How Being Helpful is Ruining Your Team's Performance as a Humanitarian and Development Leader

In this episode, we delve into a common pitfall that many humanitarian and development leaders face: when asking, "How can I support you?" While this question seems caring, it can inadvertently create dependency among team members, undermining their growth and confidence.

Understanding how and when to ask this question can transform your leadership approach and enhance your team's performance.

By tuning into this 11 minute quick quote episode, you’ll discover how to:

1. Shift your questioning strategy to foster greater independence in your team.
2. Enhance your team’s confidence and responsibility through targeted support.
3. Cultivate a stronger, high-performing team dynamic that benefits everyone involved.

Ready to elevate your leadership style and empower your team? Press play now to learn the crucial timing and approach for asking how to support your team effectively!

WHAT IS YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE?

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

Full Transcript:

In this episode, you're going to discover how asking your team if you can help them can sometimes actually do the opposite.

Welcome to The Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast, the podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout, and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace.

Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hello, my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week and I hope I'm not sounding too nasally today. I actually have a bit of a sinus cold. And still getting over it, but the show must go on.

So in today's quick quote episode, we're going to be inspired by a quote by the founder of servant leadership. And his name is Robert K Greenleaf and the quote is "good leaders must first become good servants." Now, regardless how you feel about the word servant and leadership, I do feel like there is something to be said about having a serving approach when we are leading.

And, in this episode, I wanted to explore a common mistake that I've seen a lot of leaders make when serving their teams and something that you might be doing, but haven't even really thought about it.

So I want to bring some awareness around it because making one simple switch can make the difference to create a stronger, higher performance team.

And that mistake is asking the question, "how can I support you"?

And it's not just asking the question, but when you ask that question.

A few years back, I was doing a training for a group of about 200 leaders on coaching and how to use coaching for performance and development planning. And I asked them, what are your favorite coaching questions? I always very curious to know what questions leaders like to ask. And the question that came up the most was "how can I support you"? And I felt, I thought that was so interesting. And actually made a lot of sense.

I hadn't thought about it, but in a humanitarian and development type field., if you're listening to this, you probably are a caring leader or you have intentions to be a caring leader. And on a surface level, that question, "how can I support you" is a great one. You want to help and it comes from good intentions. You want to be a caring leader.

The problem is that sometimes we actually create dependency and the opposite of what we want by asking this question at the wrong time in our coaching conversations. So it's not that you shouldn't ask it. I actually think it's a great question. But. It's when we ask it and the way we ask it, that make the difference.

But before I get into this and how, or when to ask, "how can I support you"? To your team, let's think through a minute about what does it mean to be a serving leader?

And what does service mean first of all?

So service or serving to me means providing or doing something for the benefit of someone else, in this case, the benefit of your team members. It means that we're not thinking of ourselves first, but we're thinking of others first. We're thinking of our team and what's best for them. So we're putting them first.

And then in that sense, we probably are thinking of their professional growth and development. What would help them become more confident and take more responsibility? What would help them become a higher performance team member? And eventually will benefit us as well.

But when we focus on serving them first, which is where this idea of servant based leadership comes from, then it will benefit them in a way that it will then give back to us and, and it's really a mutually beneficial way of leading.

The problem is with a question like, "how can I support you? How can I help you? How can I serve you?" Is when we ask it too early in the performance or development plan or the coaching conversation, we can actually create the opposite of the intention that we want. We probably want to ask that question to make our team members stronger.

How can I help you get stronger? How can I support you to do better? Right?

However, what happens is if we ask that too early, then the team member will start telling the leader or the supervisor, what they can do FOR them. In other words rather than thinking for themselves or creating a sense of greater responsibility and taking on more and coming up with their own ideas, they push it back to the leader to come up with ideas and to take on responsibility. Because this is just human nature. We want to operate from a low risk standpoint.

And if your team doesn't understand the intention of helping them by asking or coaching them. Then they will think that your way of supporting them will be by telling them the answer by telling them what to do by going to HR and having the conversation for them or whatever.

And yes, in certain instances, there are ways that you, as a supervisor can help them which they maybe don't have the power or the authority to be able to do themselves. However, most of the time when someone answers this question and it's too early in the conversation. They are answering it in a way, which is basically saying, "Hey, you, as my supervisor, you can do these things for me." Or "you can tell me what to do. You can give me advice." and that undoes the intentions behind what we want the conversation to create, which is a stronger, more independent team member.

So I recommend that you ask us question, and this is what I teach in my coaching course "becoming the modern, humanitarian and development leader" that we ask that question at the very end of a conversation, whether it's a development plan conversation, performance plan, or just an everyday coaching conversation. You ask that question at the very end and we ask it from the perspective of not, "what can I tell you or advise you to do"?

But "How can I support the idea that you already told me you were going to do?" Or "how can I support and move help you move forward in ways that are beyond your power or authority to help you accomplish your goal?" So it's not me telling you what to do or giving you advice or telling you to search this resource or look at this or that, or I will do it for you. Essentially.

But it's me as a supervisor wanting to know or reinforce what they've already come up with is a great way forward and that you're there to support them, but not do it for them or tell them what to do, but you're supporting them by doing the pieces that they can't do themselves because they don't have the power or authority.

Just as a wrap-up for today.

Sometimes when we want to be servant leaders or when we want to serve others, we end up actually doing the opposite. If we're not careful. And it's not that we have bad intentions. I think the question, "how can I support you" has great intentions, but it's where you ask it in the conversation that's important. And how you intend to ask the question as supporting them not by giving them new ideas or telling them what to do or, doing it for them.

But by supporting what they've already said, they're going to do. So I hope that is clear and that might make a difference in some of your coaching or performance and development, planning conversations as you're having them.

And stay tuned next Monday, when we talk about some uncommon performance and development planning goals that we can add into our performance and development plans which can really take our team and ourselves to the next level so that we can make an even greater impact and become modern humanitarian and development leaders.

All right. Until next week. Keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do? Or do you let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is the first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz "what is your leadership style?" You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz,. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz, and discover your leadership style now. Your team will thank you for it.