How To Identify When You Need Help As A Leader   Asking others for help can be difficult.  The psychology of driven, perfectionist people though is to prefer doing everything themselves.  Others never seem to match up to their expectations and standards.  Founders, entrepreneurs, strong willed individuals are often guilty of this “I will do it myself” mentality.  I am one of them.  For various reasons to do with different backgrounds and experiences, we are seized with the need for independence and self-reliance.  This works fine up to a point.  The modern age though has seen business become so much more complex.  Specialisation, niche dominance, technology, the need for light speed are all driving us toward realising we cannot do it all by ourselves.  How do we audit ourselves so we know we have to turn off that independent streak spigot and unleash that “get help” flexibility?   Here are 7 indicators that we need to rethink our approach and tackle issues from a different mind set.   When we need more experience We know what we know, but we don’t know everything.  Our lack of experience can be a blocker to further growth and we are limiting ourselves unnecessarily.  We need to hire the specialists with that required experience, rather than trying to recalibrate ourselves to master every new aspect of business. There are only so many hours in the day, so we are better off to get the experience in quickly through others, than try and work it out ourselves through trial and error.   When we need a different skill set Leonardo Da Vinci was a polymath, the essence of the renaissance man who could do it all.  We are not him.  What we need to master today is so much broader and more complex, we cannot hope to mimic Leonardo.  Audit the business for the key skill sets needed today and also for those which will be needed in the future.  As organisations grow, some people get left behind.  They were capable and fine at a certain size, but struggle with the bigger scale and new accountability.  We need to skill up those who can handle it and bring in new people to fill the gaps. All the while, keeping an eye for potential gaps which will emerge over the horizon.   When we need a different perspective Making decisions, based on what we know and the information available to us is a leader strength.  The problem though is, are we locked into a narrow view of what is possible?  We have probably all seen that training tool where, depending on how you look at the drawing, it is either a beautiful young woman or an old crone.  Same drawing, but different insights into what we are actually looking at.  The leader who is an order giver, a commander, a teller, will miss the opportunity to get different insights from within the team.  We have to recall that scene during the triumphant parade through the streets of Rome, Caesar had a bloke next to him in the chariot whispering in his ear “you are not a God”.  We need to understand we are not a God either and get inputs from others.   When we need creativity and innovation Sometimes the less people know, the more insight they have.  The codification of the work, the history of the people in the firm, the inherent groupthink all work against creative ideas emerging internally.  We need these in order to thrash the competition in the marketplace.  We get very, very focused on ourselves and lack outside perspectives.  Bringing in people from outside is handy, because they challenge the norms, ideas, sacred cows and the established hierarchy.  I always ask our new people to report to me after their first month on what we are doing that is working and what we need to do better. Unlike the rest of us, they see things we all take for granted and which we don’t question anymore.   When we need additional people power Japan is very good at this.  They throw a lot more people at tasks and projects than we do in the West.  They are more fixated with ensuring no mistakes, so they do that by applying t