@edbatista I usually refer to the failure to do so as "inflicting help"
— Tobbe Gyllebring (@drunkcod) March 4, 2013
What are the various ways we can, with the best of intentions, inflict help?
The Right Help at the Wrong Time
For help to truly be helpful, the recipients must be ready for it, and as would-be helpers we need to assess their readiness accurately. It's easy to misread potential openness for an actual invitation, so it's essential to bear in mind that help is helpful when it's asked for.
The Right Help, But Too Much Of It
Alternatively, we can offer help and have it received with gratitude, but we may not know when to stop. The desire to help takes over, and we pass the point of diminishing returns and keep on going. As helpers we need to be keenly attuned to recipients' ability to make effective use of our help and to stop helping when it's no longer helpful. [1]
The Wrong Help
Someone wants our help, and we’re able to offer it at the right time, but as the situation evolves it becomes clear that what we’re offering isn’t actually what’s needed. As helpers we may think we know what’s needed, but even--and perhaps especially--when we’re viewed as experts we need to access our ignorance and be open to the possibility that we may be wrong. [2]
What motivates all this unhelpful help? Why do we step in when it’s not necessarily helpful? Two factors explain this dilemma and also suggest potential solutions:
The Relationship, and Our Role In It
In many cases the motive to inflict help is a function of the relationship, or, rather, our interpretation of our role in that relationship. If there’s a difference in status within the relationship, such as between a manager and an employee, in the senior role we may feel that our primary function is to offer help. But when we find ourselves repeatedly inflicting help, we need to step back and question how we’re interpreting our role in that relationship.
Perhaps we're fulfilling the role in an outdated way that no longer reflects the state of the relationship or the capabilities of the other party. Perhaps we're applying a set of archetypes to the relationship--such as expert/novice or guide/follower--that no longer fit (or never did). While the desire to be of service is laudable, we need to check our assumptions about how and when we can best be of service in this particular role.
Emotion Regulation
It's essential to understand and regulate the emotions that underlie our helping impulse. Logical analysis can influence our behavior, but our actions inevitably have an emotional dimension, although at times these feelings may lie just beyond our conscious awareness. Comprehending the emotions that motivate our desire to help can allow us to sense when they’re causing us to inflict help, slow down our reflexive helping responses, and create opportunities to make different choices. [3]
We're driven to diminish our negative emotions and enhance our positive emotions, and helping relationships can trigger powerful feelings on both sides. When we feel the need to help we perceive a problem that we want to alleviate, and its persistence can trigger discomfort, anxiety, anger, and fear. The task here is to gain a greater sense of comfort with our discomfort, to simply notice these feelings and sit with them without being compelled to take action in order to soothe ourselves.
On the other side of the emotional spectrum, when we feel the need to help we perceive an opportunity to distinguish ourselves while being of service, and this can trigger excitement, enthusiasm, and even joy. The task here is to calm ourselves in the face of these stimulating emotions, to simply notice these feelings and, again, sit with them without being compelled to take action to maintain this pleasurable state.
As colleagues, friends and family members, we're asked to help in almost every sphere of life. Leaders and those of us in the helping professions may have even chosen our career path because it allows us to respond to such requests on a consistent basis. But being mindful of the difference between providing help and inflicting it is what allows us to truly make a difference.
Footnotes
[1] Stop Providing Too Much Information
[2] Ignorance, Embarrassment and the Power of Not Knowing
For Further Reading
Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help (Edgar Schein, 2009)
This is a revised version of an earlier post.
