Have A Plan Before Asking For Help To Get Better Responses

Asking for help isn’t always easy, and it can be difficult to convince someone to give you a hand if you don’t know what you need them to do. Start by having a plan to make it more likely they will be willing to assist.

Picture: Keith Tyler/Flickr.

As personal finance blog Wise Bread explains, having possible solutions makes it easier for someone to agree to help you. They know off the bat what they’re going to be helping you with. If you bring multiple options, they can choose straight away. From their perspective, this is much better than being forced to come up with their own plan on how to fix your problems:

Before you go asking for help, come up with a list of possible solutions to your problem. Even if they’re a bit far fetched, having something to offer is many times better than having nothing. If you’re very uncomfortable asking for help, or it feels threatening, you can even pose your question as “Which of these options seems best to you?” This allows your respondent to give an opinion or offer a solution of their own.

Even if you don’t know how to fix a problem, offering some kind of solution — even one that won’t work — shows that you’ve thought about it. For the person you’re seeking assistance from, knowing you’ve given it some thought is more preferable to the alternative.

The 7 Best and Worst Ways to Ask for Help [Wise Bread]