There is a difference between being appropriately helpful and being a doormat.
I’ve spent my life educating people to be cooperative, collaborative, and helpful. It’s a basic moral tenet of mine. There is also great evidence to suggest that adopting this stance promotes healthy and productive relationships. But, as with many other things, you can have too much of a bad thing. This point is reached when instead of being helpful, you absorb all the responsibility for doing the work that someone else should be doing.
Just because you do not know the answer to someone’s question should not mean that you automatically take on their responsibility for finding out. If the question is about an area of technical expertise and knowledge that you possess, and to which you have unique access you should, of course, take the time to ensure you give the right answer. But what about questions where you might not automatically be expected to know the answer?
When people ask you a question to which you don’t know the answer, what do you typically say? There are a few response options open to you:
· I don’t know
· I don’t know. What do you think?
· I don’t know but I’m intrigued to know the answer
· I don’t know but have you tried talking to Roberta?
· I don’t know, but I’ll find out
Despite these and other options, how often do you plump for the last one? It’s what we traditionally think of as the helpful response, but who is it helping?
Through my coaching practice I’ve become more accustomed to helping people find the answer to their questions themselves, rather than telling them what I think. It doesn’t always work, but I’ve discovered that people are a lot more resourceful than they often given themselves credit for, and the purpose of their questioning can be to seek reassurance and validation of what they are already thinking. In these cases, it isn’t helpful for me to tell them what I think, but to assist them in working through their thinking process and developing confidence in their opinions.
Of course, there are some questions that refusing to answer would be churlish at best and downright rude at worst. Questions like ‘What’s the time?’, ‘What’s your name?’, ‘How much is this loaf of bread?’ If you know the answer, there is no value to withholding it. If you do so, you are just being awkward. Responding with ‘Why don’t you guess?’ won’t win you many friends unless it’s part of some adolescent courtship ritual.
The search for answers is a critical part of the learning process and if people are genuinely interested in knowing the answer, they will engage in the search. So don’t be in too much of a hurry to carry out that search on their behalf. When someone asks, how far is the ‘Earth from the Sun?’, it’s okay to say, ‘I don’t know?’ and leave the finding out to them!