ASKING FOR HELP
Can you tell by this picture that the young lady on the end of the lead rope, the woman in the blue shirt, is asking Mickey, the miniature horse, to move forward? Clearly, her “ask” isn’t getting her the results she wanted. Partnering with equines creates an opportunity to become aware of when we are incongruent with our intentions and our actions. Our four-legged facilitators respond to the physical request, not the intention.
Our participant, recognizing that Mickey was not moving with her, made another request, this time to her fellow classmates. She asked her classmate (the young lady near Mick) to help. During this simple activity of leading a horse, there are many choices being made. Some of those decisions we can witness and others we can only surmise. The inner dialogue of our three participants might have sounded something like this:
*The Leader (student in blue top): How important is it that I move this horse? What does the horse represent in my life? Do I REALLY care if I lead him? What will my peers, all the other students watching this, think of me if I don’t get this horse to move? What the %*! am I doing wrong? If I ask for help, is that a sign of weakness and self-doubt?
*The Helper: I care and want to contribute, yet do I know how to help? If I help, now I’m putting myself in front of all my peers and I might make the situation worse – is it worth that risk? Maybe she should just pick another horse, or let Mickey go. If I help, am I undermining the Leader’s ability to problem solve?
* Mickey: Does this human even know what she wants? I’m confused and getting mixed signals… I’d rather just eat this yummy grass. Oh, no, there’s another human now involved…wait! This is a good thing, this human knows how to help me understand what I’m asked to do. Whew! Glad she came along and cleared things up for me!
Yes, the above thoughts are just speculations and assumptions. Regardless of how accurate they are, we can all agree that recognizing and listening to your inner dialogue increases your self-awareness. The first step in seeking guidance or support is recognizing that asking for help is an option; this indicates you’ve shifted your perspective from a stuckness to taking action with your new awareness. Now that you’re informed, you can ask for support. The next steps in your decision-making are sizing up the situation and selecting whether or not to take action, who can you trust, etc.
For humans, the congruency of intention and movement can depend on many factors. To help us understand, let’s contrast the differences between child and adult asking behavior. Picture a youngster throwing a tantrum. There’s lots of screaming, tears, maybe a little leg kicking, throw in a few fists swinging wildly back and forth and you’ve got a physical request for something different than is currently happening. The adult recognizes that the child is making an “ask” albeit a noisy and immature one. They are a child, after all, so their behavior is their learning how to ask, it is their way of practicing. If the adult responds by rewarding this behavior, granting the request, they are much more likely to see more tantrums in the future. Now, if the adult can ignore the behavior, despite the noise and embarrassment, and deny the request, they are reinforcing that tantrums don’t work as a method of asking. The child’s tantrum didn’t move the adult. Over time, the kid will start to figure this out and learn what does work to get what they want.
Adult humans, on the other hand, often try to anticipate what they “think” the other human would like as a response. This anticipatory behavior is most evident when there is a power dynamic impacting the relationship. Imagine an organizational setting with a boss, a manager, and a line worker. The boss directs the manager to respond to a customer complaint by instructing the manager to make a phone call to the dissatisfied customer. The manager agrees, because he/she/they know that is what the boss wants to hear. The manager doesn’t like to make these kind of icky calls, so they direct the line worker to call the customer.
What happens next depends on the culture of the organization. Does the line worker feel safe enough to tell the boss that the manager deflected the task and gave them the assignment? Or do they just complain to everyone else in the company? If the boss finds out the manager didn’t follow through with his/her/their request, does the boss care that the manager didn’t follow through because the job got done? A variety of outcomes can positively and/or negatively impact relationships and future interactions depending on the choices of the participants.
Power dynamics impact horses too because a hierarchy exists within all horse herds. Toss flakes of hay into a pasture with horses and you’ll quickly discover which horses are at the top of the hierarchy because they are the ones munching on the hay. Lower herd members may be pushed out or have to wait until the more powerful members are finished. Call horses in from a field to the barn after a snowstorm, and the amount of white stuff covering some horses backs tells you they were not allowed in the run-in by the horses higher up the pecking order.
The hierarchy is not stagnant, rather it is fluid and can be a changing process as individual horses challenge the horse above them. Adding or removing members can also invite re-ordering. The position in the horse herd is important, determining who eats first or who eats at all if there are limited resources.
Who moves who matters to humans too because resources, such as time, money, etc. can either be wasted or leveraged depending on the situation. A top-down power structure does not invite difference or diversity and is more interested in authority and control than learning and growing. If the culture of an organization, group, or family is not nurturing and does not invite healthy conflict, then all the participants will typically suffer from the lack of a safe place to be fully present, share differing points of view, inviting learning.
The linking between intention and action, in both ourselves and others, is influenced by many factors. Self-reflection as a conscious practice becomes a guiding light, a torch, which helps us to overcome the barrage of outside messaging that can influence and undermine our confidence, inclination to try, or willingness to ask for help.
When we suspend the desire for a certain outcome, staying open to the results that emerge, we are invited to respond to that outcome however best it serves us. This skill of staying open to outcomes, with the conscious use of self builds as you develop the muscle. The good news is we all have the capacity and ability to get better and stronger through practice, reflection, and effective feedback.
Who moved who in our example with Mickey? The first student, the leader, moved her peer who accepted the invitation to help. Ultimately, the helper working with the leader moved Mickey gently forward. Hopefully, what moved for both these humans, as well as the rest of the Northwood class that was watching, was an increased understanding of choice, agency, and the opportunity to learn in safe spaces.
Reflect on your past choices, where and when did you ask for help? What were the conditions present and/or absent that allowed you to make the choice to ask for help?
Identify a current situation where you are not asking for help. Reflect on what is stopping you.
What can you change in order to ask?