The world of work seems more interconnected than ever before. It's rare—if not impossible—to complete a project on your own, without at least a few of your colleagues' cooperation and support. And even though, technically, it may be a job requirement that they help you, we all know it's not that simple.

People have choices when it comes to helping their co-workers. They can find ways for saying no—maintaining that something isn't their job, claiming that they don't have time, or ignoring your need altogether. Even if they agree to help, they can often choose how to prioritize helping you: Is your request the next thing on their to-do list or will they get to it "eventually"? And finally, they can choose what level of effort to put into helping you. Are you getting their best or their bare minimum?

You undoubtedly know the frustration of not getting the help you need from the people around you. Talent development requires putting time into building networks and alliances at work, but if you don't know how to successfully tap into your network to get what you need, it does you no good.

People do want to help

The research on helping (there's decades of it) paints a somewhat surprising picture: The chances are pretty good that if you aren't getting the support you need from your colleagues, it's mostly your fault. What I mean is that people are, generally speaking, quite helpful by nature. They aren't the problem.

For example, in "(Mis)Understanding Our Influence Over Others," Cornell University's Vanessa K. Bohns reviewed more than 14,000 instances of people asking perfect strangers for help and found that they underestimated the likelihood of getting that help by 48 percent. In other words, other people are roughly twice as likely to help us as we think they are.

This is true even when requests for aid are large, irritating, or possibly illegal. As reported in "Underestimating Our Influence Over Others' Unethical Behavior and Decisions," participants were told to go into the university library and ask strangers to help them write the word "pickle" in pen on the page of a library book. The participants predicted that only one in four would do it. Imagine their surprise when 68 percent became willing accomplices to vandalism.

Simply ask

Why do we wildly underestimate the odds of someone agreeing to help us? Ultimately, it's a failure of taking perspective. When a help seeker calculates the odds of getting help, he typically only focuses on how inconvenient or effortful it will be for the other person to give him the aid he needs, completely missing the cost of saying no: the discomfort, the awkwardness, the feeling of acting like a jerk.

Agreeing to assist, on the other hand, is a way to feel a boost of self-esteem and a sense of purpose. Who hasn't felt a warm glow after doing a good deed for a friend or colleague?

So, if someone isn't helping you, it's probably because you didn't ask. You assumed that your need was more obvious than it was to your co-worker (something psychologists call the illusion of transparency). Perhaps you felt uncomfortable asking for help. Or, if you did ask, you didn't ask for it in the right way—one that satisfies the helper's needs.

Here are some simple rules to keep in mind when you need cooperation from others to reach your goals. They will make your requests for help more likely to succeed and more rewarding for the helper.

Be explicit about the kind of help you want

It can be difficult to recognize when someone needs our help and even harder to see exactly what kind of help they need. Busy people routinely fail to offer support, not because they are lazy or selfish but because being busy taxes our brains. Having to think about many things at once or work within tight deadlines shrinks our working memory, limits our attention, and forces us to take mental shortcuts rather than think things through.

People aren't mind readers, even on a good day. On a busy day, people can be remarkably clueless about others' needs. So, you can't sit back and count on others to just notice on their own that you need help, even if you feel awkward about asking.

And when your need for help is clear, your desire for help may not be. No one wants to give unwanted help, because people don't usually respond well to it. Recipients can be angry or resentful, feeling that the offer of unsolicited help indicates that the helper doubts their ability. Thus, your colleagues may be reluctant to offer help to you when you don't ask for fear that you don't want it.

Finally, if you do ask for help but your request is vague, it may go unanswered. Vague requests can leave people uncertain about what, exactly, you want from them. If I don't know what you want from me, I may worry that I can't do it successfully. Or, just as bad, I may worry that it's something I really don't want to do.

Personally, the vague request I most frequently receive is to "connect." Usually it's in the form of an email from someone I've never met, who tells me that he would "love to chat" or set up a time to "pick my brain." Of course, these people don't want to just connect. Invariably, they have something specific in mind that they want from me, whether it's information, an introduction, or a position in my company. When I'm unsure of what someone really wants, I have no idea whether I will want to—or even can—give it, and to avoid ending up in an awkward situation, I say no. I'm not proud to admit that, and I don't like doing it, but I like uncomfortable meetings with strangers even less.

When you need support, whether from a colleague or a person you've never met, be explicit and detailed about what you are asking for. This provides the kind of certainty your potential helper needs to make an informed decision and feel good about saying yes.

Avoid email if you can

It's perfectly normal to want to avoid making face-to-face requests for support. Most people don't feel all that comfortable asking for help. They worry that they will look foolish, that the conversation will be awkward, and that they may have to deal with the embarrassment of being told no. Asking for help in a less personal way, such as email, feels easier.

The problem is that impersonal modes of communication also make it easy for the potential helper to turn you down. She, too, is spared the awkwardness and embarrassment of rejecting you in person, and she can more easily go back to her own business without feeling like a huge jerk.

In fact, 2017 research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggests that face-to-face requests for help are up to 30 times more likely to succeed than email requests. Therefore, when something is really important, ask in person (or, if that's not possible, by phone). Any added discomfort will pay off.

If you must use email, write to individuals instead of groups

A common mistake people make when requesting help via email is sending a single message to all the potential helpers at once. We do this mostly to save ourselves time, and there is a certain intuitive logic to casting a wide net when asking for help.

However, requests for help fall victim to diffusion of responsibility when addressed to more than one person. In "Private E-mail Requests and the Diffusion of Responsibility," Greg Barron and Eldad Yechiam show that the more people you ask, the less likely anyone is to help. As the number of potential helpers grows (assuming they all know about each other), each one feels less personally obligated to help. With an email addressed to many recipients, people may also assume that one of the other recipients already responded, and do nothing.

If you plan to request support through email and you are asking more than one person, write individual messages that feel like specific, personal requests. This takes more time, but it's worth it.

Don't write anyone off

Imagine that you ask a colleague to help you meet a tight deadline, and he says no. How likely are you to ever ask him for help again? Probably not. That's what most people do.

And that's where most people make a big mistake. Remember, turning down your request for help the first time likely made that person uncomfortable. So, now, think about how uncomfortable it would be to turn you down twice.

It's relatively easy to find a justification for saying no to someone once, which is why rates of helping aren't always 100 percent. Excuses such as "I'm terribly busy" or "I'm not feeling so well today" work once to lessen your discomfort, but they don't work indefinitely.

The research is clear: According to "Once Bitten, Twice Shy," people who have rejected a first request for help are much more likely to help the second time around, not less. And this impulse is generally a good thing. It strengthens relationships and helps to mend ones that have become strained.

When you approach someone for help who has previously rejected you, you are not just more likely to get it; you give that person an opportunity to feel better about herself, too. And if you permanently avoid seeking her help, you aren't doing either of you any favors.