Asking for Help

Choosing the right balance and knowing when and how for help is a skill, and a skill you can learn.

Asking is the first step

Asking for help can be embarrassing! It can be tough to admit you don’t know something, even if you thought you’d be able to get it right. And trying to figure stuff out on your own can help you learn. But if you wait too long, or never ask for help, you’ll both learn less and end up spinning your wheels and wasting time.

Batch up your questions

We also want to avoid the “help, help, help” problem. This happens if you are asking a question every time you run into problems. You might you might annoy the person you are asking the question, even when they want to help! So what should we do?

Instead of asking your questions one by one as they occur, write them all down. That way when you ask for help, the person helping you will be able to help you all at once, They will have more information on your overall problem, and you will be able to get to your solution faster.

Set a timebox on tasks

Setting a timebox for yourself can help you prioritize problems you run into. In order to know when to ask for help, you need to do some planning. Think about “when do I need to get this done?” and “how much time do I have to do this?” Sometimes, you can end up getting stuck and it can be frustrating. When you set a timebox for your task, you are setting a timer to ask for help - “it’s been too long, time to ask for help.”

Look for a potential answer first

It doesn’t have to be the best answer, or the correct answer (if it were, you probably wouldn’t be asking for help, after all). But you should always say something like “my best guess is this works like this, because of X and Y, but I’m still a little confused - could you explain this?”

Framing a question like this helps the other person better understand what you do and don’t know. It also forces you to look for a solution first, and you might find the answer without asking - at the very least, it might give you a little more context about the question you have. As a bonus, this is a great technique to use on the job - it shows that you are taking initiative and looking to learn on your own. Being proactive is highly valued in the workplace!

Recap

To recap, here are 5 things to do when asking for help:

1. Do ask for help.
2. Batch up your questions.
3. Set a timebox on tasks, and ask for help if you hit the timebox and you’re still stuck.
4. Always provide a potential answer.

Exercises

Demonstration

Show the students several examples of how to ask questions incorrectly and then ask how they would fix the issues. Alternatively, demonstrate some good practices when asking techicnal questions.

Student Participation

In order to practice asking questions, present a problem to the class and ask for a volunteer to walk through how they would go about asking for help using the techniques described in this module.