Employing Differences, Episode 74: When is help helpful?

Karen: 0:06

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Paul: 0:12

I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:14

And I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 0:16

Each episode, we start with a question and we see where it takes us. This week's question is, "When is help helpful?"

Karen: 0:26

Just to define terms a little bit here: help, which is that instinct to say, "Oh, I see a thing, I'm going to help with it, I'm going to do a thing I'm going to engage, I'm going to participate, I'm going to help." And helpful is when the person who has the need or is the recipient of this sort of action, and energy actually ends up better off because of the energy that's put in. And what we're pointing to in this question is that those two things do not always correlate.

Paul: 1:03

I feel like when you lay out the definitions like that, it almost becomes obvious. That often helps springs from a feeling in in us. If you are the one who has suffered some difficulty, is having some problem, is experiencing some sort of thing, I may have a feeling that arises in me that says I should help. And whether or not that produces a beneficial result for you is not necessarily obvious. But we often don't think about that that way. And what we kind of want to explore today is why we don't think about it that way and then what happens. And so what might help us to remember to think about it in that way? Because I think that framing of it helps us to get that beneficial result helps our help to actually be helpful more often. So I kind of want to start with that idea of why don't we think about help in that way that? Or what are things that get in the way of us realizing that the urge in us is not necessarily useful to the other person?

Karen: 2:14

Yeah, I'm thinking that a lot of it starts with the sort of societal judgments around help and particularly around needing help. So it's a good thing to give help, but a bad thing to need or receive help. And right there you see a mismatch. You can't give help without someone receiving it, but one is good and one is bad. So we're already in a mismatch, which means that information about what would be helpful is often lacking. And so you get somebody just had a baby or a death in the family or surgery or something, and a cluster of caring people around them say," Oh, they must need meals." And all of a sudden this person's got fridge full of casseroles that isn't even the thing that they eat. And very helpful people people wanting to give help have put real effort into that. They they put effort and care into it. And they don't know. So there's this mismatch, because there's a failure to understand the need, and that probably actually begins in the basis of a failure to communicate the need, likely because the existence of a need me being needy is a shameful thing. So we can get this domino effect, where I don't say what I need, because that would be shameful, and therefore, people somehow become aware of help I might need, but there's no good communication. And this points to what you and I were saying off-camera. You were bringing up about the relationship piece of you can't be two separate entities and expect there to be an alignment between the help offered and what is helpful.

Paul: 4:08

Yeah, the further layer around that shame is often that one, I might not want to shame you by making you admit that you needed help, which I might do by asking. "Oh, do you need some help?" "Oh, no, no, no, I'll be fine." But the other thing is that there might be some shame if I don't know what I'm supposed to do that would be helpful. We've talked about Ask and Guess culture before. That absolutely gets tied up in this. So there is some degree in some places where you're just sort of expected to know what you could do to be helpful. And so it's almost forbidden to ask. And so as a result, instead of actually getting information or communicating about what would be useful, then instead well I'm just I'm just acting on whatever impulse arises in me and whatever urge arises in me. I think that is one way that we get into this place of me providing unhelpful help. And I think the other dynamic that often gets added to it is that feedback is incredibly hard to give under many circumstances. But it's even harder to give to someone who has been trying to help. If I'm doing something that I regard myself as being helpful, and I'm help trying to help you, and you're not regarding it as particularly useful. It's really hard to say that. Because we're supposed to appreciate when people want to want to help us. So it could be very hard for you to give me that feedback. And it could be super hard for me to receive that feedback. To say, "But I' trying to help! Don't you se?" Now you're just ungrateful. S now, now you've received help you didn't want and you' e perceived as being ungratef l about it. And then so the ne t time that happens, you're ne er going to say anything. There s this entire communication brea down about what would actually e useful. I think it is a real struggle, because we on't get information about t e fact that the help we're prov ding isn't helpful, and so we on't even start to notice it. A d so we just assume that whatever it is, that we're doin is helpful. And so I think t at's one of the reasons why we g t stuck into that spiral.

Karen: 6:34

Yeah. And to give a counter example, to the "too many casseroles," when the relationship is intact, when you actually have a solid relationship and honestly, also an understanding of the circumstance. So two things that were in play in the example I'll give, which is, I had a friend getting ready to have a baby. I had recently had a couple of babies, we were raising our toddlers together, she's now having her second one. So I have a pretty clear understanding of kind of what that life experiences been there before. So that makes it more likely that I'm going to guess what's helpful. And the other piece is that I knew her pretty well. And one of the things I knew about her is she really hates to cook. And we'd eaten together enough times that I had a sense of what sorts of meals she might like. And then the other piece that we put into this was that the feedback loop was built in. So what I gave her was an empty casserole dish, and a list of meals. And "You tell me when you want the six meals that I'll give you over the course of the next couple of months. Do you want them in the last days of pregnancy? Do you want them right after? Will other people bring you meals for two weeks, and you want them a month later?" But that what I gave her was this offer and then you tell me what you want. So we built in a communication loop with it. And I don't know if I ever made as many casseroles but certainly some and they arrived on the day that she really wanted them and were a meal her family would eat.

Paul: 8:06

Yeah. So one of the things that points to is the communication channel. Another thing that it points to that we've talked about before is her control and autonomy in the situation. She's actually in control of it, that she can decide, "Okay, do I want this now? Do I want this later? Do I want this at all? What kind of thing would this look like?" For me, there's also a piece in there that you did that's really useful, which is there's a menu of choices. Because sometimes when we need help, we don't know what kind of help we need. We don't know what to ask for. We don't know what to order. And so there you're presenting a situation where these are things that I could do and that I would not regard as an undue burden because then there's the there's all a lot of things about asking for help there. But you're actually given her a set of things to pick from that can spur some thinking, but also give her a sense of control and go, "Oh, actually, that would be really helpful. I would find that helpful. Could you do that for me?" "Absolutely." And so part of that is about the dialogue. This is the relationship part of it. If we actually want to be helpful, and we are capable of doing the thing, that thing needs to be matched with what the other person or what the situation actually needs. And so we need to have a dialogue that helps that match up.

Karen: 9:32

I think in that dialogue, and this is where it gets a little nuanced, we need to be conscious that we've got this other societal norm. So even if I'm willing to say in a very straightforward way, "Here, this is the thing I'm willing to do for you," the polite thing can be to say, "No." So depending on how much relationship is built, another frame I've seen used with this is to say, "I'm betting it would really help you if I came over and cleaned your house" or in an office environment, "I'm betting it would really help if I did that set of invoices for you," or whatever the thing was "Unless you tell me not to, I'm going to do it." "Unless you tell me not to, I'm going to be there Tuesday at two o'clock and clean your kitchen for you." Whatever that is. And then they certainly can say no. You want to set that up that it's totally okay with me if you tell me no, but the default here is I'm going to give you help so that you don't have to be in the shameful place of asking for it.

Paul: 10:32

Yeah. Part of that is just about how do we smooth the path towards making that dialogue as easy to have as possible? Where we're noticing the forces that would normally be pulling pulling us in certain directions, and doing things to sort of account for those. Let's not pretend they don't exist, but how do we actually work with them? I think the other piece around that is also just there's a degree of can we talk about how it actually landed? Like,"Hey, hey, what was useful here? The next time something like this happens, would you like me to do that again? Would you like me to do something else?" You know, what was that like for us? Because that is one of the things about building relationships, working relationships, over time, is that you actually learn that what I do to be helpful for one person is not the same thing that I need to do for another person. And I think that's actually one of the things about learning to actually provide helpful help, is learning that it isn't just about what I feel that I should do, it's actually about what's tuned to the relationship and to the situation. And when you actually start to notice that you are doing different things, in different situations, with different people, that's probably a sign that you're providing more helpful help.

Karen: 12:01

Yeah, yeah, I think the last piece I want to make sure we touch on here is that is in many relational spaces which help is such a relational space we can often get tricked by what's going on for us internally. So I can have this great need to help that may not actually relate to their need to be helped. They may be just fine. But I need to help for whatever reason, because I was raised that way, because my mother's voice is in my head saying, "If you don't take a meal, there's something horribly wrong with you," or whatever the thing is. I can have my own internal agenda, and if that's the driver, my ability to hear what the actual need is drops dramatically. And so I think one of the filters here is to be thoughtful about what is going on in me, where is my desire to help coming from? Because we tend to think, "Well, if I want to help them, that that must be a good thing." And in fact, it can be a pretty complicated thing, and driven way more by my own guilt, or whatever my side of this thing is. And if it's being driven by my need, it might very well not be helpful.

Paul: 13:22

It's very much that place of intent versus impact. Our intention is to help, but are we actually being helpful? And I think the thing that further complicates it, is that oftentimes that desire to help shows up in emotionally intense situations. We are probably not our most introspective at those moments. Something has happened, and and there's an emotional charge to it. We're feeling sad or feeling hurt in some way or we are feeling on behalf of this other person and probably also a lot on our own behalf too, particularly if it's something that's happened in a group or in a community. We've got our own emotional response that's going on that may get in the way of us noticing why we have this urge to act. And so that complicates it even further. It makes it even less likely that we will notice that we're acting out of our own need our own instinct, rather than to address the need that exists in the community, in the group, the other person. And so being able to kind of slow down is always useful. I think the stronger the urge to help, the more useful it is to take some deep breaths and ask myself, "Why is it that I'm wanting to help here?" And then,"What would actually be helpful?"

Karen: 14:51

Yeah, and I i think that slowing down also it helps both sides, right? It helps us pay attention to me pay attention to myself. And it helps me really hear what the need is on the other side, right? So that's slowing down, taking a few deep breaths, reflecting back checking in, really building in those communication skills. Yana Ludwig, co author of mine likes to say, "If you can't accurately hear, you can't accurately care." And so that really essential element of communication is so important.

Paul: 15:31

There is a piece that shows up around this of surprising the other person with help. Which can be completely at odds with what they are actually doing to deal with the situation. And if we haven't actually slowed down enough, we might spring into action and do something that is, in fact, the opposite of helpful. I think we've all been in those situations. I know I've said these words: "Please stop helping." "I want this relationship to continue, I want us to continue to be able to work together, right now I get that you want to be helpful. And your help is not helpful. I'm sorry,that I have to say that. And please stop. For now." And that's the situation we really want to avoid. We don't want to get to that space. And we don't want to have to have the other person say that to us. And so that slowing down, I think is one of the ways that we can help really get there.

Karen: 16:29

Yeah. So I feel like what we're saying here really is to know that helpful help is a thing that happens in the context of relationships. And that all of the usual good relationship advice applies. Pay attention to what I'm bringing, and how that is playing out. Really take time to listen and key into the other person which may be actual minutes and hours, or maybe just a sensitivity and an awareness, depending on the level of the relationship, the intimacy of the relationship. And then really be empathetic to what's going on on the other side and what the actual need for help is. Get communication as good as it can be and work with what the reality of the emotions are. You're more likely to align the intention to help with the impact of being helpful.

Paul: 17:19

Yeah. Well, that's gonna do it for us for today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 17:25

And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.