If you’re a business academic, you’re probably a pretty accomplished person. And like many highly accomplished, successful, brilliant people, you may hate asking for help.
As Manfred Kets de Vries notes in this HBR article, the reluctance to ask for help can feel like admitting weakness, even failure, for some people. It can also carry a range of negative emotional scripts about our worth and safety: we might believe that we “owe” anyone who helps us, that we don’t deserve others’ help, or that we’re opening ourselves up for painful rejection (after all, you’ll never hear “no” if you don’t ask). These feelings are more likely among academics, for several reasons.
Yet the most successful academics often have incredibly strong support networks. So how did they overcome the widespread aversion to assistance in order to build these career-changing connections?
Let's talk about exactly why it's so hard to ask for help in academia, and how to do it effectively—plus the immense benefits of asking.
Why Academics Struggle to Ask
The academic environment creates unique barriers to seeking help:
Imposter syndrome can make scholars fear exposure (“If someone sees behind the scenes, they’ll see just how much of a fraud I am!”)
Competition for tenure and grants breeds isolation
The "lone genius" myth persists, despite being repeatedly and firmly debunked
Academics may worry about burdening colleagues just as busy as themselves
The fear of appearing incompetent to mentors is REAL (I think I’d rather have eaten my notebook than ever admit to my supervisor that I didn’t understand her feedback)
Many academics have legitimate concerns about intellectual ownership and theft of ideas
Nevertheless, the truth is that everyone needs help. Indeed, the gap between what’s expected of business academics and what they can actually do is fast becoming a veritable canyon. Whenever an early-career academic reaches out to me for the first time, I’m saddened to realize that they usually believe most of their colleagues are simply smarter and more efficient researchers than they are. In actuality, they’re probably getting help you can’t see. Case in point: our top two clients last year spent around $17k and $16k on edits with us, respectively.
Not everyone has that degree of funding to invest in their success (though it’s worth noting that our edits of full journal articles start at only $750). But fortunately, there’s plenty of free and less specialized help available for academics too.
Here are some common forms of support—consider all of them before choosing at least 5 where, based on your immediate gut reaction, you think you’d be most likely to find much-needed help if you asked.
How to Ask Effectively
Once you’ve identified 5 promising sources of help, you can use the well-known SMART approach to ask for what you need. That is, whether the help you’re seeking is paid or free, formal or informal, ask for something that is:
Specific (Can you please do X for me?)
Measurable (Here is what I’m picturing/some steps you could take to do this.)
Achievable (Is this doable for you? If not, what specific aspect isn’t doable?)
Relevant (Here’s why your help would be so helpful to me.)
Timebound (Can you do it for me by this date?)
This structure ensures that you’re clear on exactly what you need and why, reducing the likelihood of misunderstanding or hurt feelings if the would-be helper declines.
Finally, always follow up any kind of help with thanks, but don’t be afraid to let any kind of paid assistance know how they could be even more helpful. Those of us who provide services have designed our business to (you guessed it!) serve you: we want to know if there’s something we can improve on.
Remember, building support networks takes time and it’s totally normal to feel overwhelmed as an academic right now. If you’d like specialized, results-oriented support with something you’ve written, please contact us. We understand how hard it can be to ask for help, which is why our aim as editors is two-fold: to help you achieve your publication goals and take as much work as we can firmly off your plate.
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