“John’s team said they’d help with this, and now they’ve stopped doing it and it needs to be done by next week!”
This is obviously an issue because an offer of help has now been taken away. This can cause ill will and trust may be eroded between people and teams in this situation.
So what are the options? How can you be helpful sometimes, but not all the time?
Put boundaries on being helpful, to avoid falling into the “too helpful” trap
Unfortunately, you can’t just help everybody all the time. You need to set boundaries if your team is going to help people without being overwhelmed with work.
It sounds a little selfish, but unfortunately, your team were employed to perform their roles. If being too helpful gets in the way, then you are actually being unhelpful to your own team and colleagues, because you can’t fulfil your own role.
As you might expect, communication is the key to avoiding the pitfalls of being too helpful. Here are some things to try to avoid the problems:
Make your helpfulness time-bound: There is nothing wrong with saying that Tom can help out until the end of the week. Unfortunately, after that, he needs to focus on his own work.
Clearly scope your helpfulness: Limit your help to a specific set of tasks or deliverables. Avoid just “helping out”. Make it specific and measurable, so your team can get back to their own work when their done.
Say “No” sometimes: Pushing back is a critical skill that is often underrated. You cannot just take on every piece of work that everybody throws at you. You need set boundaries and train your stakeholders that you won’t help them with everything.
We all like to be helpful. But being too helpful is likely to be decidedly unhelpful in the long term. Set boundaries on your helpfulness to avoid your team falling into the too helpful traps.
Author: Ben Brearley