It will be so much fun! We can totally drink beers and catch up! Girl time! Road trip! Because asking for help makes us so uncomfortable, and because we really do expect that people will say no, a common tactic is to portray the help we need as a small, piddling, almost invisible, negligible really, barely there, little favor.
This, too, is fraught with awkwardness. And yet people often make a critical mistake when expressing gratitude: they focus on how they feel—how happy they are, how they have benefited from the help—rather than focusing on the benefactor.
Researchers Sara Algoe, Laura Kurtz, and Nicole Hilaire at the University of North Carolina distinguished between two types of gratitude expressions: other-praising , which involves acknowledging and validating the character or abilities of the giver i. In one of their studies, they observed couples expressing gratitude to one another for something their partner had recently done for them. Their expressions were then coded for the extent to which they were other-praising or focused on self-benefit.
Examples of their expressions included:. Finally, benefactors rated how responsive they felt the gratitude giver had been, how happy they felt, and how loving they felt toward their partner. The researchers found that other-praising gratitude was strongly related to perceptions of responsiveness, positive emotion, and loving, but self-benefit gratitude was not.
There are really three ways of asking people for help that avoid making them feel controlled and that let them experience the natural high of helping. These three reinforcements create the desire to want to help another; you can use them in specific requests for help, and you can learn to emphasize them to create a culture of helpfulness.
The first reinforcement is what psychologists call a strong sense of in-group. In other words, the belief that the person in need is on your team—a part of a group that is important to you. This goes beyond mere collective reciprocity; we help people from our in-group because we care about what happens to the in-group.
People appreciate gestures like these, but actually delivering will earn you a new level of respect. Our company has created a process for adding value to our connections, and we use Contactually to put connections into easy-to-find lists so we know whom to contact when an appropriate opportunity arises.
Be transparent with any benefit or agenda. Most businesspeople admire full disclosure. He seemed to appreciate the honesty and let his guard down enough to ask what I found valuable. Ask more questions before you volunteer your help. Recommending resources too quickly turns people off.
It raises a red flag when you offer help after knowing virtually nothing about the person or his company. So get that information before making suggestions. Offer alternative resources besides your service. Asking for help is a natural part of life, so why not learn how to do it better?
The following steps will unpack the process of asking for help. Asking for help can be uncomfortable, and people want to avoid the embarrassment of rejection, so they say nothing. But several research studies have shown that people often guess wrong about the people they want to ask. People generally like to see themselves as useful and are often willing to take action when asked.
So go ahead, ask for help more often and see what happens. Before you ask for help, clarify what you need. Knowing this can determine who you ask and what you need them to do.
Think about your problem and decide what missing part matters the most. Do you need to explain a big picture situation, or do you have a specific topic to discuss? Do you need to gather knowledge or complete a task? Write down what you need so you can say it clearly. Getting help from native English speakers is a piece of cake with HiNative! So when you need help, how can you ask for it? Well let's start with the basics.
There are a few modal verbs that are really helpful when asking for help. Other modal verbs are possible too but these three are the most common ones when asking for help. The main verb is always in the -ing form. So these modal verbs are often used to request for help. But what about some of the other expressions that I mentioned at the start of this video? This is another really common way to ask for help in English. I use this expression all the time. It's a casual, relaxed way to ask for help.
Usually it's used when what you're asking doesn't require a huge amount of effort from the person that you're asking for help. Here are some more examples in different contexts with different tenses. Can you give me a hand with these shopping bags? They're really heavy! My mum really needs someone to give her a hand in the shop on Thursday. Thanks so much for giving us a hand yesterday! My brother gave me a hand moving furniture into the new apartment.
It was so hot! I wish you had given me a hand. Mum needs someone to give her a hand. Thanks so much for giving us a hand. My brother gave me a hand. When you're asking someone to do something for you or to help you solve a problem, you can use this phrasal verb. But you usually need to say who needs the help. So for example,. I need to translate this sentence.
Can you help me out? I'd really like to help you out, but I'll be working on Saturday. John always helps his neighbours out.
His parents helped him out when he bought his first house. Now, all those examples were transitive phrasal verbs. I told you who was receiving the help. So let me show you with some examples. Could you work in the shop next Tuesday? I know that's usually your day off… Sure, I can help out! I know you've got lots on at the moment. Would you like the kids to help out tomorrow? So the structure is to help out with something or to help somebody out with something. Can you help me out with this question?
My brothers and I are lucky my mum and dad usually help us out with money if we really need it.
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