How can I help?

The whole point of my job is to enable the people who report to me to do their jobs. So as a manager, I’ve asked this question before. Makes total sense – I want to help; I want to communicate to someone that I am available to help them, so I ask them “how can I help?”. Cool. Easy.

Is it, though? I saw someone else ask that question at work recently and instead of feeling happy for the recipient, I felt annoyed. How weird! Someone was thoughtful enough to offer someone a kind gesture, and it annoyed me. That doesn’t make any sense.

So I thought about it a little bit. Did I feel the same way the last time someone asked me how they can help? And actually, yeah, I kinda did. I thought, “you motherfucker, in addition to all the other stuff I’m doing, now I have to figure out a way for you to help me and I’ll probably have to move a bunch of stuff around to allow you to do that.” At that point, I might as well just do it myself.

I found countless forum posts and blogs of people complaining about the same thing. A parent bringing home their first newborn, or a person grieving a recent death. A 20-something with three jobs whose car just broke down. A family who just lost their home to a house fire. Whatever. Overwhelming life stuff.

Is it different in a work setting? Maybe. The stakes are definitely different. Social norms in a work setting are different to social norms in a casual setting. Bunch of managers writing articles on LinkedIn about how to ask for help makes it seem like it shouldn’t be my responsibility. But it doesn’t feel right. I’m not sure if I’d feel comfortable asking that question to people any more and I want to workshop that a little bit.

Why am I asking that question?

Obviously, when people ask “how can I help?” it’s because they want to know how they can help. The intention is to help. Duh.

So if someone needs help, probably one of a few things is happening:

• They have too much stuff to do, possibly because:
  • They are bad at delegating
  • They don’t know how to say no (or they feel that they can’t say no)
  • They didn’t realise how much work they had until it was too much
  • Something else is going on that is reducing their capacity
• The work they have is beyond their current skill level
• They are demotivated by the work

There’s probably more, that’s just what I got off the top of my head. But all of those things are really difficult to say. I don’t think most people would be comfortable telling their boss “the work I’m doing is super boring” or “I’m hella unqualified to be doing this”, even if their boss is really cool and they have a good relationship. Especially if they’re already feeling overwhelmed.

What should I be asking instead?

So if “how can I help?” isn’t actually helpful, it’s probably better to ask something else. It’s definitely more work for the manager, but instead of asking what the solution is, more targeted questions will probably lead to better outcomes if those questions uncover the root cause.

So if they’re shit at delegating, you can pair up with them and show them how to do it. If the work crept up on them, you can try more targeted check-ins. If the work is too complicated, you can pair them up with someone more experienced. If the work is something they really don’t like doing, you can give them different work. If there’s a personal thing going on outside of work, you can look into concessions. The point being if you know what the problem is, you can figure out what to do next and actually help.