TED | 如何寻求并得到帮助

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如何寻求并得到帮助

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Heidi Grant

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心理 社会 技能 TED 演讲

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寻求帮助很难。但是要度过一生，你必须一直这样做。那么，你怎么才能放心地提出这个问题呢?在这次可操作的谈话中，社会心理学家海蒂·格兰特分享了寻求帮助并得到帮助的四个简单规则，同时也让帮助你的人得到更多的回报。

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00:13

求助可以说是最糟糕的事了，对吗？它却没有被列入人们最害怕的十大事物之中，比如公众演讲和死亡，但我非常确定它属于这类事物。尽管不愿承认我们需要帮助是愚蠢的，无论是向爱人，朋友，同事，甚至陌生人求助。求助总会让我们感到有点不适和尴尬，当然，这也是我们大多数人尽可能避免求助的原因。

00:55

我父亲就是那“父亲军团”的一员，我发誓，他宁愿开车穿过鳄鱼出没的沼泽，也不愿意找人帮助他开回大路。我记得小时候有一次全家出去度假。从位于南新泽西州的家驱车前往前殖民地威廉斯堡。我记得我们完全迷路了。我和妈妈恳求他把车停在路边，向别人询问回高速公路的路，他直接拒绝了，事实上他向我们保证他没有迷路，他只是想四处看看。

01:34

因此如果我们要求助——这是我们几乎每天都会做，而且需要做的——我们适应它的方法是变得善于求助，去增加我们求助时别人答应帮助的概率。不仅如此，他们还会发现自己能够在帮助我们的过程中获得满足和回报，因此他们就有动力继续在将来帮助我们。

02:02

我和我同事做的一些研究对人们为什么有时会伸出援手，有时候则不，提供了一些解释。现在让我们进入主题：如果我们需要帮助，我们就得开口。大声说出来。可以吗？我们在某种程度上都有心理学家常说的“被洞悉错觉”——这说的是我们的一种错觉，我们总觉得自己的思想、感觉和需要对他人而言很明显。事实并非如此，但我们相信这点。所以我们只是干等在那儿，等待有人注意到我们的需求，然后主动提出帮助我们。这是一个非常糟糕的假设。事实上，不仅说出我们的需求很难，而且我们身边的人也往往琢磨不透应该如何支持我们。

02:57

我的伴侣不得不养成一个习惯，每天问我很多次，“现在怎样？你需要什么吗？”因为在需要帮助时，我太不擅长发出信号。现在，他给予了我更多耐心，更积极主动，更乐于助人，我们通常没有权利要求别人这样对我们。所以如果我们需要帮助，我们必须开口。另外，即便有人看出来我们需要帮助，他们怎么知道我们需要什么？大家有没有试过主动帮助别人，结果人家根本就不想让你帮？他们很快就会厌恶，对吧？

03:38

这是个真实的故事——前些天，我十几岁的女儿穿好衣服准备上学，我决定自发地给她一些帮助。

03:47

我碰巧觉得她穿亮色衣服好看。但她通常喜欢偏深、中性的色调。于是我试着说，也许她可以回到楼上，试着找件颜色不那么阴沉的衣服穿。

04:04

如果眼神能杀人的话，我现在就不会站在这里了。我们不能责怪别人不主动帮助我们，特别是当对方不知道我们需要什么时。事实上，研究显示工作时同事之间百分之九十的帮助是响应明确的求助请求的。所以我们得说：“我需要你的帮助“。这是无法回避的。

04:33

想要做好它，确保当我们寻求帮助时，人们会帮我们，请记住一些非常有用的做法。

04:41

第一点：当我们求助时，一定要准确地阐述我们要的帮助和原因。含糊、间接的求助对于帮助者其实不是很有用，不是吗？他们的确不知道我们想得到的帮助是什么，同样重要的是，他们不知道是否能够成功帮助我们。没人想帮倒忙。大家或许像我一样，在领英收到过来自非常友好的陌生人的邀请，这些人想做一些“喝杯咖啡、聊个天”或“向你请教一下”之类的事情。我每次都忽略这些请求。这并不是因为我不够友好。只是我不知道他们想从我这里得到什么，以及希望我能提供哪种帮助，我就不感兴趣。没人会有兴趣。如果他们能直接说出任何他们想从我这里获得的帮助，我就会更有兴趣，因为我很肯定他们有些具体的想法。所以要开口，“我想和你谈谈贵司有没有工作机会。”或“我想提出一个你一定会非常感兴趣的领域的联合研究项目。”或者，“我想听听你对读医学院的建议。”说实话，我不能帮助解决最后一个请求，因为我不是医生，但我可以指明谁可以提供帮助。

06:06

好了，第二个技巧。这点真的很重要：请不要用免责声明，道歉和贿赂。真的，这非常重要。这些听起来熟悉吗？

06:20

“我非常、非常抱歉要请求你件事情”。“我真的非常不想麻烦你”。“如果没有你能做成这事的话，我一定会的”。

06:35

有时候这让人感觉，他们是如此渴望去证明他们寻求帮助时，不是因为软弱和贪婪，但他们完全忽视了这样做会让我们感到不舒服。顺便问一句，如果他们讨厌求助我，我怎会觉得帮助他们是让我感到满足的事呢？虽然付费给陌生人帮我们做事情是完全可以接受的，当涉及到激励我们的朋友和同事时，我们要非常小心。如果我们跟某人关系很好,彼此帮助就是那段关系很自然的部分。这是我们展示关心彼此的方式。如果我们在这种关系中加入激励或者付费，会让人觉得这不是段关系，而是个交易。这其实会让人产生一种距离感，更讽刺的事，这反而会让人更不愿意帮助我们。所以，在别人帮助我们后，我们可以用更淳朴的礼物来表达感激之情——这样做就很好。付钱给帮我们搬进新公寓的朋友就不是好做法。

07:42

第三点，我想说的是：请不要通过邮件或者短信请求帮助。我是认真的，请不要那样做。邮件和短信很不正式。我知道有时候没得选，但多数情况下，我们喜欢通过邮件或短信求助，是因为这样做我们不会感到那么尴尬。有什么比用邮件和短信求助更尴尬的吗？没有。事实上，有研究支持这个观点。当面请求得到帮助的可能性比发邮件高30倍。所以当一件事真的很重要，我们需要人的帮助时，当面提出这个请求，或者只用手机通过打电话——

08:36

去寻求我们需要的帮助。

08:39

好了。最后一点也非常重要，它可能是寻求帮助时最容易被忽视的一点：当我们寻求别人的帮助并得到肯定回答时，事后与他们保持联系。人们普遍有种误解，认为帮助别人的回报在于帮助本身。事实并非如此。帮助的回报是知道你的帮助落实了，它产生了影响，你的帮忙是有效的。如果我根本不知道我的帮助如何影响你，我对这帮助会有何感想？

09:14

这种事情发生过：我当大学教授很多年，写了很多的推荐信，帮学生找工作或申请研究生院。其中有大约95%我都不知道之后发生了什么。当我不知道我是否帮助了你，是否帮助你得到你想要的东西时，我该如何看待我花在这件事上的时间和精力？事实上，这种感觉有效的想法是某些捐助的呼吁如此有说服力的原因，因为它们能让我们生动地想象我们的帮助将产生的效果。

09:49

比如DonorsChoose。我们在网上选择我们想给予帮助的教室的老师的名字。为他们购买他们请求的特定商品，比如显微镜、笔记本电脑和可调节高度的座椅。这就让我很容易想象我的钱将会起到的作用，在我做出捐赠的那一刻，就感觉有一种立竿见影的效果。

10:15

但你知道他们还会做什么吗？他们还会跟捐助者保持联系。捐赠者会收到教室里学生的来信。他们会收到照片。他们知道他们对别人产生了影响。这是我们在生活中都应该做的事情，尤其当我们想要人们长期帮助我们时。花时间告诉我们的同事他们给予的帮助帮助我们谈成了那笔大买卖，或帮助我们得到了很想要的面试机会。花时间告诉我们的伴侣他们给予的帮助帮助我们度过了艰难的时光。花点时间告诉帮助你照顾猫的人，我们很高兴，因为这次我们不在的时候，猫没有打坏任何东西，他们做得棒极了。

11:02

归根结底：相信我——我知道——寻求帮助并不容易。我们都有点害怕这样做。这让我们感到脆弱。但现代的工作和生活不是我们可以独自应对的。没人能独自成功。事实上，我们比以往更需要依靠他人，有了他们的支持和配合，我们才能成功。

11:30

所以需要帮助时，大声说出来。用可以提高得到肯定回答概率的方法去做，另外，确保他人因为帮助我们而感到快乐，因为这是帮助者应得的。

11:46

谢谢。

The End

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00:13

So, asking for help is basically the worst, right? I've actually never seen it on one of those top ten lists of things people fear, like public speaking and death, but I'm pretty sure it actually belongs there. Even though in many ways it's foolish for us to be afraid to admit we need help, whether it's from a loved one or a friend or from a coworker or even from a stranger, somehow it always feel just a little bit uncomfortable and embarrassing to actually ask for help, which is, of course, why most of us try to avoid asking for help whenever humanly possible. 

00:55

My father was one of those legions of fathers who, I swear, would rather drive through an alligator-infested swamp than actually ask someone for help getting back to the road. When I was a kid, we took a family vacation. We drove from our home in South Jersey to Colonial Williamsburg. And I remember we got really badly lost. My mother and I pleaded with him to please just pull over and ask someone for directions back to the highway, and he absolutely refused, and, in fact, assured us that we were not lost, he had just always wanted to know what was over here. 

01:34

So if we're going to ask for help -- and we have to, we all do, practically every day -- the only way we're going to even begin to get comfortable with it is to get good at it, to actually increase the chances that when you ask for help from someone, they're actually going to say yes. And not only that, but they're going to find it actually satisfying and rewarding to help you, because that way, they'll be motivated to continue to help you into the future. 

02:02

So research that I and some of my colleagues have done has shed a lot of light on why it is that sometimes people say yes to our requests for help and why sometimes they say no. Now let me just start by saying right now: if you need help, you are going to have to ask for it. Out loud. OK? We all, to some extent, suffer from something that psychologists call "the illusion of transparency" -- basically, the mistaken belief that our thoughts and our feelings and our needs are really obvious to other people. This is not true, but we believe it. And so, we just mostly stand around waiting for someone to notice our needs and then spontaneously offer to help us with it. This is a really, really bad assumption. In fact, not only is it very difficult to tell what your needs are, but even the people close to you often struggle to understand how they can support you. 

02:57

My partner has actually had to adopt a habit of asking me multiple times a day, "Are you OK? Do you need anything?" because I am so, so bad at signaling when I need someone's help. Now, he is more patient than I deserve and much more proactive, much more, about helping than any of us have any right to expect other people to be. So if you need help, you're going to have to ask for it. And by the way, even when someone can tell that you need help, how do they know that you want it? Did you ever try to give unsolicited help to someone who, it turns out, did not actually want your help in the first place? They get nasty real quick, don't they? 

03:38

The other day -- true story -- my teenage daughter was getting dressed for school, and I decided to give her some unsolicited help about that. 

03:47

I happen to think she looks amazing in brighter colors. She tends to prefer sort of darker, more neutral tones. And so I said, very helpfully, that I thought maybe she could go back upstairs and try to find something a little less somber. 

04:04

So, if looks could kill, I would not be standing here right now. We really can't blame other people for not just spontaneously offering to help us when we don't actually know that that's what is wanted. In fact, actually, research shows that 90 percent of the help that coworkers give one another in the workplace is in response to explicit requests for help. So you're going to have to say the words "I need your help." Right? There's no getting around it. 

04:33

Now, to be good at it, to make sure that people actually do help you when you ask for it, there are a few other things that are very helpful to keep in mind. 

04:41

First thing: when you ask for help, be very, very specific about the help you want and why. Vague, sort of indirect requests for help actually aren't very helpful to the helper, right? We don't actually know what it is you want from us, and, just as important, we don't know whether or not we can be successful in giving you the help. Nobody wants to give bad help. Like me, you probably get some of these requests from perfectly pleasant strangers on LinkedIn who want to do things like "get together over coffee and connect" or "pick your brain." I ignore these requests literally every time. And it's not that I'm not a nice person. It's just that when I don't know what it is you want from me, like the kind of help you're hoping that can I provide, I'm not interested. Nobody is. I'd have been much more interested if they had just come out and said whatever it is was they were hoping to get from me, because I'm pretty sure they had something specific in mind. So go ahead and say, "I'm hoping to discuss opportunities to work in your company," or, "I'd like to propose a joint research project in an area I know you're interested in," or, "I'd like your advice on getting into medical school." Technically, I can't help you with that last one because I'm not that kind of doctor, but I could point you in the direction of someone who could. 

06:06

OK, second tip. This is really important: please avoid disclaimers, apologies and bribes. Really, really important. Do any of these sound familiar? 

06:18

(Clears throat) 

06:20

'I'm so, so sorry that I have to ask you for this." "I really hate bothering you with this." "If I had any way of doing this without your help, I would." 

06:35

Sometimes it feels like people are so eager to prove that they're not weak and greedy when they ask your for help, they're completely missing out on how uncomfortable they're making you feel. And by the way -- how am I supposed to find it satisfying to help you if you really hated having to ask me for help? And while it is perfectly, perfectly acceptable to pay strangers to do things for you, you need to be very, very careful when it comes to incentivizing your friends and coworkers. When you have a relationship with someone, helping one another is actually a natural part of that relationship. It's how we show one another that we care. If you introduce incentives or payments into that, what can happen is, it starts to feel like it isn't a relationship, it's a transaction. And that actually is experienced as distancing, which, ironically, makes people less likely to help you. So a spontaneous gift after someone gives you some help to show your appreciation and gratitude -- perfectly fine. An offer to pay your best friend to help you move into your new apartment is not. 

07:42

OK, third rule, and I really mean this one: please do not ask for help over email or text. Really, seriously, please don't. Email and text are impersonal. I realize sometimes there's no alternative, but mostly what happens is, we like to ask for help over email and text because it feels less awkward for us to do so. You know what else feels less awkward over email and text? Telling you no. And it turns out, there's research to support this. In-person requests for help are 30 times more likely to get a yes than a request made by email. So when something is really important and you really need someone's help, make face time to make the request, or use your phone as a phone -- 

08:36

to ask for the help that you need. 

08:39

OK. Last one, and this is actually a really, really important one and probably the one that is most overlooked when it comes to asking for help: when you ask someone for their help and they say yes, follow up with them afterward. There's a common misconception that what's rewarding about helping is the act of helping itself. This is not true. What is rewarding about helping is knowing that your help landed, that it had impact, that you were effective. If I have no idea how my help affected you, how am I supposed to feel about it? 

09:14

This happened; I was a university professor for many years, I wrote lots and lots of letters of recommendation for people to get jobs or to go into graduate school. And probably about 95 percent of them, I have no idea what happened. Now, how do I feel about the time and effort I took to do that, when I really have no idea if I helped you, if it actually helped you get the thing that you wanted? In fact, this idea of feeling effective is part of why certain kinds of donor appeals are so, so persuasive -- because they allow you to really vividly imagine the effect that your help is going to have. 

09:49

Take something like DonorsChoose. You go online, you can choose the individual teacher by name whose classroom you're going to be able to help by literally buying the specific items they've requested, like microscopes or laptops or flexible seating. An appeal like that makes it so easy for me to imagine the good that my money will do, that I actually get an immediate sense of effectiveness the minute I commit to giving. 

10:15

But you know what else they do? They follow up. Donors actually get letters from the kids in the classroom. They get pictures. They get to know that they made a difference. And this is something we need to all be doing in our everyday lives, especially if we want people to continue to give us help over the long term. Take time to tell your colleague that the help that they gave you really helped you land that big sale, or helped you get that interview that you were really hoping to get. Take time to tell your partner that the support they gave you really made it possible for you to get through a tough time. Take time to tell your catsitter that you're super happy that for some reason, this time the cats didn't break anything while you were away, and so they must have done a really good job. 

11:02

The bottom line is: I know -- believe me, I know -- that it is not easy to ask for help. We are all a little bit afraid to do it. It makes us feel vulnerable. But the reality of modern work and modern life is that nobody does it alone. Nobody succeeds in a vacuum. More than ever, we actually do have to rely on other people, on their support and collaboration, in order to be successful. 

11:30

So when you need help, ask for it out loud. And when you do, do it in a way that increases your chances that you'll get a yes and makes the other person feel awesome for having helped you, because you both deserve it. 

11:46

Thank you. 

The End

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