What do Michael Jordan, Iron Man, and a lawyer closing down their firm in a panic have in common?
We all learned that waiting too long to ask for help and trying to do it all yourself makes everything harder than it needs to be.
Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player most of us will ever watch. Early in his career, he tried to win by himself. He took every shot. He carried the weight. And he kept losing in the playoffs.
It wasn’t until he trusted Phil Jackson, bought into the system, and actually relied on his teammates that championships followed. Kerr in Game 6 against the Jazz, Paxson in 93 v. the Suns, etc.
Same talent. Same drive. Different willingness to ask for help and let others in.
Tony Stark is brilliant, rich, and always the smartest person in the room. He also consistently waits too long to ask for help because he’s convinced he can fix everything himself.
Ultron happens because he doesn’t bring people in early.
Civil War happens because he carries guilt alone.
Infinity War becomes reactive chaos instead of coordinated planning.
Tony eventually learns that being the hero doesn’t mean doing it solo. It means building the team before the crisis and loving people 3000. And then there’s my colleague who sent a group text on a random Monday about how he was closing down his company and finding a new job. Look…do I know that I could have helped this person keep their firm open and running? No. Absolutely not. But am I really disappointed that they didn’t give me the opportunity to help and instead played it cool until things blew up? Yes…of course. And look, I can’t really fault them…because I used to be awful about this too.
But here’s the part I missed.
Lawyers are actually good at asking for help. We just don’t call it that.
We call it getting a second opinion.
Or we run out case strategy by someone and get feedback.
Or we ask colleagues for the arguments they made that worked in similar cases.
That’s help!
But it’s only when I realized that, that I was able to ask for the help I truly wanted.
No…scratch that…the help I truly needed!
Brené Brown talks a lot about how we admire vulnerability in other people and leaders, but resist showing it ourselves.
That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re early enough to change the ending.
Wrapping It Up
The difference between asking for help and shutting the doors isn’t really ability. It’s timing.
Early help sounds like:
“I would love to bounce this idea off of you before I mess something up”
Late help sounds like:
“I should’ve said something sooner…and now we both have malpractice claims pending on this case”
Let’s try to do more of the former and less of the latter…especially if we want to be Iron Man or MJ (or maybe the MJ of practicing law?).
Next week we are talking about How to Tell Better Stories, until then send one text you’ve been avoiding and ask for help while you’re still writing the middle of the story. |
