It’s a natural assumption that if you volunteer for everything and help everyone, they will love you and see your value. Immediately, accolades and promotions will follow. You will be the office superstar, indispensable and on the fast track. This is, however, a fallacy.
You need to think of the frequency of offering to jump in and help as existing on a bell curve. People who are successful with this behaviour are in the middle. Too much is just as problematic as too little.
Why? Being eager is subject to the law of diminishing returns. After a while, the benefit you will gain shrinks to the point where it’s hardly worth it and can even start creating negatives. Let’s break it down.
Offering Help When Someone has to Train You Isn’t Help
The #1 rule of offering to help someone at work is to make sure it actually is help. That it will make their life better. That it will reduce their workload and increase the chance of their success. If you see someone drowning because they have to edit a bunch of social media posts and you have never used the editing software, offering to help them edit is a bad idea. If they have to stop what they’re doing to train you, you are not helping. You are creating more work for them. You’re better off offering to pick them up some lunch so they have a bit more time to finish.
Make sure you have the requisite skills, knowledge, or network to deliver on your offer of help. We can’t stress this enough. Don’t offer to do something that you cannot deliver on your own. Yes, you may want to build a better relationship with that colleague, but don’t be so eager to help that you end up making them regret taking you up on your offer.
Pair Enthusiasm with Awareness
The #2 rule of offering to help is to make sure you know what’s been done. There are few things more annoying that someone who swoops in to save the day, only to produce what you finished days ago.
Don’t redo work or reinvent the wheel. Find out as much as you can on your own, ask for a thirty second check-in, and confirm that what you’re planning to offer is actually useful. If someone needs help pulling numbers for a presentation, don’t rewrite the executive summary. Pull the numbers. If you want to show initiative, ask them if they would like you to write some simple code that will pull the numbers automatically every month.
Another piece of the awareness puzzle: Don’t add stuff that will create work for someone else without their buy-in.
Don’t offer to help Sophie by identifying all the work you can’t do and suggesting someone else. You aren’t helping Sophie by pointing her to Jeremy. It’s still work for her, and he’s going to be irritated because you’re placing yourself in the middle. If it’s Jeremy who’s in the better position to help, go to him first and share your thoughts. But be cautious, because if it’s a lot of work for him, you’re bringing him a problem. And now you’ve gotten yourself into a mess. If you can’t help him help Sophie, then don’t bother in the first place.
Limit How Often You Volunteer
You need to choose moments that have visibility or impact. Being selective is for your sanity as much as anything else. First, you don’t want to burn out. Second, you don’t want to lower your value by doing tasks that are far beneath your capabilities.
Helping people at work is rarely altruistic (there are some exceptions, particularly with trustworthy colleagues who would help you if asked). Most of the time, you need to make sure the help offered is good for you too. Will it showcase some skills you don’t get to display often? Will it connect you with new parts of the organization, increasing your chances of finding new opportunities? Will it help you develop your professional network? Planning a team lunch offers far less exposure that helping out on an executive retreat.
At a minimum, you don’t want to be doing so many tasks for other people that you run out of time and energy to do your own job. You must always be able to deliver on your own commitments first. You don’t want to be in a position where you have to ask for help because you’re too busy producing deliverables for other people. That’s not good time management or organizational skills. Your boss will notice. And they won’t be happy.
Why Too Much Assistance Can Make You Look Bad
Another factor: if you’re always offering to jump in and save the day, you’re actually making people feel like they can’t do their job. You aren’t a superhero, but more a villain, showing them up and exposing how awful they are.
Before offering to help someone, ask yourself how you would feel if the situation were reversed. Most of us appreciate assistance during an unusually busy time or uniquely intense project. Most of us do not appreciate frequent offers of help for things that are part of our daily job routine.
Plus, if you have so much time to help others, your boss might start to wonder what the hell it is you’re actually being paid to do.
In conclusion
When it comes to offering assistance at work, aim for the sweet spot between ‘detached, couldn’t care less about other’s struggles’ and ‘jumping in every five minutes in a desperate bid to be liked’. There is a happy medium in there. Where you provide genuine value in challenging situations.
And remember, don’t be so eager that you end up creating more work for the person you are helping. That will hurt both your reputation and your ability to get help when you need it.