Smart Help – 7 Questions to Ask Before Helping
Successful leaders help people, but helping has disadvantages you might not see.
Don’t rush to help. Strength rises to challenges. Don’t get in the way. Ease bores talented people. Challenge brings out people’s best.
Leaders who thrive learn how to put weight on people, without overwhelming them.
10 hidden disadvantages of helping poorly:
- Rejection. Stepping in suggests people may be incapable.
- Trust. Offering unrequested help may hint you don’t trust people.
- Respect. Over-helping makes people feel disrespected.
- Competence. People may question their own competence.
- Incompetence. Struggle strengthens people.
- Relevance. If people are relevant, why are you jumping in to do their job for them?
- Responsibility. Constantly bailing out people is your stamp of approval on failure.
- Ignorance. When you repeatedly cover for someone’s failure they don’t learn from failure.
- Criticism. Unrequested help sometimes feels like criticism.
- Dependency. Responsibility is better than dependency.
Smart Help – 7 questions to ask before helping:
Unneeded help is harmful.
#1. Clarify expectations.
Before helping ask, “If things turn out perfectly what will be the result?” Ask this when you think goals need clarification.
#2. Expect initiative.
Before helping always ask, “What have you tried?”
#3. Honor the team.
Before helping ask, “Who on the team is great?”
Tip: Teach people to help each other.
#4. Respect experience.
Before helping ask, “What have you learned in past situations like this?”
#5. Include self-reflection.
Before helping ask, “How might you have contributed to this situation?” Reflect on attitudes and actions.
#6. Expand perspective.
When you help what are you trying to accomplish for individuals? For the team? For yourself?
#7. Evaluate challenge.
Before helping ask, “How challenging is this situation for you on a scale of 1:10?”
Examine yourself before helping:
Sometimes we help because it makes us feel important. Your job is to believe others are important.
What questions would you ask before helping?
Which of the above questions seem most relevant to you?
The Goal of Helping is Enabling, Not More Helping
7 Rules for Overhelpful Leaders
Help Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
This really hit home with me today. I have a new team and all of them are learning a new job. There is a lot of cross training going on and I know they are overwhelmed. Some team members are having animosity and resentment for one another. The questions above will allow me to have better discussions with my team. Your post reminds me that I can’t step in every time I notice an issue. I need to let them work through this time period themselves so they can come out on top. Thank you every day for your insight.
Thanks Brandi. It’s a challenge to have a new team and it’s hard not to jump in when you are kind and compassionate. I’m sure you appreciate the long-term benefits of not jumping in quickly. But it can be difficult not to. I wish you well as you navigate this challenge.
…and then there is another huge risk that creeps in the moment one starts “helping”: what if things don’t go as expected?? Now the helper gets the blame! Aka the “helping drama triangle”. It’s very real and it’s everywhere…
Thanks, Arjan. Good point. Sometimes when people ask for help, they’re really saying they don’t want to take responsibility. They want you to take it.
Dan great list. My much older boss, George, when giving advice, would sometimes ask me “what would you do if I were gone?” I would tell him and he usually agreed!
Brad
Love it, Brad. I’m going to use that one for sure.
My first boss was great at this. He would say, “Give this some thought and do what you think is best. No matter how it turns out it will be fine.” Sometimes I nailed it, other times I failed it. Either way we would sit and talk about the decision I had made and how it had led to the outcome. We celebrated when I was successful and he made it safe for me to fail. I learned a lot from him.
Sometimes we help because it makes us feel important. Your job is to believe others are important.
I LOVE this. Thank you! So many people swoop in to save the day, hoping to be validated as a hero. The real heroes are the ones who watch from a short distance as their “charges” may fail. This is often much more difficult to do than stepping in to help and fix.