HELP Workbook

Unfortunately, many people do not seek help from their peers, colleagues, or managers when they have a specific need for assistance. Often, this is the result of personal pride, fear of being refused or failure, or even embarrassment at not knowing all there is to know about the job.

However, truly great leaders want to be invaluable resources who can comfortably be sought out when help is needed. This is the basis of the concept of servant leadership, a term coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in his book Servant Leadership.

How can we communicate our commitment to being a servant leader?

Good listening, empathy, persuasion, and self-awareness skills are all needed to help others. They are covered in some detail in the LEADERSHIP communications model article and in the practical applications in this workbook.

We need to remove the barriers that prevent people from asking for help—not wanting to look weak and incompetent tops the list. People have often asked the wrong person for help in the past only to be disappointed. Furthermore, they may not want to change or are not aware of how failure to change could adversely affect them. Sometimes people are just too proud to ask.

Whatever the reason, the manger needs to remove the barriers. They can do so by taking these approaches:

Fill out the GROW form below with your plan to become more of a servant leader.