I totally. I mean and and and and there's still some discomfort. And I think it's gotten a lot better, you know, part of what I You know, there's really when you think about why people don't ask for help, there's really you can kind of break it down into, you know, two big categories. One is that we worry about what other people will think of us when we ask for help, or we sort of judge ourselves negatively for need being in the first pace. But we often assume that people will think less of us because we need help, that they might not like us as much, right, that they'll kind of, you know, that somehow will be judged negatively. Again, the research, actually, when you dig into this, shows that the opposite is true. Not only do people not think less of you and not like you less when you ask them for help, the research actually shows that they like you more, that helping one another is actually something that kind of bonds people together, and that when someone has actually helped you. They actually they increase their liking for you, not decreasing. So again, like intuition is completely wrong, right, people like us more when they help us. So that's sort of one piece, right, there's that sort of like, you know, how I worry about how I'm being judged. The second part of it is I worry about being rejected, right, I worry about being turned down. It's incredibly painful. Like in the book, I talk about really how our brains are wired to treat social threats like being excluded, being rejected, being turned down when you ask for help, being disrespected or not valued. All of those things actually trigger real pain in the brain. They're processed in much the same way that physical pain is processed. So when we ask for help, part of why we don't want to do it is that we're kind of dreading hearing no and knowing how that might make us feel, knowing the actual literal pain that will experience from rejection, you know. So the other part of the thing I spent a lot of time talking about in the book is how again anticipating rejection. You know, we're kind of wrong to worry about that so much, because it turns out the people are much more likely to help us than we think they are. On average, when you look at the research, we underestimate the odds of getting help by by more than half. So people are at least twice as likely to help as we as we think they'll be. One of the more fascinating things that I read and you know, in Reinforcements was your story of Benjamin Franklin. You know, Franklin is is sort of the patron saint of self help, but he had all sorts of great ideas for how you know, people interact with each other. And you talk with a story of him. You know, one of his fellow leaders in Philadelphia, you know, not supporting him for something. And so the way around that is he went and asked this guy for a very rare book from his library, like could he borrow this book from him? And which seems ridiculous, like how is that going to help? But the fact that he loaned him something and then he wanted to you know, that this guy was asking him for help. All of a sudden, this man is supporting Benjamin like Benjamin Franklin is his friend, which is you know, ben Franklin obviously knew a lot about human nature. But I think that that demonstrates your point you're making on that quite well. Absolutely, you know, he again, Franklin was a really clever guy. He picked up on things that a lot of us need to do, like lots of experiments to figure out. But he knew that by asking this guy for this very rare and valuable book, what had basically happened was from the perspective of the person who loaned him the book, he had then these sort of two inconsistent thoughts rattling around in his mind. One was I just loaned a very rare and very valuable book to Ben Franklin. And then the other is I really don't like Ben Franklin, and and and that kind of you know. People were again sort of wired to want to be consistent in our thinking, and when we have these inconsistencies, it creates what psychologists call cognitive dissonance, which is really like a tension state in the brain. I believe two things that don't go together, and so what happens is we tend to a jug one of our beliefs so that they actually are compatible. And that's what happened with Franklin. So after loaning him this book. He basically the guy decided, well, you know what, I must not think Ben Franklin's such a bad guy after all. And there's actually lots of research that shows that that this really is, this really works. There was one study where, you know, people come into the lab, they earn money for doing a task. But the experimenter, his name is mister Boyd, that was his name. He was deliberately unpleasant during the entire experience. You know, he'd say things like, you know, pay attention, I don't want to have to repeat myself. And he was really really rude to all the participants, and at the end of it, half of them were you know, mister Boyd comes up to them at the end and says, look, here's the money, you know, for participating in the experiment that you earned. But you know, the thing is, I'm paying for this out of my own pocket, and this is actually sort of the last of my money, and I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind not taking the money, because if you take it, I actually don't have any money. And people would invariably say, okay, you can keep the money. At the end of it, they asked the participants how much they like mister Boyd. And what you found was the people that got to keep their money that he didn't ask for help from they hated him. They rated him very very low. And the people who asked who actually gave them the money came the money back, rated him really high, like they liked him. And in fact, the more money they had to give him back, the more they liked him. So there's this weird thing where it's like, if you do a favor for someone who's you know, not very nice, you are, you know, kind of a jerk, you like them more, and if you do a big favor for them, you start to think they're kind of a great person. And so again it's one of these things where you know, one of you know, ironically, one of the best ways to get somebody to have a good impression of you and to like you is to actually ask them for help. Yeah, that is so fascinating. Do you think there's an aspect of people like think seeing the person is more vulnerable, like you know, in that particular experiment, it might be partly the help and partly I guess, well, maybe it's the fact that when somebody asks you for help they're sort of revealing themselves as another real person with the same human challenges rather than just some sort of abstract other. So I don't know if that's yes. I think that that's probably true. I think that that show it that there's something human and suddenly you can relate to this person in some way. I think that's part of it. Also, you know, one of the things we know about and one of the again the big themes of the book that I that I really want people to walk away understanding is that helping feels great. You know, much of the time. There's a few things I talk about where we kind of ruin it for people sometimes and that like we make it not possibly like the helping isn't satisfying. But most of the time, much of the time, helping other people feels really good. It's one of the most reliable ways to increase people's sense of well being, their self esteem. It's one of the most reliable ways to be like end up in a good mood is to is to to do something helpful for someone else. So the other thing that's happening Mary, like when I give mister Boyd that money back, I feel good about me and I feel like I'm a good person, I did the right thing. I'm going to have a little bit of a boost of positive mood. And that also transfers onto my feelings toward mister Boyd. I mean, he just kind of created a moment where I could feel good about myself. And I think we all have those when we you know, it's so one of the great ironies of helping is that we all feel good helping and that's just human nature, and we all feel terrible asking for help even though you know. And again this is when one of the reasons we underestimate so much why the likelihood that other people will help us, is that when we're thinking about asking them for help, all we're thinking about is the effort they'll have to put in, how unpleasant it might be for them, or like how onerous the task is. We're not It's like a massive failure of perspective taking. We're not thinking about how it is form First of all, we're not thinking about how awkward it would be for them to say no, they don't want to do that, right, that's unpleasant on the on the on the on the helper side, and also the benefits of helping the real boost. I mean, there's there's very few things in life that actually more reliably lead to feeling good about yourself than helping other people. We're just wired that way. So so I always sort of say, you know, when you're feeling awkward about asking for help, remember you know you're actually creating an opportunity for somebody to feel really good about themselves. There's this is really a potential win win, and I think again some of that warm glow that we feel sort of transfers to how we feel about the person we helped. Talk a little bit about those ways that you can ruin that we could we could do a whole like effective ask like, so let's talk about what's an effective ask and what's an ineffective ask? So how we can do it well? And then how we ruin it. Oh, there's lots of ways to ruin it. So and again there's and you can mean different different things by ruining it. So so you can do things that actually lower your chances of getting help, and then you can do things that, while you'll still probably get the help, it will be less rewarding for the other person. So why don't we start with what are the things we do that make us less likely to actually get help. The very first thing we do is sort of fail to recognize that the helper needs some things from you in order to actually give you help. And the first two, which kind of go together, are the helper needs to the potential helper needs to actually know that you need help and that you want it. And this is actually a huge gap for a lot of people, because, first of all, because none of us really like asking for help, we all kind of walk around wishing that people would just help us. And I mean, I think that's no more you know, again, speaking from experience that's nowhere is that more true than sort of when it comes to our partners. You know, I remember very very often feeling with my children's father that I just couldn't believe he couldn't see how much help I needed, right, that he wasn't just spontaneously getting up and offering to do things because clearly I was so overwhelmed and had so many things that I needed to do. That's actually just not how it works. The truth is that other people like and we are all guilty of this. We mostly attend to things that have to do with ourselves. We don't notice other people's need nearly as much as people assume we do. And that's because again, there's just so much to pay attention to. There's so much information coming in at us, and and all of us are kind of again, our brains are wired to pay the most attention to the things that affect us directly. So each of us is sort of going around throughout our day mostly focused on our own stuff, but assuming that everybody else is paying attention to us, right, and nothing could be further than the truth. They are all in their own little worlds. And we talk about this a lot on the show, Yes and Our somebody notices what you do exactly, ourselves included. You know, we are all guilty of this. And so there's a very good chance that the reason if you're not getting the help you need, there's a very good chance that the people you want help from are not seeing your need. They're not understanding it, they're not noticing it because they're too busy noticing their own needs. And it's not a failure of wanting to help, it's not even selfishness, it's just actually the way we're all wired. So the first thing is you need to actually notice and the busier people are, the more things they have on their plate, the less likely they are to notice that somebody else needs help, even somebody even when you think that that should be There's something called the psychologists called the illusion of transparency. We all feel that our thoughts and feelings and intentions are obvious to other people and nothing could be further from the truth. So we need to make explicit requests for help. We need to get over that sort of fantasy world where people will just offer spontaneous that help to you and you never have to ask for it. It's not realistic. We need to ask for it. And because the other part of it is even if someone does notice that you need help at work or at home, they may not know that you want it. So you may need it, but you may not want it. And if you've ever offered unwanted help to someone, you know how unpleasant people can be when you know they because it. They'll sometimes take it as sort of an insult, like, oh, you think I can't do this on my own, And so people are very reluctant even when they see the need to offer it if it's you know, in an unsolicited way, because they don't want to offend you. They don't want to give you something you don't actually want. So for both of those reasons, we really need to be explicit. You need to not make assumptions. There's a phrase that I absolutely hate that I want to ban from the English language. That is it goes without saying. Nothing goes without saying. Everything goes with saying, because people need to being said to them explicitly if you want something in return. So I think that's sort of the probably the one of the biggest mistakes we make right there. I'd say, another very very common mistake, and this is really more true in the context of work. You see this a lot is that we make requests for help to a whole bunch of people at once. So, you know, you send out that email saying like, hey, I really need somebody who can help me on this particular project, and you send us to ten people who could poticularly help or Laura, you know you and I as book authors. Sometimes yes, you bring this up, Heidi, that's the one. That's the one. We send out a group email right to everybody and we say, hey, everyone I know, would you possibly you know, read my book and if you like it, would you say something nice about it? All? Right, But here's the thing, Heidi, after reading your book, I didn't do that. I know, right, I emailed one hundred people individually and ask them like influencers to did it work? Well? Yeah, yeah, I would say the vast majority did. I mean, there are people I know, so I mean it would be I mean, in many cases, I feel like it would be almost rude. Like you know, there's somebody who for years, like you write them specifically saying hey, please, you know, post on your blog, Twitter or whatever, you know, just wish me a happy pub date. I would say the vast majority did. But I'm curious because Heidi, I was on a mass email from you. What but I you know what I did. I did? I sent so so I was again and this is one of the things that you're pressed for time. So what happens is we send these group emails out for support because we're pressed for time. I mean, the reality is we we want to kind of, you know, send one kind of math plea out and you kind of assume that you know, that'll be fine. And what the research shows, right, is something called diffusion of responsibility, so that the more people who could help you, the less likely anyone is to actually help you, because each person feels less responsible. In that case, you sort of sit there and you go, well, I'm sure a lot of the other people are doing it, so I don't really need to do it. And yes, I knew this, right So I sent one of these mass emails out and I knew it going in and I was so I was absolutely crunched per time. My editor was like, you need to do this right now. So I did it. But what I did was I actually did a little bit. I'm like, you know, apologies for the mass email. And what I did was I did send actually individual emails, but I had the bulk of the text I just copied and pasted. But I acknowledged that I had done that, and so that people would feel like a little bit less likely generic in this situation because it's like, okay, I'm apologizing. Look, I know like I'm pressed for time. But and the other thing I did, so I'll come back to this in a second, because I did something else that is related to how you can get more help. That is a good strategy. So I violated my own rule of it, but I did so knowingly, like I was like, I know that this is kind of lower my chance, and I'm going to take it on the chin. On that one, it is generally speaking much if you have the time, much much more effective to send out individual requests. The other thing that it's actually much that's even more true is that email requests in general are much less effective than face to face or phone like sort of live requests. Now, again, the reality is a lot of times we have to do things by email. You either maybe don't know the person well enough to pick up the phone and call them, or you don't see the person face to face. But in the context of work, where generally speaking, a lot of these people you're working with are like down the hole. It's amazing how often we ask for help over email, and we do it because it's more comfortable for us, right, It's like, it feels, you know, less awkward to put in a request over email. But what the research shows is you're thirty four times more likely to get a yes if you ask for help in person rather than buy a email. There a lot so when searched in this particular study, it took two hundred emails to get to the same success rate as six in person requests. So yeah, it's huge, And again it's because we don't think about, like, yes, asking by email is easier for you, but you know what, it also is easier for the other person to say no. How funny exactly exactly. So whenever you can again like get over that initial discomfort and create either like a phone or face to face interaction where you're asking for the help, you're just vastly more likely to do it. Now. The other thing that I did when I sent out that email to all of my book author friends saying hey, guys, would you give me a hand with this, is that I actually reminded people right at the beginning that we are fellow book authors, and that is something that's another motivator for helper And it's called like in group identity, So in other words, we are more like And again this is just out of how human beings are. We're more likely to help other people that we see as a part of our own group, that we see as sort of part on the same team, having the same goals. People with whom we share common experiences are common identity. We're just naturally more inclined to be helpful to those people than we are to people with whom we feel we have nothing in common and we don't share common goals. So there's another little thing you can do, which is sort of that subtle reminder, like, hey, you and I do share a common identity. We're all in the same boat. We all know how how hard it is to you know how much we all hate asking for this, right, And that's the thing that kind of puts people in that mindset. If you know what, I will help you, because you're right, we're all in the same boat and we all should be helping each other out. And again that's a good thing. We have a lot of a decent cohort of physician listeners, and this whole thing absolutely strikes a chord with me in terms of call requests. So when you get your schedule like a year in advance, invariably things come up and you have to switch or and so this is a common conversation and I'm like listening to you and thinking, oh my god, instinctively, I totally Number one, I always walk into someone's office like when they're in a good mood, like I would never ask them over email, right. And number two, I think I do do that thing where I'm like, oh, you know, I tend to ask the people who have kids, and I'll be like, you know, all those school events I have one to go to, can you cover me for this day? And if you have one coming up, then I can cover you. But that's so true. It's like it's like you create that that it creates empathy, you know, because it's like that that common experience that we share helps me to empathize with you, which makes me more likely to help. Empathy is one of the strongest predictors of helping, right, So yeah, with this, So she also wants to focus I think you said something in the book about people often frame the requests in terms of themselves, like, oh, you'll be helpful to me, which you know, as much as I might love all of you, is sort of less motivational than what I might get out of it. Yeah, so you also have to frame the requests in terms of more that person's identity being part of the group and what they might get from it, and the and and the get from it part. You know, it's important to understand that that that what they want to get from it is not necessarily a reward, is not necessarily in fact, actually there's research that suggests that when you make it in exchange, especially with someone you already have a relationship with, it can actually kind of take it down a peg. Like so you don't you don't actually want to say, oh, if you do this thing for me, then I'll buy you lunch. You know that actually sort of makes it feel like this, like very like, oh well, originally I was going to do it because I was going to feel like the great person who was very supportive to my friend and colleague. But now I'm apparently doing it for lunch, which it doesn't allow me to feel like a really good person in the mix. So so, you know, I think that what we people do want, though, and I talk a lot about this in the book, is to be able to feel effective. And that's a thing that a lot of times we miss the mark on. So if you if you know an example that you use, like if you're going to switch switch with me so that I can go to my child's event, I can see immediately how the impact I understand immediately the impact of my helping will be on you, Like I can picture that and I can feel good about that. A lot of times people ask us for help, and we were not really quite sure what the impact of our help would be. And people are demotivated in those cases they really want to and you know, and whenever possible, we should actually kind of circle back and let them know what the impact was, because that is that's the moment where you feel good. So I was a university professor for years and every every fall, students come to you and they ask for letters of recommendation for grad school, medical school, jobs, and so on. And it's amazing what small fraction of them actually ever think to kind of contact you later and let you know how it all turned out. And on the job. By the way, Hey, yes, and you would like to hear that exactly. I'd like to know, like what school did you get? And that's the moment where that help is rewarding. It's the moment when you feel like your help landed and you know how it landed because you're seeing the impact. You know, writing the letters of recommendation isn't that satisfying because you're not really sure what's going to happen, But hearing about what happened is the moment that feels really good. And there's a lot of research that shows this. For example, with people who do like charity work. There was one great study where people who were volunteer fundraisers for a scholarship at a university. They had you know, it's it's difficult work. You're getting on the phone and cold calling people and asking them for money for the scholarship. And what the researchers did was for half of those people, they introduced them to a scholarship recipient who had you know, who had gotten that scholarship and who got a chance to talk to them about the impact that it had on their lives. And then they looked and after that happened for the next month, they looked at, you know, sort of their effort and the money they reased, and the people who had met the scholarship recipient actually spent two to three times as much time on the phone in the subsequent month and also raised more than twice as much money. And so there is something about sort of tangibly knowing how how your what effect your help is going to have. And I encourage people to actually put that in the request itself. You know, you know, you if you help me in this way, it's going to have a huge impact on my ability to reach this goal, or if you help this in me in this way, it's going to give me the time to do this other thing that I really want to do that's going to be really beneficial to me. The more vivid you can make that for people so they can really see like, oh, you know, because everybody wants to be an effective helper. Nobody wants to do something and it didn't help. There's no joy in that, there's no personal well being in that. So so to the extent that we can create that for people, it's incredibly motivating for them to understand the impact that they can have. So let's talk through a few scenarios of how we might practically ask for help. So, I mean, let's say like Sarah's off this okay, so she's really busy physicians, seeing all kinds of people, She's starting the new residency program. Let's you know, also has a six month old baby. I'll give you, I'll give you. I'll give you an unrealistic example with this. Let's say I'm on call and I get a request like to fit in an urgent appointment, but I'm about to finish my call week and I have no space in my schedule the next week. So this is a realistic one where I might kind of make it a lot easier if I could kind of give it to the next personal call or give it to somebody else. But because I have so much going on. But at the same time, I feel kind of guilty for asking, because everyone has a lot going on. Okay, what would your advice to me? I think I think that it's really so you want to ask. So the first and foremost, we need to get over the guilt thing. Everybody needs help sometimes, and the world is a better place with more asking because more asking creates more opportunities to help, and it creates relationships where you can have that reciprocity so that someone later on who needs your help can ask for it when you are perhaps in a position to give it. Yes, it's true that other people are busy, and that's a reason to be reasonable about your requests and to be understanding when people can't help for whatever reason. But it's not a reason to not ask. We should all be doing a lot more asking. So first and foremost, I think you want to ask. Secondly, you want to ask explicitly. In this case, it's a very explicit request that you would be making. One of the mistakes I see people make a lot is they make these vague requests for help. And people turn down vague requests for help all the time because again, they're not sure what it is you're really asking. They're not sure if they can be effective, they're not sure it's something they'll want to do. I'll just give you a quick example that I promise happens to Laura. I know for a fact this must happen because it happens to me. People read your books and things and they are interested in them. That's great, it's amazing. That's what you want. You want people to get stimulated and excited. And they send you an email and they say things like I'd love to get together and I'd love to connect, or I'd love to pick your brain, or i'd love to chat, Like can I get an appointment with you or meeting with you, or go to coffee and connect or chat or something like this. Now here's the thing. They want something right now. They don't want to just connect. That's not even a thing. There's something they want right either. They want to ask you some questions that came up for them when they were reading your work, or they want something kind of information, or they want an introduction perhaps to someone that you know in common, or they want, you know, in my case, it's like maybe they want to learn more about the company that I work for, and maybe they want a job, and those are all fine things to want. But say it like, say that that's the thing that you want from me, because that way I have certainty about what this is about and whether or not I can provide you with the thing that you're asking, and whether or not I want to provide you with the thing that you're asking. That actually really increases the chances that I'm going to help you. So pacific requests, I mean, when I get those requests to just connect, I mean half the time, I'm not proud of this, but the truth is I ignore them and a lot of the time and and I ignore them, and I feel bad about it. But what feels worse is like awkward conversations with strangers that actually feels even worse to me. So like, I don't I don't like to put myself in that position. So I think you know, in your case, you're talking about your making a really explicit request, which is great. People know exactly what it is you're asking them for, and then you know, and again I would, I would explain why you know you never want to make a request this just can you take this shift from me? Or can you take this thing off my plate without explaining what the reason is, because people do have a bad reaction to feeling like that, the like it's possible that you just are pushing something onto them that you don't want to do. And I again see that as a very common mistake that I see that people will say, hey, would you mind taking this call for me with a client where you know in my organization? Can you make this call for you for the client? Why? Why? Because is it because this client is a real pain? Like is that the reason that I'm met to? Or you know, are you just you don't feel like it? I mean, you know what's the reason if you say you know, it's because I'm really slammed or you know that you want to explain to people either I'm really really slammed, or I'm exhausted because I've been slammed for so long, or I have this other thing that's really important that I need to do, or I ran into this I tried doing this on my own, but I ran into an obstacle I just can't seem to get past. Do you think that you would be able to help me get past this obstacle? You know, you want to give them the why, because that, again is going to create empathy for you, It's going to create understanding, it's going to make them feel like your request is legitimate, it's valid, it's appropriate for you to be asking. So so I think those are some simple things that we can do. Again, a lot of time that stuff is in our heads, but we don't say it, and other people need that context in order to feel really good about helping you and not feel like they're really being taken advantage of or manipulated in some way. Now, how about kids? Like? Can we talk about kids? Sure? Sure? And I will add to that inter generally intergenerational differences because you know, as we work with more and more younger h millennials or even Generation ZE starting to come up in there. Yeah, do you feel like this differs? Are kids more willing to ask for help? I feel like millennials are. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know that would be my experience certainly, And again, I think some of that is born. Some of that is very healthy and some of it is not. And it's not that the asking for help is the problem. Again, So coming to this is through the lens of I was a university professor for a long time. I have had a lot of undergraduates in my office. And there's there's again these sort of two different situations you run into. One is where you've got the undergraduate who comes into your office. They have done everything they possibly could do. They tried to find the information, they tried to solve the problem themselves. They worked hard, you know, whether it's they have questions about a test or whether it's they have questions about their major and what classes they should be taking. And you can see that. There's there's the kids that gave it like they're all and they're stuck for some reason and they come to you. And that's an incredibly rewarding thing for me and for just about anybody to get to help under those circumstances. Right, It's like, here's this person who's like, you know, really deserving of help, and I get to feel really good that I help them get past whatever that obstacle was, and that's incredibly rewarding. Then there's the other ones who come into your office and they like just didn't bother, you know, like they didn't bother to like open a book or like look online. You know. There's my professors tend to like pass things around to each other when we're kind of like all exacerbated, but like ask exasperated about something. And one of my favorite ones that came from a colleague of mine was a student who had asked her what time the exam was in response to an email the professor had sent. The subject line said what time the exam was? And it's like that, you know, it's just one of like these things where you go, like, wow, you could not even be bothered to read this at all before you just sort of pit reply and said what time is the exam? And and so there's there's those are the moments where I do think that, you know, there's there's generations where definitely, if you look at older generations, there were definitely I think, too much concern with asking for help as a sign of weakness or you know, that we should all be these like incredibly independent creatures, especially in the US, you do see cross cultural differences in this as well. So like in very independent cultures where people are kind of believed that you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you go it alone, and the US is sort of like this. A lot of Western cultures are like this. Then then you do see generationally older, older people being seeming to be a bit more proud, so to speak, thinking that asking for help is a sign of weakness. I think it's a really positive thing that younger people today don't seem to have as much of that, that they feel more perhaps interconnected, they feel like it's more socially acceptable to ask for help. But you do see that sort of like the pendulum perhaps swinging a little too far in that, you know, and perhaps it's because of parenting styles having shifted that people just getting a lot of help. I see a lot of kids. I see this with my own children, a lot of parents over helping, over protecting, the helicopter parenting that the doing everything for your kid. You know, the kids who come into class and they've clearly have the project that was sent home with them was clearly done by their parents, And that can set up kids for asking for help at times where it's really not appropriate. You really should have tried, you know you really should have done it yourself, and you're robbing your You know what, why it really matters, apart from the fact that that's annoying, is that you know it's actually doing them harm. Because one of the most salient and important sources of confidence and self efficacy and self esteem that a human being has is being able to look back. And this is a research based statement, not just meet my personal opinion. One of the strongest source of confidence and self efficacy is being able to look back on the challenges that you have overcome, and knowing that you have overcome them gives you confidence moving forward that you can handle the new obstacles that hit you. And so when people get to go too far in the asking for help all the time because I kind of just don't feel like doing this myself, you're actually getting robbed of experiences that would have built confidence and self efficacy for you going forward. So I do think that it is something where we don't want the pendulum. You know, a request for help need to be valid and legitimate and not the consequence of just I don't feel like doing it, And that's important. So Hia, but what if I just want my kid to like empty the dishwasher more frequently like that. If I had the answer to if I don't really like if I had like a silver bullet for that one, I think I would that would just be like the one book I wrote and be like how to get your kid to do what you tell them to do? I mean, I do, I do think that there is something to some of these same techniques. Right. So a lot of times parents don't communicate why the child doing these things is so important. Right, So it is actually important to actually articulate, you know, when you do this because of it. Yeah, not just because I said so, because it's a drag or you know, trying to create guilt tris, but actually saying, you know, when when you do this, here's what Here's the impact that it has on me. Here's the impact that it has on all of us, you know, here's here's why it's so important to contribute to you know, you're you're a member of this team and we're all in it together. And when you do that, it's it is so great for me, you know, and I see you know you as I see you developing, you know, you're you're being becoming older and more responsible and that's something I really you know, respect and that other people will respect. So you want that like positive identity that you want them to feel like they're a good person and they're there's there, and it's a reflection of their good qualities that they would do this thing. And they're a good team player as a help right, Yeah, exactly, you're a helper. They're a helper versus just like the statement of identity is more important. The identity stuff is really it is an opportunity to create positive identity for them and we just need to take it. And it's all in the sort of that language you use. And I talk to my daughter when she's helpful about again, you know, what a helpful person she is, how I see her growing into such a responsible young woman, you know, and really maturing, and and it's all true. I mean I'm not just saying those things. I think that as she contributes more and more to the house, as she helps me more and takes responsibility for things more, that is all true. That's all a part of her development. And when you acknowledge that, it's really motivating for them. It's not just to have to do it's not just to let me get Mom off my back. But it's like, wow, Mom really admires me for making these contributions. You know, they are something I should do, but it's also something that is admirable. And I think when we can frame things that way, we again we're playing off of that natural desire. The teenagers absolutely have kids absolutely have you know, to be seen positively in the eyes of others. They want that just like we do. Yeah, exactly. Well, maybe that'll be your next book there we go, how to get your kids to wash the dishes. It will just be in addendum to they It'll be like in the next edition, I'll put like that as another chapter. By the way, this on your children wonderful. All right, well, this has been a great interview with Heidi Grant. Her new book is Reinforcements about how to So Heidi the exact subtitle. Sorry, oh, it's Reinforcements how to get people to help you exactly. And we all know that one of the ways of having the best of both worlds is not doing everything ourselves and asking for help. So we've had a lot of great advice there from Heidi on doing so effectively. So Heidi, thanks so much for being on Thank you both. Thank you, Hi, thank you both so much. This is a lot of fun. Well, that was a great interview, and now we segue into our Q and A. So this week we're going to do a Q and A for me my question, which is a situation where I sort of thought I had asked for help, but maybe I did not do so effectively. So, you know, people who've been listening to those podcasts are reading my blog sort of no general outlines of my family situation. So my husband and I both travel for work. You know, both have reasonably demanding jobs. He definitely travels more for work than I do. We've had some tension in the past over times that are very busy for me, namely around book launches, and I have this perception like I feel he's not giving the same level of home and kid support during my busy times that I feel he's given me during his busy times. Now, obviously recognize certain things like he works for a company right like I do not I work for myself, and so there's slightly less control of the time. Although on the other hand, he's worked for the same company for twenty five years. In the honest truth is he has one hundred percent control over time. All right, that's just my editorial comment. I wrote out a nice calm question, and now here I am like already editorializing. Is the problem of doing your own question anyway, So in the past, like we've has various things with book launches, it's always been a thing like, oh, I didn't know what was coming up, Yes you did, come on, it's been my email signature for six months, or you know, like it was just a really busy time for me. Anyway. So I told him the book launch date for Off the Clock like ten months ago, and asked that he please scale down his travel around it so he could handle the kid's stuff that I normally do. And you know, we have a full time nanny, but with forked kids there's always parental stuff too, and even if like you outsource that too, it's like arranging for a second driver, like taking on the logistics of that or whatever. You know, kid appointments had to be made and all that. So I asked if he could do that or figure out someone else to do it, but get the mental load off me for a few weeks, a big chunk of which would be to not travel as much. And then he could also handle things like the three time three year old bedtime battles, so I could work anyway. Let's just say, long story short, this did not happen really at all. So my question is, Sarah, like, how should I deal with this? How do I talk myself down from the ledge? Or how do I ask to be more effective on my next book launch? Oh man, Okay, So yes, I think it's a two pronged question. At the end that you just said is key. So there's two parts. Number one, like, let's get down from the ledge, because your husband is a really nice guy. I've met him, and I have a feeling that maybe he wasn't I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here that maybe he wasn't hearing exactly what you needed. So we'll get there in a second. And the second part is, how could we potentially have a better experience next time? Because there certainly will be a next time because I'm sure there well, we know there's at least one more book to g in the pipeline. There's gonna be more after that. So I guess my first thought is, you know, in my experience, sometimes I feel like when I flip out about my husband not something to come that's coming up. Sometimes he has a little bit too big of a grain of salt, at least in my opinion, like, you know what, Sarah's freaking out, but really it's probably gonna work out, okay, and I'm not going to take it that seriously. And then a lot of times he's proven right. So then that kind of perpetuates the behavior because I guess Earth didn't stop spitting on its axis. Yeah, Like I would like maybe maybe you asked him, you know, oh, I need like, you know, cone of silence for a month, and maybe in his mind he's like, yeah, she doesn't really need that. So maybe part of what would help would be being really really specific about what you need and like literally giving him dates, like I need you to not travel between this state and this state, perhaps even saying is there someone at work? So I've done this and maybe like this is overstepping, but I've even like emailed his scheduler politely like, oh, could I please see the July call schedule because I'd like to know. So can you go you know, beyond him and say, oh, would you like me to like let your secretary or scheduler know that, like you need to be home between X date and X date, So being really really specific. And I also think that saying like I don't want to deal with the mental load like to many police mail partners, like they may not know what that load that you're talking about is necessarily, so it's harder for them to know what you mean. So you could literally make a specific list in an email, be like, I need you to handle all doctor's appointments, all drop offs, all X y Z during this date to the state, and also invite him to let you know does that work for you, because if not, maybe maybe you actually maybe you can't. You know, maybe he's like, actually, you know what, I don't think I can step up for that. I can do this part of it, but you actually probably just need to have two caregivers, which I guess you know, that's not the choice I would want my husband to make. But if if that's if that's it, then better that than it all landing on you at the last minute when you're really not able to deal with it. So yeah, I would say asking for really specifically what you need, also making sure that you're you're not over reacting, because I like, at least I'm speaking myself, like I'll be like, we have to add the airport nine hours before the flight. Like sometimes I do go like a step I get stressed about something, so I go a step beyond and that allows my husband to sort of blow off all of it because I've gone extra, do you know what I mean? So making sure you're asking truly for what you do need and being very specific about what it is. Yeah, I think that would be that would be maybe an improvement for next time. But you'll have to You'll have to let us know. And I also think this is one that our readers and listeners, we welcome your thoughts as well. Yeah, just so how you you're busy times, especially if you are, you know, often the one who's doing maybe more of that kid and home stuff and you'd like to specifically not do it for a short period of time you're feeling rather stressed about things, as the case might be, all right, So we welcome your feedback on that. And are we doing our Love of the week afterwards? Are wed? Oh? I think I think sure, Let's do our Love of the week after Let's close with the Love of the week. We can always ask our guests for the love of the week as well, but just in case that I am not there during the recording segment, I would say my love of the week this week is my Gap Pure Body leggings because I was looking for some really good so you know, like a lot of the leggings these days, they do a really good job like sucking you in and like being really high rise and stuff, and they look kind of nice when you're working out and you feel, well, that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about like the leggings that you want to put on that are like so soft and comfortable and like completely non constricting. Because I think I mentioned previously that I was on a quest to find some better lounge whear well, the Gap Pure Body leggings are about twenty bucks and are perfect for this, and I'm about to order like two more pairs because i want to have a little stockpile. They do seem to want pretty well. They're made of modal, which is like I guess bamboo generated with some spandex and them, and they're just they're so light and dreamy. I love them. That's cool. I've been One of the things I've been I've been loving is I don't know if I I mean, I only have one little girl, so uh my, my knowledge of like little girl clothing has has only sort of recently developed in the sense of I'm not, you know, the fashionate stuff, but I've been happy to see how much little girl clothing is like structured for playing now that you know, my my daughter loves these skirts and all that, but so many of them either come with little shorts inside or it's just very easy to like buy little bike shorts that go you know, under the short under their dresses. And I don't recall that being something I ever like experienced growing up, Like that wasn't you know, something we had a lot of. And and so it's good that you can both be this like flouncy little girl in the skirts and you know, still be on the monkey bars without showing everyone your underwear. So it's a great sports or arts are aws like, Yeah, no good. So that's that's my love of the week. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. Fascinatingly mixed episode. All kinds of stuff going on in this one. But we'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.