Why Your First Instinct Isn't to Ask for Help (And How to Change It)
•Episode 694
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In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, host Todd Rhoades discusses the common resistance to asking for help in leadership roles. He argues that asking for help is not a sign of weakness but rather an essential component of effective leadership. Rhoades emphasizes that proactive help-seeking fosters team success and prevents crises. By framing the act of asking for help as ownership rather than weakness, leaders can set a positive example for their teams and create a culture of vulnerability-based trust.
• Leaders often resist asking for help due to cultural expectations of self-sufficiency.
• Waiting until overwhelmed can lead to urgent, chaotic situations requiring rescue instead of help.
• Asking for help shows good leadership and prioritizes organizational success over personal ego.
• Leaders should model proactive help-seeking to foster a healthy team culture.
• Ministry contexts may amplify the resistance to asking for help due to spiritualized self-sufficiency.
• Proactive help-seeking is aligned with biblical principles of community and support.
Your project behind your calendar is absolutely insane and you know you need help, but instead of asking, you just power through and you tell yourself, hey, I've got this, or that everybody else is slammed as well, or maybe if you're honest, you don't want to look like you can't handle it. So do what you always do. You carry it alone. Until one day you just can't carry everything anymore. If this sounds familiar, we're going to talk about it today. You're in the right place here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.
My name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffing.com. And recently I was reading a piece by Dan Ryland, who's a great executive pastor, on unshakable leadership. And it got me thinking about this weird, just a weird resistance we have a lot of times for asking for help. Most of us were shaped by a culture that celebrates self-sufficiency. Go figure it out yourself. Don't be a burden. Leaders have it together. And even recently, we'll just get AI to do it, right? I use AI a lot, and it makes a lot of my work faster, but it also creates a lot more work for me still. Take all this and put it into a ministry context, and sometimes it's even worse because now you've got this kind of spiritual layer on top of it. Strong Christians depend on God, not people. If I was more prayerful, I wouldn't need help, and those kind of things that we tell ourselves, which are just not true. And so asking for help just feels like you're admitting that you're weak, or worse, that you're not spiritual enough.
But let me tell you, there are some things that go wrong when we don't ask for help. And here's what's actually happening. You think you're being responsible for not asking for help, but you're actually creating a bigger problem and a long-term problem. Because when you wait until you're drowning, you don't ask for help either. You need rescue at that point. And rescue, different than help. Rescue is downright messy. It's urgent, it's chaotic. It involves other people having to get involved because you didn't have soon enough, and it makes everybody scramble. Now you've gone from could have used some support to I'd gotta have support because right now this is a dumpster fire, this is a crisis, everything's burning down unless I get some help. And the worst part, you've modeled to your team that suffering in silence is kind of the standard, and you're watching, they're watching you burn out really quietly and learning because of your example how to do the same. Now, let me tell you, I know you're not trying to be a martyr. You genuinely don't want to burden people. I get that. And I think there's something about being a man that I know for me, I don't like to ask for help. Don't even Don, don't even ask me one more time to ask for directions, okay? Because I'm not going to do it. I'll figure it out on my own until I'm so lost that I have to ask for directions. And then, like I said, it's a crisis. Everybody has to scramble. But here's the reframe I think you need. Okay? Asking is ownership, not weakness. If you think of it like that, it changes the whole equation. Asking for help before you're drowning is not weakness, it's actually a sign of good leadership. It's ownership of the mission. Because when you ask early, you're saying, hey, I care more about getting this done than I care about looking capable, right? You're prioritizing your whole team's success, your church's success, your mission success over your ego. And you're protecting the work and yourself from really unnecessary collapse. Patrick Lincioni talks about vulnerability-based trust, and it's the foundation of healthy teams, and it starts when leaders admit that they don't have it all together. And when you ask for help, you're not showing weakness, you're actually showing strength, the kind that builds culture.
So, what does this actually look like? First of all, you have to separate asking from needing. Okay, asking is proactive, needing is reactive, okay? So start asking before it's urgent. Hey, I've got a project coming up. Could you take a look at this with me next week? Not, hey, I'm buried and everything's on fire. Can you drop everything and come help me? So that's number one. Number two, name it out loud with your team. Hey, I'm working on getting better at asking for help earlier, so I just wanted to reach out. It's not a crisis, it's just a collaboration. Could you help me on this? That's literally changing the narrative when you present it like that. Number three, notice when others ask you for help. How do you feel about them? Do you think they're weak? Probably not. Do you respect that they're being honest and proactive? Probably exactly. That's the whole point. Extend yourself the same grace that you extend to other people when they ask for your help.
See here's the thing. Ministry amplifies this problem because we've spiritualized self-sufficiency. We've made I can do all things through Christ mean I shouldn't need people. But that's not what Paul meant. He had a team. He asked for help constantly. He wrote letters asking churches to send him support, to send people to pray for him. Jesus himself sent disciples out in pairs, not alone, but together. Even Jesus in the garden asked for his friends to stay awake with him. He didn't get it, but he asked. Asking for help isn't a lack of faith, it's how the body of Christ is supposed to function.
So here's your bottom line for today. Asking for help before you're desperate is not weakness. It's actually wise stewardship of the life and ministry that God has given you. So listen, you don't have to carry all of this alone, and you weren't meant to. If this helped you today, I hope you'll share it with somebody else on your team who needs to hear it. We're all in this together, and at Chemistry Staffing, we are for you. If there's ever any way that we can help your church, please reach out to me. Podcast at chemistry staffing.com is my email. All right, that's it for today. We'll be right back here tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast episode.
