Dr. Wayne Baker is a professor of business administration and professor of management and organizations at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, and faculty director of the Centre for Positive Organizations. The author of the forthcoming book, 'All You Have to Do Is Ask', as well as five other books and many scholarly articles. Wayne's research focuses on social capital, social networks, generosity, and positive organizations. He's also the co-founder and board member of Give and Take, Inc. who are developers of collaboration technologies based on the principles in All You Have to Do Is Ask.

In this week’s podcast, we learn why being able to ask to help is one of the keys to workplace success, and the simple steps you can take to ask in ways that make it easy for people to say yes!

Connect with Wayne Baker: 

• https://allyouhavetodoisask.com/

You’ll Learn:

• [03:15] - Wayne explains why being a good giver-requester at work shapes our success and wellbeing in workplaces.
• [04:29] - Wayne outlines how his research on giver-requesters intersects with the research of Professor Adam Grant on being successful self-protective givers.
• [06:07] - Wayne shares what the research is finding on how gender influences our ability to ask for help at work.
• [06:57] - Wayne offers insights on how age and power influence our ability to ask for help at work.
• [08:39] - Wayne outlines how psychological safety in our workplaces influences our ability to ask for help at work and what we can do to improve this
• [10:34] - Wayne outlines the SMART criteria to make it easier to ask for help at work and for people to say yes.
• [13:12] - Wayne shares his free assessment tool to measure your ability to ask for help and shares the findings surfacing from this new research.
• [14:54] - Wayne shares the barriers that make it difficult for most people to ask for help at work and how we can overcome these.
• [18:01] - Wayne shares why researchers are finding that you should ask people more than once for help.
• [19:06] - Wayne provides some plug and play routines that workplaces can use to help make asking for help easier.
• [20:34] - Wayne shares how we can map the energy for asking and giving within our teams to measure what is unfolding.
• [21:23] - Wayne explains how mini-games can be used to playfully incentivize a group to ask for help to solve a problem together.
• [23:22] - Wayne offers some tips to help recruit and rewards leaders who are chief help seekers.
• [24:50] - Wayne offers two cautions about asking for help at work.
• [26:28] - Wayne completes the Lightning Round.

Your Resources:

• MPPW Podcast on Facebook
• The Economics of Higher Purpose by Robert Quinn

Thanks for listening! 

Thanks so much for joining me again this week.  If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this post.

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Until next time, take care!  Thank you Wayne!