Asking Your Team ‘How Can I Help?’ Improves Business Performance in These 5 Ways

Why this simple question fuels a company culture committed to enhanced results

Business leaders understand that teamwork is invaluable to the bottom line, and is never to be underestimated. Redpixel/ShutterStock

By Michelle Van Slyke

As nearly all business leaders have likely grasped, teamwork is invaluable to the bottom line, and is never to be underestimated. Working together is an engine for collaboration and better performance and outcomes. It follows, then, that leaders often have a willingness and desire to help teammates, but the most effective of them also understand that simply being willing isn’t enough—that they need to make colleagues feel comfortable reaching out for assistance by presenting themselves as welcoming and approachable.

That’s why I’ve started regularly asking my team, “How can I help?” and what appeared at first to be just a simple query has materially and positively impacted both the company culture and its performance. Here’s are some of its effects:

1. Team Members Feel Supported

How many times have you heard leadership insist that “My door is always open?”—a commonly used phrase that conveys a willingness to help whenever it’s needed. Yet, while often spoken with positive intentions, this blanket statement actually fails to encourage colleagues to raise their hands for support.