Does asking your manager for advice make you look less competent?
When facing an unfamiliar task, an employee may hesitate to approach their manager for fear of revealing a weakness. The question here concerns advice before acting, rather than feedback after completing work: does asking for guidance necessarily damage perceived competence?
What the literature establishes
Alison Wood Brooks, Francesca Gino and Maurice E. Schweitzer (2015, Management Science) show, in a series of experimental studies, that asking for advice can improve the advice seeker's perceived competence in the eyes of the person consulted. This effect depends in particular on task difficulty and the expertise of that person. The fear of appearing incompetent therefore does not accurately describe all the consequences of seeking advice.
Interpersonal risk does not disappear
Amy Edmondson (1999, Administrative Science Quarterly) establishes an association between team psychological safety and learning behaviours. This work sheds light on the conditions that make asking for help or acknowledging uncertainty possible, without isolating advice seeking from a manager. Employees therefore consider not only the usefulness of the answer, but also the interpersonal consequences they anticipate.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that employees simply need to consult their manager more often to strengthen their credibility. The findings justify neither asking as a matter of course nor treating advice as a substitute for preparation. A cautious application is to present the problem, the reasoning already undertaken and the precise point on which the manager's experience would be useful. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
Advice-seeking experiments do not reproduce the full history of an ongoing hierarchical relationship, with its availability constraints and evaluation responsibilities. The psychological safety study concerns teams and cannot establish that a particular wording produces a better response from a supervisor. Neither study demonstrates an optimal frequency of requests or shows that a better impression guarantees a technically sound decision.
A practical check in Sion
Within SHR's « Construire une relation efficace avec son manager » programme, an exercise in Sion could focus on a non-urgent decision in hydropower, healthcare, winegrowing or Alpine tourism, without changing mandatory approval and safety procedures. Over two weeks, record each request for advice along with the problem, the option under consideration and the targeted question, then note whether the answer provides a usable decision criterion. Next, calculate the proportion of requests that produced such a criterion, keeping the total number of requests as the denominator. This check assesses the operational usefulness of the exchange, not an assumed improvement in competence or trust. To go further: explore the Building an Effective Relationship with Your Manager training in Sion in the canton of Valais, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Building an Effective Relationship with Your Manager in Sion
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