Can you shape "asking for help" behaviour in yourself?
Photo by Austin Kehmeier on Unsplash
In the recent post, I discovered that asking for help is still something I struggle with. I have certain people in my life that I have no problems in asking for help but if it is a group of people, I probably won't do that. It got me thinking. How can I shape my own behaviour to acquire skills I would like to have?
Shaping is a method of operant learning that is widely used in teaching human and non-human animals. The premises of it are to break the behaviour down into small, achievable steps and reinforcing approximations towards the goal. The example might be on how to teach a raven to pick up a ball and throw it into a basket. This behaviour requires many skills. Raven needs to come close to the ball, needs to pick up the ball, carry it and put it into the basket. And those are milestones, not small steps. The first question we need to ask ourselves is, what behaviour I already have that is the closest to the behaviour I want to see? In the example of the raven, it could be standing on the ground with the ball nearby. The first approximation that you want to teach would be to make it about the ball. It could be look at it, go towards it or peck it. Sometimes you start at just standing there near it. It depends on the repertoire of behaviours of animal that you work with. Knowing your animal will allow you to plan more precisely. That's the first stage of a training plan.
That shows you how small your approximation can be. The behaviour of picking up the ball and throwing it into a basket you start from just looking at the ball in the distance or even with just standing near it! There are no steps that are "too small". Everyone needs to start somewhere.
Taking it back to the example of asking for help, the behaviour that I already have is asking for help individual person I know and consider my friend. I can further develop it by either asking people I don't know very well or by asking groups of people. Asking groups can be further broken down to make it accessible, yet still a little bit over my comfort zone. Maybe starting with asking 3 or 4 people? Maybe finding a small forum with just a few people could be a good way?
Another thing to consider is, do I see an increase in difficulty depending on the subject I want to ask help with? I believe I do. The more difficult questions are about help in my personal work, like can you help me with the project I'm working on? This question puts me in a vulnerable position where I would have to show the progress I made. So the issue to work through is not just to increase the number of people that I ask but also the level of difficulty and vulnerability of the question itself.
Shaping works best when you work on one thing at the time. When I will be increasing the number of people I shouldn’t be also adding more vulnerable questions. When increasing the vulnerability of question, I should start with only one person. Working on one thing at the time before putting all of the steps together.
My first step will be to ask strangers for help on an individual basis (working on one thing only). I have a couple of emails to send that I was procrastinating on. The individuals I want to approach are experts in their fields which makes it more difficult and it's not something I practised a lot. That's my first approximation of shaping “asking for help” behaviour in me. What is my reinforcement? The progress and completion of the task will be my reinforcement. I will report on my progress in two weeks time.
You can use behaviour science in your own life to design learning new skills in the most positive and least intrusive way. It might not be the easiest thing to analyse and some people might not like self-reflection part. By doing so you might find out things about yourself that you hoped not to find. It's not for everybody. But if you are already doing self-reflection on a regular basis, this can be an amazing tool to enhance your self-development significantly and learn new skills effectively.