Steve Jobs ‘never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them.’ The challenge for most people? Reaching out to someone they don’t know

You may not want to stay in your current job forever. You may want to work at a different company. You may want to change direction or even your entire career. And even if your goal is to stay right where you are, you want to have the best possible experience and get the most out of it. Your best bet in accomplishing any of these goals is to build relevant relationships with people who can give you the advice, encouragement, and opportunities you seek.

You can only go so far alone. But with the right network, your future can be unlimited.

There are two types of folks: those comfortable reaching out to people they don’t know and those who aren’t. And being the second type, the shy type, can have consequences.

How widespread is this problem? As an example, you’d imagine someone hired to be a B2B salesperson would be OK with cold-calling potential customers, right? After all, their job might depend on that ability. And yet, a study found that 48 percent of salespeople were actively afraid to do so!

If virtually half of a sales force sweats out cold-calling, then the psychological challenge of trying to connect with people we don’t know must be formidable indeed—which is why your first obstacle to expanding your sphere of influence may be your hesitation to reach out to someone you don’t know. It’s far easier to sink back into your comfort zone and keep talking to people you already have a positive relationship with. But that tends to limit your horizons.

So why are we so frightened to reach out? Well, let’s go back to the study of B2B salespeople, who provided two clear reasons for being anxious about cold calling: (1) they were afraid of sounding like a salesperson and (2) they were afraid of being rejected. Broaden the emotions expressed in those reasons, and they can easily apply to all of us. In the first case, we’re looking for professional help, and we don’t want the other person to think we’re trying to use them. Research shows that professional networking can lead to feelings of “dirtiness,” particularly for people with lower power in an organization. The more self-serving the networking feels, the more discomfort people tend to have, especially when the experience feels forced instead of spontaneous.

In the second case of fear of rejection, well, we don’t really have to expand on that. Nobody wants to be turned down, especially when they’re trying to connect with someone they respect who may be at a higher professional level than them. But instead of looking at potential rejection, focus on the positive possibilities, and it could be a game changer. If you want something, you must ask for it, even if it’s uncomfortable.

When Steve Jobs was only twelve, he looked up the number of HP’s co-founder, Bill Hewlett, in the phonebook (for those of you who remember phonebooks). Then he had the nerve to cold-call Hewlett on the pretext of requesting any leftover electronic parts the company might have. The executive was amused Jobs dared to call him up out of the blue and was impressed with the kid’s knowledge and drive. Jobs not only got those parts, but he also got his first entry into the tech world. Hewlett offered him an internship at HP, where he ended up on an assembly line, using those same parts to build frequency counters for the company.

“I’ve always found something to be very true, which is most people don’t get those experiences because they never ask,” Jobs said in 1994. “I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help.” I emphasize that last part of the quote because that’s what you want to focus on—not your fear. Most people do want to help if they can. You just have to be willing to ask.

Jobs went on to say, “You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn, with people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

Excerpted from Unspoken: A Guide To Cracking The Hidden Corporate Code by Ella F. Washington, PhD. Copyright © 2024 by Ella F. Washington, PhD. Used with permission of Forbes Books, Charleston, South Carolina. All rights reserved.