The Little Red Hen is a Bad Role Model
How the Little Red Hen should have asked for help.
The moral of Little Red Hen is that you need to help in order to share in the reward of the work.
But what else is going on in this story? One person, er chicken, begrudgingly keeps on doing work by themselves and berating others for not helping them. The story praises the person who does things on their own and teaches us to shame others for not jumping in to help. So what did the Little Red Hen do wrong when asking for help? Let’s dig in!
Success Requires Asking For Help
Rarely does anything get done alone. It’s an important professional and personal skill to be able to ask for and receive help. If you’re not getting the help you want, don’t blame others and struggle to do it by yourself — change the way you ask for help.
How to Ask For Help
I’m taking this career workshop where the first lesson is to “cultivate everyday supporters” — in other words: to identify helpers, let them know you need help, and ask for help.
There’s a huge difference between asking a group of people for help, and asking a specific individual to help on a specific task. There’s the bystander effect where you assume someone else will jump in or is more qualified than you to act, so you do nothing. This creates a problem for the person needing help because everyone assumes that someone else will step up.
Side Note: Because of the bystander effect is, it’s important that you point to and ask a specific person to call 911 instead of shouting out “someone call 911!”
It’s Not Obvious to Others That You Actually Need Help
While it’s obvious to you that you need help, it’s an illusion of transparency that others recognize and understand your situation.
Sometimes you ask for help not because you can’t physically or mentally do the task, but because you want it done more urgently in parallel with other tasks. Because others recognize that you are capable of the ask yourself, they may not jump up to help when you ask because what they don’t understand is the urgency.
The Little Red Hen failed to communicate why she actually needed help. Obviously she was capable of doing the tasks herself, so there were unarticulated reasons why she needed help.
We need to practice communicating the reason why we need help, to make it clear to our potential helper why their effort is valued and how it will help. This is important not only in professional settings, but also in our personal lives.
Yesterday our cat peed on our toddler’s car seat that was on the living room floor. I went into cleanup mode, pulling the fabric covers off the seat and checking how far the damage went (all the way — the pee went all the way through). I asked my husband to move the car seat base outside, and when he said “sure” but didn’t immediately get up to help, I got frustrated and dumped the pee soaked fabric on the floor and picked up the car seat to carry it outside myself. I was acting like the Little Red Hen.
I failed to articulate why my request for help was so urgent. I saw the cat pee triggering a whole slew of tasks that could be done in parallel to get done faster so I could get back to all the other things I needed to accomplish that evening.
I could have said “I need to start this laundry so I can also get the diaper laundry done tonight. Can you move this outside while I start the laundry, so it can get as much sun as possible before the nanny might want to use the car seat tomorrow?”
Sure it’s a lot more to say, but it communicates what was obvious to me but not obvious to my husband.
Help Your Helpers Follow Through
First, make sure you’re asking people for help on tasks where they have the required ability or expertise. The Little Red Hen could have been more successful by asking specific animals for help on individual tasks that they were each best at. Ask the dog to dig holes to help plant the seed. Ask the cat to help cut the wheat. And ask the pig help carry the flour back from the mill.
After you identified the right helper, align on your expectations of what you are asking them to do and when you need it by. Set everyone up for success by communicating clearly, and follow up when expectations change.
Don’t Be Like the Little Red Hen
It’s easy to blame the other animals for not helping. It’s harder to look at yourself and ask why you failed at getting help. Don’t be like the Little Red Hen — instead identify specific people who can help you, communicate your need for their help, and follow up with them.
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Design Strategy, User Experience Design, Interaction Design
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