When Our Help Is Not Helpful

We are biologically hardwired to helping others. We can’t help it.

This isn’t just a learned behaviour or a nurtured characteristic. For millennia, human cooperation and assisting others wasn't a choice or option—it was the difference between life and death! Evolution shows us that the groups that thrived weren't always the strongest, smartest or fastest; they were the ones with the deepest systems for mutual support and a helping vibe. 

Beyond the history lesson, helping others physically feels good. When we step in to solve a problem for someone else, it lights us up. We get a wave of dopamine and other feel-good chemicals that feel like a runner’s high or when your favourite sports team hoists the trophy.

(Go Canada Go!!!)

This phenomena goes well beyond our personal relationships and lives. Productive teams often are the ones that have the most rigorous and conscious support systems and cultures of mutual aid. You’ve (hopefully) felt that in your working career, where the environment of support and care for each other is palpable and ever-present.

But is too much help ineffective at times? Does our desire to help sometimes get in the way or lost in translation?

Yup.

Our human nature is also to rush in. We grab our firefighter hat, pull up our suspenders, whistle for the dalmatian, and get into that fire! At times, it’s an almost autonomous response. 

If you lead others, it’s always tempting to rush in to fix a crisis.You feel competent, valuable, and connected in that moment. You feel like you are serving your people. The biological booby trap is that the leader gets the dopamine hit of solving the problem, while the employee is deprived of the neurological reward of figuring out the solution themselves.

Make no mistake, it’s all well intended and designed to be a positive influence on a situation. And the insights and support we have to offer as leaders may just be the fix to the challenge the person is staring down

But if delivered and offered the wrong way, that support can backfire like a 1967 VW Beetle with a hacked-in exhaust system.

When we let ourselves wildly step in to fix a problem before being asked, it can threaten the other person’s sense of independence and competence. According to something cool called Social Exchange Theory, solicited help aligns with social norms, while uninvited help disrupts them and can undermine an employee's positive self-view. Instead of feeling supported, the recipient may feel de-valued. 

When you swoop in to fix a problem unasked, you aren't just taking over a task—you are forcing a transaction. Uninvited help burdens your team member with an unsolicited relational debt, obligating them to express gratitude for a "favor" they never requested. The price they pay for this intervention is their autonomy...and that’s a heavy price. By short-circuiting their productive struggle, you inadvertently encode a lack of trust in their competence. What you intended as support is experienced instead as a subtle undermining of their independence. 

And then it can get worse.

The “here’s what you should do” vibe can have the unintended consequence of reinforcing status and power dynamics that are fundamentally unhealthy in any team. Over time, this dynamic erodes culture and authentic conversation. Your team will eventually come to believe that their ideas are secondary to your directives. They stop trying to solve the puzzle, waiting instead for you to simply hand them the missing piece. 

The best way to stop this cycle is to take just one easy step. Asking what they need neutralizes this threat by keeping the employee in control. 

If your help is asked for rather than foisted, there’s a good chance the other person will be more committed to taking action and sticking with it. Think of your instructed and non-requested solution as scotch tape…easy to use, but doesn’t last very long and breaks easily. On the flip side, the help that’s asked for or co-created is duct tape…it can last longer, withstand stress, and creates a strong bond.

It’s simply the only path forward as a leader.

So, keep being the helper you can and want to be to those around you. Extend that helping hand, offer those listening ears, and be present for your people. To ensure your help is the most effective and appreciated, here are three easy questions you can ask as you meet the other person where they are at:

What’s the best way I can support you?

What would be most helpful right now?

How can I be additive in solving this situation?