Latest / New Manager Conversations with Fexingo: First 90 Days, Managing Former Peers, and Leadership Basics / How New Managers Can Ask for Help Without Looking Weak
Transcript
- Lucas: There is a stat from Harvard Business Review that has stuck with me: eighty-seven percent of first-time managers say they avoided asking for help in their first six months because they were afraid it would make them look like they didn't deserve the job. Luna: That's a staggering number. And I bet the other thirteen percent are just better liars. Lucas: Right. But the irony is that not asking for help is exactly what makes new managers fail. The HBR study also found that the ones who did ask — even clumsily — were rated higher by their teams within a year. Luna: So the fear of looking weak actually creates the weakness. Lucas: Exactly. And today I want to look at why asking for help is such a bottleneck for new leaders, and then a few concrete moves to get past it. I've got a case from a SaaS company that really illustrates the cost of not asking. Luna: I have a counter-example from a product team I worked with. Let's start with yours. Lucas: Okay. So this is a VP of engineering at a mid-sized SaaS firm — call it about two hundred people. He was promoted from senior engineer to VP during a critical migration from a legacy monolith to microservices. Luna: That's a huge technical and organizational lift. Lucas: Huge. And he had deep knowledge of the old system but zero experience running a migration at that scale. The board was nervous, the timeline was aggressive, and he had a team of twenty engineers, many of whom had been his peers a month earlier. Luna: I can already picture him nodding in meetings and then panicking alone. Lucas: Exactly what happened. He didn't ask the CTO for guidance. He didn't bring in an outside consultant. He didn't even ask his most senior engineer — who had done a smaller migration before — to co-lead the technical design. He just burned weekends and fell behind. Luna: And his team noticed. Lucas: Within two months, the senior engineer quit. The migration missed three milestones. And the CEO had to step in and restructure. By month four, the VP was moved to an individual contributor role. He'd rather have looked like he knew everything than actually get the help he needed. Luna: That's brutal. But my counter-example is a product manager who did the opposite. She was promoted to lead a product line she had helped build as an associate. When a launch started slipping, she gathered her former peers in a room and said, 'I have never led a launch this complex. I need you to tell me what I'm missing.' Lucas: She named the gap without apologizing. Luna: Exactly. And the team didn't see her as weak. They saw her as self-aware. They jumped in to redesign the rollout plan. The launch still shipped a week late, but it was successful, and her team's engagement scores went up. Lucas: So the difference isn't whether you ask — it's how you ask. Let me break that down into three moves. First: name your gap without apologizing. Luna: That's harder than it sounds. Most of us lead with 'I'm sorry, I should know this, but...' Lucas: Which signals shame. Instead, try: 'Here's what I do well, here's where I need help — can you cover that piece?' That frames it as a division of labor, not a confession of incompetence. Luna: Second move? Lucas: Make the ask specific and time-bound. Vague requests like 'Can you help me with the migration?' dump the problem in someone else's lap. Say instead: 'Could you review the database sharding plan by Wednesday and flag two risks?' That's a concrete, scoped request. Luna: That also respects the other person's time. And it makes it easier for them to say yes. Lucas: Third: reciprocate visibly. If someone helps you, name that help publicly in a way that doesn't feel like a power move. Say 'Maria caught a blind spot in our timeline — that saved us a week.' That normalizes the exchange. Now asking for help becomes a signal of good leadership, not weakness. Luna: There's a subtlety here with managing former peers. When you get promoted, your old peers watch how you handle uncertainty. If you pretend you have all the answers, they resent it. If you ask them for input, they feel valued. Lucas: That's a really good point. The dynamic shifts from competition to collaboration. One thing I'd add: don't ask for help from the same person every time. Spread it around. Otherwise you create a dependency that looks like favoritism. Luna: Or like you're using one person as a crutch. Diversify your help portfolio. Lucas: Exactly. And this is where a lot of new managers stumble — they think asking for help is a one-time event. Actually, it's a habit you build. Start with small, low-stakes asks. 'Can you double-check this email for tone?' 'What's the best Slack channel for this question?' Build the muscle. Luna: I want to push back on one thing though. There's a risk of asking too much too fast and becoming known as the manager who can't figure anything out. Lucas: That's fair. The antidote is to always show you've done your homework. Before you ask, say 'I've looked at X and Y, but I'm stuck on Z.' That proves you've put in effort. People respect that. Luna: So the art is: do enough prep that your ask is smart, but not so much that you're paralyzed. Lucas: Right. And that balance is exactly what distinguishes the managers who grow from the ones who stall. If we've helped you think through a move like that — or even just given you a framework to try — a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these shows going. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, that small supporter base makes a real difference. It's how we stay ad-free and keep digging into this stuff. Lucas: Back to the main thread though — I think the biggest takeaway is that leadership credibility doesn't come from knowing everything. It comes from knowing what you don't know and being willing to close that gap with other people's expertise. Luna: And if you manage to do that in the first ninety days, you've already beaten the odds. Lucas: Yeah. The HBR data backs that up: managers who ask for help in month one are significantly more likely to be seen as effective at month twelve. Luna: So the next time you're in a new role and you feel that knot in your stomach — just let it out. Name it. Ask for what you need. Lucas: Make it specific, make it reciprocal, and you'll actually build more trust than if you'd tried to go it alone.