By Tricia Kidd
It’s lovely to work with people who are helpful. Being helpful is a wonderful thing. If someone in your team is helpful, they reduce the weight of the tasks ahead and get things moving. It’s like having someone in your rowing team who is strong, reliable, and never gives up, even when tired.
We say that they ‘pull above their weight’, meaning that, not only do they move themselves through the water, but they also add extra pull to the whole boat. But how do you know if you’re exploiting a helpful person or if by being helpful, you are being exploited?
Maybe it comes down to awareness and choice. Being aware of who benefits from the help and choosing to make it happen. Because, ideally, a helpful person benefits as much as everyone else.
However, there’s no place in a sustainable organisation for workaholic martyrs. Martyrs (by definition) cease to be helpful eventually.
Being helpful makes you feel good. When applied in the right context at the right time, it is also beneficial to the person or team that you are helping. Someone may be new. If you help them now, in the long run they will perform better, and this can save you time and effort in the future. Helping your team of your boss can improve the overall performance, which reflects positively back on you as a group. Being helpful contributes to keeping the boat afloat and heading in the right direction. But when are you giving too much?
Setting boundaries
When you start resenting people asking you to do things. When you notice other people not doing something because the expect that you’ll do it. When your helpfulness prevents you from completing your own workday tasks. Helpfulness is a temporary thing, so don’t drift into situation where helpfulness becomes an unpaid part of your job description. A good boss will protect you from exploitation (and your workaholic self) if they see an imbalance appearing.
A well-run mature organisation won’t rely on voluntary helpfulness for important processes. Whereas a SME or growing enterprise does rely on people seeing gaps and filling them. But at some point, if something that started out as gap-filling or general helpfulness is becoming a repeated and mainstream task, it’s time to talk to your manager or HR about reviewing whether the task should become official, either for you or someone else.
People have different levels of awareness about what needs doing beyond their job description. And some people feel more responsible than others about filling the gaps to achieve success for an organisation. But if someone ends up being a martyr over gap-filling, you can guarantee there’ll be tears or even a show-down at some future date.
It’s important to know your limits about being helpful. Don’t let that stop you being helpful. Because helpfulness is a wonderful thing. But be aware! and if it goes too far for too long, flag it up!
Add comment
Comments