To serve or not to serve?
When Pat broached this delicate subject with me on Friday afternoon, I was frustrated by my inability to give him a concise, perfect solution. I don’t succeed in the following paragraphs, either, but perhaps this will clarify my position on helping others and how much is too much help to give.
First things first: As someone who has seen firsthand how much Pat gives and gives (and gives and gives) to people and companies who ask him for help, I would estimate the amount of value he has helped create as - at minimum - in the tens of millions of dollars range. He is often given little or no thanks for this, sadly.
There are a lot of people on this planet who, as the Brits say, take the piss. You know the sort: They’ll inundate you with emails and phone calls, begging for “just a minute of your time” or “a quick favor”. If you agree, these people will, more often than not, fail to help you to help them. For example, you hook them up with a personal friend and valued contact, but they fail to follow up or else give your person a lot of hassle about times and dates for meeting. (The foreshadowing of this is usually that they do this to you first.)
A lot of times, appearances are deceptive: These flakes can seem quite functional, appreciative, and as if the last thing they’d do is make you regret helping them out. Through much trial and error - and many times burned by losers - I have learned little tricks to help me sort them from the winners. First, I have to take an honest assessment of them based on what I know:
- Are they at least as interested in helping others as they are in seeking help from others?
- Do they show genuine interest in seeing others succeed?
- Have they offered to help you in any way?
- If you have helped them out previously, have they taken heed of advice or assistance?
- Have you caught them being dishonest, even if “only” of the “little white lie” variety?
- Do they fail to give proper credit, generously and without hesitation, where due?
- Do they claim to have been “screwed over” by lots of people or lay claim to several people who hate them “for no reason”?
- Do they ask you to work for free or for promises of undefined or unrealistic future rewards?
The last four are dead give-aways that you’re dealing with a loser (and probably a narcissist). Not only should you not help these people for free, but you should never work with them under any circumstances - and that includes connecting them with your valued contacts. No good can come of this for you. As my friend Gina likes to point out:
There’s a big difference between an underdog and a loser.
I have helped a loser or two in my time. The good news is that their hesitance to give credit where due means that your name often doesn’t get tied to theirs. (These people are usually so bad on the execution front that the great ideas you gave them are useless in their hands - another reason not to give them any in the first place.)
Another red flag: They ask you for a “quick favor”. As Gretchen Rubin once wrote in a very memorable blog post:
[I]f you ask someone to do something, and you characterize it as difficult or a lot of trouble, paradoxically, in my experience, people are more willing to help. They know you recognize their effort. Once a friend sent me an email with the subject line, “Quick favor.” In fact, the favor was going to take some work on my part, and I was irritated by her characterization of it as easy.
But what if you’re being approached by lots of winners? Well, how do you know they’re winners?
To me, winners are people who know how to parlay good advice from clever people into success - and are willing to share that success. Even if someone “just” does you lots of smaller favors (not introducing you to the guy you ended up making $20 million with, but still helpful things), you should try to thank them however you can. That might mean picking up the check at dinner or springing for the cappuccinos whenever you meet up for those valuable chats, treating them to a gift certificate from a favorite store or spa, or buying them a meaningful, useful gift. Plus, of course, always be willing to pick up the phone when they call, answer those late night emails, drop everything you reasonably can if they need you, and constantly reiterate the offer to reciprocate in any way possible. Then, when they try to take you up on that, let them.
Do you see this person displaying such reciprocal behavior? If not, they’re a loser.
As far as how much is too much…Well, I think it depends on you and your life and how your attention and energy must be divided. I don’t have a family, so I’d say I have more to give than someone with a spouse and children or elderly parents to care for. But as someone who has often tried to do too much in the past, I have learned (as Nancy Rommelmann has reminded me so many times) that I can only make so many things grow at once.
So one really has to put a pause between stimulus and response; when someone asks you to do them a “quick favor,” you can afford to stop and think about how much time it will realistically take you, and whether or not this person is someone in whom you can afford to invest your limited resources. Two things in particular must be remembered, especially by those of us who are soaking in the constantly connected, instant reply atmosphere of the web:
1) It’s okay not to reply right away.
2) It’s okay to say no.
“No, I’m sorry - I can’t” is a line you can cut and paste or write on the palm of your hand and recite out loud. Anyone who persists, or hammers you with “Why not?” inquiries, is trying to control you. This should piss you off, and make you further resolved not to invest in them. It should not make you feel guilty.
If I had to give a very vague description of my purpose in life (always subject to change), I would say that I am trying to be of service to others without hurting my ability to be of service to others. Opportunities to be of service are all around us, every day, and many of them are embedded in our paid work. The people I know who are most equipped to deal with life - that is, to take the rough with the smooth, keep perspective, and suffer well - are those who live to serve. I know of no exception to this.
But the important part is that I not impede my ability to be of service to others. If someone is asking me to do something which will risk my usefulness to others, I need to say no without hesitation.
How about you?
Filed under: Life
Wow. Brilliantly nailed.
This concept so balanced, a lot of people just can’t hear it. They’re ingrained with the (very culturally widespread) sacrifice v. selfishness dichotomy to such an extent that such advice just meets with total bafflement.
When I was trying to support new mothers, back in the day, it was with exactly these ideas in mind- it’s absolutely essential for parents to be giving without being self-sacrificing. Very very difficult to communicate to exhausted people with frazzled emotions though .
Interesting stuff.
Brilliantly nailed indeed.
Miss Manner is the boss of Just Say No, by the way. Her suggestion when you’ve told someone no and they keep asking “but why not?” is just keep repeating “it isn’t possible.”
I generally do as Miss Manners tells me.
The inability to take a no for an answer is also IMHO the last test of the loser. “OK, thanks for your time” is the response I hope I remember to give every time someone says no to me.
@ Jackie: You are right. There is no concise or short answer to Pat Phelan’s question.
Yet ‘to help or not and how much and whether to turn it into an advantage for ourselves’ it is a question we have all struggled with. Your list of test-questions is very practical though and I am going to try and use them over the next month or so and see how it goes. Who knows, it may even be worthy of a post!
@ Alice: My experience in the business context is that the dichotomy is not between sacrifice versus selfishness but between giving and receiving. Pat Phelan’s question - as I read it - is about when the giving, although pleasant and natural to the giver, could become a drag on time without bringing anything back to the giver. Another interesting aspect is very giving people finding that when push comes to shove, few in their network can or will help them.
Parents operate in an eco-system of parents. I recently had my friend’s son over for 3 days. I collected him from his school. In the yard, I met a few women, whose children are at school with this boy. One of them asked how long I had known my friend. I said, um, 16 years, give or take. She was very surprised and said - how come I have never seen you before and well, at least with you she does not have to keep a record of favours (cue: laughter from all mothers). I found it a very odd thing to be said to a person one has never met! So I said - you will likely not see me very often because you only ever see my friend in one context and that is your children and their activities; and yes, isn’t she lucky to have someone with whom she does not have to keep running accounts of favours! Needless to say, it was time to leave very quickly thereafter.
May be businesspeople need to learn this brutal philosophy of ‘keeping accounts’ from parents. :-)
Makes me think of Ayn Rand one of my favorite authors. According to Rand, the individual “must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life….the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute” (from Wikipedia :).
Although she comes off being very ’self interest’ oriented, utlimately to me it came down to mean be the absolute best that you can be because that is the only true way to add value to the world, which includes others. She also said that when people ask you to comprimise and do things ‘for them’ you should scrutinize vigorously to make sure your self interest are being met first.
Your post seems a healthy, ‘realistic’ spin-off on her which I really enjoyed! Keep them coming.
PS. I do realize some folks dislike Ayn Rand alot, but Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are by far some of my favorite reading.
I think one of the best skills a parent can teach their children is how to say no gracefully and to recognise their right to say no. As somebody who has also been burned by people I’ve bent over backwards for in the past, I know the bitter taste it leaves in your mouth. However, I’ve had to be honest with myself: do I want to help people because of what it does for me, or because of what it does for them?
And I can’t even imagine somebody badgering me if I’d turned down their request for help. I think I would just ignore any further communication from them!
I do thank you for this timely post. In the past month, I have had as many as a dozen people ask me for so many things; I found myself typing so many “instructional” emails I thought, I should just have one so that I can hit “send.” I think the straw came when, after I’d edited someone’s book, for free (for complicated and family reasons, I did not feel comfortable accepting money she does not have), and sent it back saying, “This is yours now,” she immediately wrote back to ask, “Well, should I…” I put my foot down and have not heard back. Good. Also had someone who I’d advised extensively — and who’d been a very quick study — ask me to link her new blog. I thought about writing her back to say, why I would not, and then, just didn’t. She’ll learn why, or she won’t.
Another thing I’d add to your post: you and I are both the “What can I do to help?” type. I’ve found it best to be specific, as in, “I’d like to help by writing an article about Hillary’s latest gaffe” or “Let me bring the casserole.” Knowing what the person you’re interacting in might need, and suggesting you fill it thus, is always helpful (even as just a launching point), rather than just saying, “What can I do?” which of course just puts the onus on the ask-ee.
“It’s okay to say no.” - yes, but this has to be learn! It took me years to learn how to say no without feeling guilty.
The final straw was one person, who I rushed to see on a Sunday morning to help out with something, only to be told “not to be so nosy” when I enquired about it four weeks later.
Janet, I am a big fan of Rand (while not being a disciple or a member of the lunatic Objectivist crowd!). You’re exactly right.