Is Your Team Too Helpful? It Could Be Doing More Harm Than Good.

Almost everybody feels good when they help somebody. However, there are situations where your team members may be too helpful for their own good.

Being helpful gives people a sense of satisfaction. When you’re helpful, others respond positively because you’re assisting them in achieving their goals. Unfortunately, by being too helpful, your team members may not be achieving their own goals.

So what’s wrong with being helpful? Nothing in moderation. Everybody should help others at one time or another. But there is always a balance. Let’s look at some of the problems that can happen when team members start being overly helpful.

1. People Who Are Too Helpful Create Confused Roles and Responsibilities

It’s nice to have variety in your work. In fact, a job that has skill variety can be very enjoyable. Rather than do the same boring work all day, you get to do different things, using different skills.

The problem arises when team members start to take on work that is not really within their role. Maybe they are helping to organise meetings, create presentations or communicate with people on someone else’s behalf. They might even start writing documents that are the responsibility of somebody else.

Before you know it, the definition of what this helpful team member does is unclear. Now, everybody starts asking them for help with similar work.

“I saw you helped Jake with that presentation. It was great, can you please take a look at mine too when you get the chance?”

If this helpfulness occurs for a long period, these extra tasks can start to form a permanent part of somebody’s role, which was never the original plan. This can cause issues in the long run as people have developed expectations about the work that will be completed.

Learn more about fixing unclear roles and responsibilities here: How Leaders Can Fix Unclear Roles and Responsibilities.

2. People Who Are Too Helpful Can Lose Motivation

At first, being helpful is fun. Oh, the look of joy on the faces as a team member offers to help out with that big report. Now, they are *always* helping with those big reports.

But that’s not what they signed up for. You didn’t bring this person in to assist others with random tasks. They were employed for a specific purpose.

If the additional helpful work that is being performed strays too far from the team member’s role, they are likely to lose motivation. They were meant to be applying their expertise in their chosen field, but someone found out they do great powerpoint presentations.

So now, that’s also what they do instead.

3. People Who Are Too Helpful Become Overwhelmed

In most jobs and industries, workloads fluctuate, so some periods may be busier than others. When there is some spare time, it’s not unusual for helpful people to lend a hand doing things they might not usually do. Many people start to become stressed when there isn’t enough work to do, so it’s not surprising that they want to lend a hand.

The real trouble begins when the workload starts to pick up again. Now your helpful team member has their own job to do, and the work they took on before. In some cases, a helpful team member never wants to let anybody down. So they continue to take on too much work.

4. People Who Are Too Helpful Let Others Down

Your helpful team member has taken on too much. Some will collapse under the burden and may burn themselves out. Others will drop the “helpful” work like a hot potato and focus on their own tasks.

Now, you have a potential team reputation problem.

“John’s team said they’d help with this, and now they’ve stopped helping 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 trust issues between teams.

—

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 own 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.

Communication is the key to avoiding the pitfalls of being too helpful. Here are some things to try to avoid the problems:

1. Add a time limit: 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.
2. Clearly define the scope: 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.
3. Say “No” sometimes: Pushing back and saying “No” 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. For help on doing this, read the Managing Upwards eBook.

We all like to be helpful. But being overly helpful is likely to be unhelpful in the long term.

—

What are the issues you’ve seen when people help others too much at work? Let me know your stories in the comments below!

Alternatively, if you would like to ask a question or need some help, you can send me a private message through my contact page.