On Friday, I went with members of my family – my mother, my nephew and niece Edward and Rebecca, and Rebecca’s husband Phil – to The Spice of Life Indian restaurant in Lewisham to celebrate Edward’s and my birthday (same day, different year!).  It was probably late in 1988 or early in 1989 when I first visited the Spice and I’ve been going there ever since.  Meals at the Spice with friends and regular take-aways have formed a backdrop to the times in my life when things have been going well and the tougher times, too.

Today, responding to a couple of invitations to Link In and sending out a couple of my own, I pause to reflect on the question:  who do I rely on?  Because in these days of mobile careers and social networking the number of people we can call on and the number of people we actually do can be quite different.  There are friends and family who have been with me since my earliest years and others whom I have met along the way.  There are colleagues who have stood out along the way as offering wisdom and providing welcome support.  There are people from whose work I have learnt from and which I continue to explore – some by my participation in training programmes and others whose work I have devoured by reading and other means.  There are those people who have supported my practical needs (Moody at the Spice has looked after my need for food over the years and Gary has had ample mention for his great work on my kitchen over the turn of the year).

It’s interesting to reflect on how many people contribute to my well-being and in how many ways, even whilst none of them has the skill or time to make the right contribution every time I need support.  This can make for an interesting paradox – with so many people who can and do support me it is nonetheless easy to find myself without the support I need unless I ask.  I have already mentioned on this blog just how much receiving support relies on the willingness to make a request and to hear a ‘no’ as well as a ‘yes’.

Many of my clients, progressing through successive layers of leadership, find it challenging to balance reaching out for help with other considerations.  Early in their leadership careers they are keen to maintain the image of ‘someone who knows’ and this can make them hesitate to seek support.  At more senior levels, telling themselves they need to maintain confidentiality in any number of business matters they find the pool of peers and seniors is ever diminishing as a proportion of the people they interact with.  And still, they do need support.   You do need support.

In case you want to check in with yourself around the extent to which your needs for support are easily met here are just four questions for you:

• How confident are you that you notice in time when you have a need for support?
• How confident are you that you have people in your life who have the means to provide support when you need it across a range of needs?
• How confident are you that, when you need support, there are at least three people you would be willing to call on to request the support you need?
• How confident are you that, if one person says no, you’d be willing to keep reaching out and asking until you find the support you need?