What if someone in your life is struggling, and you know you could help them if they just let you?

It feels cruel to just let them suffer on their own, making the same mistake over and over again, when all they have to do is listen to you.

• Maybe you’ve been where they are, and you can offer support from a place of wisdom.
• Maybe you’ve helped others with this same issue, and you know you can ease their pain.
• Maybe you’re simply a composed and caring sounding board, someone who can listen and ask smart questions to upgrade their mindset.

In a perfect world, they’d ask for your help. My bat-phone would ring, and someone I care about would say, “Hey, Howie, Help me if you can, I’m feeling down.”

In a slightly less-than-perfect world, I might notice their distress and say, “Hey, I can help,” and they’d say, “Oh, yes, that would be amazing.”

But in the is-world, as opposed to the wish-it-were-world, people often don’t want to admit they need help. They might feel weak, or needy, or not-enough.

And it’s even harder for folks to ask for or accept help from people who have “skin in the game” of your life. If I’m their employee, colleague, or boss; spouse, parent, or child — then they have extra reason to be wary of my motives in wanting to help: Am I trying to make their life better, or my own?

Depending on the power dynamics in our relationship, I might have the power to plow through their reluctance or resistance and insist that they talk to me about the issue.

But I guarantee that doing so will generate a superficial conversation at best, with no buy-in on their end, no matter how brilliant the solution we devise.

That’s why the first move in initiating a helping conversation is to obtain permission to have the conversation.

And that involves being totally willing to have them withhold that permission.

In other words, your ability to influence depends on giving up control.

That’s not quite right. Here it is, better: Your ability to influence depends upon giving up the illusion of control.

Next time: An approach (and a script) for asking for permission to help.

I support leaders and their teams to achieve high performance through mindset mastery, individually and collectively. Find out more about how I can help at askHowie.com.