Research: When Help Isn't Helpful

Harvard Business Review

2 days ago

Amy was a senior designer at 'Glow Design,' a pseudonym for a globally admired design consultancy known for its strong culture of collaboration. When we first met Amy, she was a vocal champion of the firm's helping ethos. Eighteen months later, she was in tears—overwhelmed, unsupported, and considering quitting. What went wrong?
The answer: unhelpful help.
Helping was woven into the fabric of Glow—so much so that it was enshrined in the employee handbook as the 'mother-lode of all Glow values.' It was because of this culture that we approached them about conducting an in-depth study of help at work. We spent years studying how helping worked at Glow, including conducting 69 interviews and analyzing 401 daily diary entries from team members about help they gave and received. And yet, despite the strength of this culture, we discovered something unexpected in our data: 25% of help-seeking episodes reported in the daily diaries were rated by recipients as unhelpful.
That's right: one in four times, help wasn't actually helpful.
Decades of research has shown that helping at work, though valuable, is all too rare. Workers often don't get the help they need—generally, because they don't ask. In recent years, however, research, including our own, has identified some forward-looking organizations that have cracked the code of creating a culture of helping, including figuring out how managers can offer help without micromanaging. That makes helping a lot more common.
But making help more common comes with its own risks. Even in organizations famous for collaboration, a surprising proportion of help isn't all that helpful. That's why if you want a productive helping culture in your team or organization, you need to understand unhelpful help.
What Is Unhelpful Help?
Unhelpful help occurs when givers offer assistance that misses the mark—because it's poorly executed, not what was promised, or simply not what the recipient needed. These failed attempts aren't usually malicious. In fact, they often stem from good intentions. But they can still drain energy, slow down work, and erode trust.
In our years of studying the helping process, we've discovered that help at work is a paradox. Some aspects of organizational structure that make help common enough to fuel creativity and learning also increase the likelihood that unhelpful help will emerge. These structures are (1) strong helping norms, (2) flat hierarchies, and (3) flexible roles.
Strong helping norms increase the likelihood that people will ask for help when they need it, and others will agree to give it. Flat hierarchies mean that people don't worry as much about asking others for help—even those experts who might be hard to approach in a steeper hierarchy. Finally, when roles are fluid and everyone feels responsible, it's hard to know who is responsible for what.
Why Unhelpful Help Happens
Our research identified three factors that contribute to unhelpful help:
1. Fuzzy Asks and Murky Understandings
In a culture where helping is expected, people ask for help often—but not always clearly. This was Glow's first trap. Strong norms encouraged asking for help, but people didn't know how to ask for help effectively. Specifically, people didn't want to seem too demanding, so they made what we call fuzzy asks —vague, open-ended requests like 'I just wanted to get your input.'
As one designer in our study reflected, 'Helping somebody help you is often quite difficult when you're overwhelmed with information and you don't know how to narrow down the question.'
Help-givers, in turn, were left guessing. One explained, 'It was unclear what the team wanted from me…I think it was more like, 'Can you come in and just be part of this discussion?'' The result? Murky understandings that led to help that didn't fit the receivers' needs.
2. Optimistic Expectations and Lack of Accountability
Fuzzy asks often led help-seekers to assume their needs were understood—and would be met. This created what we describe as optimistic expectations: the belief that givers could solve the problem.
Givers often felt pressure to say yes but didn't always follow through. In Amy's case, many agreed to help, so Amy hoped they would solve the problem. She stopped working on other solutions. When givers failed to deliver, the problem had become that much more difficult and urgent.
3. An Emotionally Charged Aftermath
Unhelpful help doesn't just derail projects—it damages relationships and morale. Recipients often felt misled and unsupported. In Amy's case, the lack of follow-through made her feel undervalued. As she put it, 'If Glow thinks this is what I'm all about, to make sense of things that are all crazy and just to hold it together, I don't want to. That shouldn't be my value here.'
Givers didn't fare much better. Some felt their contributions were ignored or misused. Without feedback, they couldn't know whether they'd made a difference—or how to improve next time.
How to Make Help More Helpful
So how can organizations improve the quality of help at work? Our findings offer three concrete lessons:
1. Clarify the Problem
Asking for help requires admitting you have a problem. But it's a long journey from 'I feel anxious' to 'I know who to ask and what to ask for.' For most people, the process of finding clarity comes from talking it out.
Problems—especially in creative work—don't come neatly packaged when we encounter them. That's why leaders need to encourage subordinates to be open about their struggles and then listen carefully to what they hear. Leaders can focus these conversations around questions like 'what are the obstacles that might prevent you from reaching a goal on time?' and 'what would be the expected deliverable from a colleague you may bring into this project?' When an organization's projects require creativity and learning, many employees aren't actually aware of what they need. Formulating the problem and clarifying the help required is an important work task.
Additionally, organizations need to acknowledge that clarifying a problem is progress. Both givers and receivers who have clarifying conversations should be praised and recognized. Just as doctors are valued for their clear and correct diagnoses, so too should leaders and other help-givers. Sometimes, understanding employees' struggles is the most important work that needs to be done.
2. Avoid the Politeness Trap
In our research, we found that politeness is a hidden cause of poor-quality help. Asking for help is akin to asking for a favor, so everyone wants to do it politely. But sometimes, help-seekers are so deferential that they make their requests vague, asking for general 'input' or nonspecific 'feedback.' Such 'fuzzy asks' can feel polite and deferential because pointed requests seem too bossy.
But help-givers aren't mind readers. For any problem, there are a thousand ways to help. Do you want new ideas that might send you back to the drawing board? Or are you looking for minor feedback that you can use quickly? It is possible to do this politely. Your helpers will appreciate the direction and can be honest with you about whether they can deliver.
Senior leaders play an important role in making sure that their employees don't fall into the politeness trap by fostering an environment of psychological safety —the knowledge that it is safe to take interpersonal risks (such as asking for help when you need it). Leaders can foster psychological safety in several ways. First, they can encourage employees to discuss problems and areas where they need help—and praise those that do. Second, they can admit their own errors and struggles. Third, they can accurately frame the work, telling employees when they expect that tasks will require buy-in from others. When leaders normalize asking for help in clear, tangible ways—and encourage others to do so as well—it can help change the culture, making explicit asks feel less impolite and more standard fare.
3. Close the Loop and Show Your Gratitude
In our research, we were surprised at how often help-givers didn't know the ends of their own stories. They'd chipped in on a project but then didn't know how their contributions affected the final outcome.
Most people say 'thank you' when they receive help. That's good—we should feel and express our gratitude for those that help us. But helpers often want more than momentary gratitude. They want to see the impact of their labor—how did it affect the final output?
Besides genuinely wanting to provide value, people also help one another in hopes of building relationships. That's why leaders, managers, project leads, and anyone asking for help should close the loop after they receive it. Especially on big projects, it's important to keep track of those that helped along the way. One impactful way to do this is to send contributors the final product and point out how they, specifically, made a difference.
For leaders, actively affirming the different ways that their staff members have contributed—and asking managers too as well—will not only make these workers feel appreciated and helpful. It is also likely to give leaders insight into what unique skills each of their team members has, and how they can effectively draw upon those skills in the future.
. . .
Helping is a core part of work. But like all forms of collaboration, it's a skill—one that requires practice, feedback, and support. When it comes to help, it's actually not just the thought that counts.