> And I'll ask why they didn't just ask for help. They weren't comfortable asking for help. They were only ok stating the problem when asked specifically for status.

This is a real thing but it should only be temporary. If your culture is good and amendable to this sort of thing, then the IC should learn fairly quickly that they need to ask for help.

This behavior in ICs is, believe it or not, trained. I'm sure they've worked somewhere before or with a different manager in the past who would get annoyed at them asking for help. So they've tuned their behavior to that.