Are you willing to do favors at work?
Our reader poll today asks: What’s your approach to doing favors for others in the workplace?
– I help out everyone who asks whether I know they’ll reciprocate or not: 82%
– I’ll help anyone once but if they never reciprocate I won’t help them again: 14%
– I’ll help only people who are likely to help me in the future: 2%
– I’ll do favors only for those who can influence my career positively/negatively: 1%
– I’m too busy to do favors for other folks: 1%
It’s an encouraging sign to see a workforce willing to lend a helping hand. A favor is a favor, and there should be no expectation of reciprocity. Hopefully once you say “yes” to helping you maintain this perspective. The cautionary note on your generosity is be careful of becoming an enabler of procrastination or lazy work. If you’re always around to help out in a pinch, you might find yourself getting taken advantage of and regularly cleaning up other peoples’ messes.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!
These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.
Interesting poll Mike. If we only help to get help people sense it and will probably reject our offer. Internally they are thinking, “What’s the catch?”
When they know you truly want to help them succeed they tend to accept and appreciate it. They’re also much more likely to reciprocate if you genuinely need their help down the road.
Zig Ziglar said, “You can get everything you want in life if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.” Bottom line, be genuine in your offer to help and trust that good people will want to help you if and when you need it.
Brian
I totally agree with that. I have always been someone who gets more out of helping others. It’s always brought me more satisfaction to help others,but that is something that you have or you don’t. But it has its rewards and its disappointments.They like to keep asking for favors and that can be a real issue. But to be a person and leader you have to be able to relate to everyone, and make everyone feel equal, and still maintain your role as leader!
The best work environments I have been involved with feature people willing to assist others when it means meeting an organizational goal. Often, the person needing a favor does not have to ask, because colleagues are genuinely interested in each others’ work, and they are sufficiently informed about the organizational goals and their colleagues efforts to know when some help would be appreciated and beneficial.
So the answer depends upon the environment in which you work. Setting a good example as a leader by linking staff work to organizational goals at every opportunity, and keeping all staff informed of each other’s projects and timelines can make the answer to the poll fairly easy to choose. An office of mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed “compost”) will answer in a very different way for very good reasons.
Flip it around and say: how can I lead my organization to become a place where it is easy for staff to know when to do favors for others?