How to Offer Help at Work
“Let me know what I can do to help.” That’s how people often phrase it when they offer to help a friend or family member or a teammate or colleague. This wording may be a thoughtful expression of empathy, yet it’s so vague that it doesn’t lead to actual assistance.
If you’re serious about offering help, try being specific and accountable. Being specific may entail asking questions or doing some background digging to gain an idea of how you can help. Being accountable means doing what you said you’d do and in the agreed-upon way and timeframe. This is especially important if it’s your boss you’re offering to help.
But don’t overhelp. There’s a fine line between an acceptable amount of help and too much. Guard against taking over the situation or treating the recipient of your help in a patronizing way. Instead, offer some assistance and then see if more is needed. Try to avoid creating the impression that it’s a quid pro quo—that is, don’t make it seem as if you’re doing someone else a favor only so that they’ll then do one for you.
It’s especially important to not offer help where it’s not wanted. Foisting unwanted help on teammates may annoy them rather than make them grateful. Some people may want help at some point—just not now. And some people may want help—but not from you. In any case, some people like to work their way through their own problems; in fact, they may learn more if they solve certain problems alone.
In offering help, think twice because words matter. Liane Davey, a specialist in team effectiveness, described a situation in which an executive at a planning session admitted to his team that he was having difficulty with a change the executive team was dealing with. One of his teammates responded, “I’ve had similar experiences before. It’s not a big deal. You’ll get over it.” This comment was intended as a show of support, but the executive who voiced the difficulty felt trivialized as a result.
In fact, minimizing a negative event that a colleague has experienced is likely to be counterproductive for the colleague. Davey described research that suggests that people who are coping with a negative event may do better when they minimize the event on their own than when others try to minimize the event for them. As Davey points out, “Only once people had sufficient time to cope with the event and come to their own conclusions did it help to have the external validation that indeed it wasn’t a big deal.”
Sometimes, help helps. And sometimes, it doesn’t. Consider which is more likely the next time you’re inclined to offer help.
