Asking for Advice Makes People Think You’re Smarter

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2016

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The research shows we shouldn't be afraid to ask for help. Francesca Gino and Alison Wood Brooks, both of Harvard Business School, explain.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you work with early career professionals, my colleagues at
0:03.8	HPR have a great new podcast for you. It's called New Here. Think of it like the
0:08.4	Young Professional's Guide to Building a Meaningful Career on your own terms.
0:11.9	Share New Here with the Young Professionals in your life. a meaningful career on your own terms.
0:12.8	Share new here with the young professionals in your life.
0:15.9	Listen for free wherever you got your podcasts.
0:18.6	Just search new here. Welcome to the HBR IDEA Cash from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. I'm talking today with
0:36.0	Francesca Gino and Allison Wood Brooks, both of Harvard Business School. Thank you both for
0:40.0	joining us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. So our topic today is communication
0:45.5	and more specifically asking for advice and asking questions at work. So I want to
0:50.0	dive right into your research on this. Given how useful advice is, why do some people hesitate?
0:56.7	This is one of the questions you began by exploring. Why do we hesitate to ask for useful advice?
1:01.1	Francisco, let's start with you.
1:02.5	We have the wrong mindset when thinking about asking for advice.
1:07.0	We probably will experience this idea of being stuck or having a problem and feeling like if I'm going to go to a colleague or to my boss and ask for advice,
1:17.0	he or she's going to think I'm stupid.
1:20.0	And so because of that belief, we just don't ask.
1:24.6	So what actually happens though when people ask for advice?
1:28.9	So this belief that if you go to ask for advice from someone they're going to think you're
1:33.4	incompetent and you can't complete the task on your own is misplaced. In our
1:37.8	studies we had people ask advisors for advice or not and it turns out that our lay beliefs are completely wrong
1:46.3	we actually view people who seek our advice as much more competent than people
	...

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