Alvah Parker is publisher of Road to Success and Parker's Points, e-newsletters providing strategies to advance your business and career goals. Click here to subscribe. Alvah is a Work/life coach, who can be reached at asparker@asparker.com, or visited on the web at www.asparker.com.

By Sharon Teitelbaum

Are you limiting your professional success by failing to get help when you need it? There are two ways professionals limit themselves:

1. Failing to delegate tasks you could do, but shouldn't
2. Failing to reach out to peers and managers.

As a work-life and career coach, I have seen these self-defeating patterns with many high-level professionals who benefit greatly from learning to ask for appropriate help. See if you recognize yourself in the examples that follow.

At the Office

Delegating administrative tasks to administrative staff.

• Your resistance: "It's boring work. I feel guilty passing it off on someone else."
• How to respond to your resistance: You are not paid to do administrative work. You are paid to lead. Delegating this work frees you up to use your executive skills and do the job you're paid to do.

Delegating lower-level program tasks to junior members of the team.

• Your resistance: "The junior people on my team are already overworked. I don't want to give them more, especially tasks I don't want to do."
• Response: See above. Also, giving junior team members the opportunity to do this work gives them more experience and exposure, and may fulfill some of your executive level function to develop the people who work for you.

Getting technical assistance when approaching something you don't know how to do.

• Resistance: "I should know how to do this. If I ask for help I will be perceived as inadequate."
• Response: Asking for high-level help moves you forward by allowing you to take on more responsibility and move into new areas. Not asking for help can lead to failing to complete the task in an appropriate time frame.

Asking for relief from your workload when you have an "impossible job."

• Resistance: "I should be able to do all of it; after all, it's on my plate, isn't it?"
• Response: Your job has steadily grown because you are a problem solver and you take initiative. As a result, you now find yourself with an impossible job that no one could do. You must, for the sake of the work, get help or off-load some of what's on your plate before you start dropping balls. Additionally, your experience contains data about what it truly costs to run your business. If you are actually doing the work of two people but not disclosing that information, your company is missing out on that data in its calculations.

At Home

Delegating household or personal tasks to others, such as yard work, housecleaning, taxes: hiring help.

• Your resistance: "I feel guilty paying others to do household or personal maintenance jobs I 'should' do for myself."
• Response: By hiring someone else to do it, you are supporting someone else's business. Also, by having someone else do this work, you are making space for yourself to re-charge your batteries, enabling you to return to work refreshed and ready for your job. Getting help on the home front supports your success at the office.

Getting help with something that's out of your field. For example, if you're a chief technical officer with a background as a software engineer, you might need help with your taxes.

• Resistance: "I'm smart. I should be able to learn this."
• Response: Yes, but that's not a great use of your limited time. You a) are not interested in this field, b) are already running on empty from your day job, c) need some down time, and d) could benefit from expert, experienced advice.

Especially for the Job Seeker

Some aspects of the job hunt are natural situations to ask for help, for example, by getting names of potential networking contacts or having a trusted colleague, friend or family member review your resume. However, high-level professionals too often hinder their job search efforts by not getting help with job hunting skills or lifting the burden of distracting household chores.

Getting help with some of the specialized skills associated with job-hunting, such as networking skills.

• Resistance: "This isn't rocket science. I should know how to do this."
• Response: Networking is an essential skill for job seekers. You may not be naturally good at it. There are people who can teach you how to do it better. It's a smart move to have them teach you how to do this.

Getting help with housework and other maintenance tasks when you are in transition.

• Your resistance: "I'm not working now, so I shouldn't spend the money."
• Response: Getting help on the home front supports your success with your job hunt by providing an opportunity for you to rest and replenish from the very challenging career work you are doing.

If any of these patterns ring true for you, I encourage you to take action and get the help that will lead you to greater career and personal success.

Sharon Teitelbaum is a work-life and career coach who works by phone with high level clients across the US, and in person in the Boston area. She coaches high achieving women with young children, people at mid-career, and professionals seeking greater career satisfaction or work-life balance. Her book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: Restoring Work-Life Balance, came out in 2005. Sharon can be reached at Sharon@stcoach.com or www.stcoach.com.

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