“Not Helping” in the Best Way Possible

Attempting to Be Helpful When Giving Hard Answers

REFLECTIONS | BRAD TAYLOR

Throughout my career, a common theme in my work has been helping people. Whether supporting individuals in distress, connecting people with resources, working with communities to address challenging situations, or helping organizations strengthen their practices, much of my professional life has centered on finding ways to be helpful.

And yet, often I would go home feeling like I had fallen short.

Over time, I started to realize that although a large part of my job was to help people, an equally important part was to not help people. There were times when I could not meet someone’s expectations, deliver what they were hoping for, or provide what they needed. Sometimes, despite my best intentions, being helpful in the way someone needed simply wasn’t possible.

So I decided that if part of my job was to not help people, I wanted to do that part as well as I could.

I began thinking about what it might mean to not help someone in the best way possible. How could I still be of service when I was unable to meet their expectations?

I started focusing less on what I was unable to do and more on what I could still offer.

I could provide space for a person to be seen, to feel heard, and ideally to feel understood. I also aspired to maintain mutual respect and a sense of mutual dignity.

These became three areas of focus, and I began considering how they might add value to an interaction, particularly when I had little ability to influence the outcome. Being Seen, Heard, and Understood

Certainly, I wanted someone to feel seen and heard. But when I extended that intention to wanting them to feel understood, I began to recognize that I could carry additional responsibility in a conversation, even when I could not deliver the outcome they wanted.

I started thinking about what it meant to be not just a better listener, but a more effective one.

My mind drifted toward my teenager, earbuds in, nodding his head in my direction and presumably registering at least some of the sounds I was emitting. Technically, I suppose, listening.

I thought about the outward signs of attentive listening: making eye contact, nodding my head, leaning forward, and offering the occasional “mm-hmm” or “I see” to indicate that I was following along.

This seemed a considerable improvement over the teenage earbuds approach.

But I also had to acknowledge that I had become pretty good at demonstrating these behaviors without necessarily listening all that well.

There were times when I appeared to be giving someone my full attention, but if I was honest about what was happening in my own mind, I was mostly waiting for them to stop speaking so I could make my point.

I was listening in order to speak.

I wanted to raise that standard to listening to convey understanding.

I began calling this approach Capital-L Listening, and it shifted the responsibility for conveying understanding onto me.

This became particularly valuable when I knew someone was likely to receive an answer they did not want. If I was going to tell a person that I could not provide what they were asking for, it seemed important that they at least know I understood the question.

And ideally, that I understood something about the circumstances that had led them to ask it.

I even developed my own steps for compassionate communication as instructions to myself, a way to become a better and more effective listener.

I could not always change the answer, but I could work to ensure that the person receiving it knew I understood what they were asking. Maintaining Mutual Respect

Listening, however, was not the only way I could work toward not helping someone in the best way possible.

I also wanted to maintain mutual respect.

Now, as a parent and former substitute teacher, I have been disrespected up and down the hallways of more than a few buildings, and it doesn’t really faze me all that much anymore.

I have become reasonably good at differentiating between the personal and the professional, recognizing when someone’s disrespect may have more to do with frustration, a power differential, or a defensive response to what I am communicating than with me specifically.

Of course, I still appreciate being treated respectfully. But I began to realize that my interest in maintaining mutual respect was less about ensuring that I felt respected and more about ensuring that the person in front of me felt respected by me.

I could not necessarily control whether someone treated me respectfully, but I could pay attention to the respect I conveyed.

My listening strategies could certainly contribute to that, but I also needed to remember that the moment we were sharing did not embody the entirety of that person’s life. Their frustration, disappointment, or disagreement with me was occurring within a much larger set of experiences and circumstances, most of which I knew little or nothing about.

I explored this perspective further in my essay, Complex Lives Surround the Dense Moments.

I wanted to prioritize the relationship over the immediate subject matter. When I could not help someone achieve what they were hoping for, I still wanted them to feel that they mattered within the conversation, and that the vulnerability involved in asking for help was something I recognized and respected.

Maintaining Mutual Dignity

Finally, I wanted to maintain a sense of mutual dignity.

I’ve lost enough face over the years that I’m surprised I have any eyebrows left, and I have become considerably less concerned about preserving my own.

But when I am the person providing the answer, or declining to provide what someone is asking for, I may be operating from a position of considerably greater power.

I may have the authority to make a decision, access to resources, the support of an organization, or simply the benefit of being paid to participate in the interaction.

The person in front of me may be making themselves vulnerable by asking for support, expressing a need, or sharing a troubling reality. They may be doing so in front of colleagues, family members, neighbors, or others whose opinions matter to them.

And although I might experience our conversation as one of many interactions in my day, it may carry considerably more significance for them.

I began considering how I could communicate a limitation without making someone feel foolish for asking, or disagree without diminishing them. I also wanted to recognize that someone’s frustration with my answer did not necessarily require me to defend my authority or prove that I was right.

There have been plenty of opportunities in my life to lose face, and I suspect there will be more. I don’t necessarily need to protect mine at the expense of someone else’s.

What I Can Still Offer

I cannot always be successful in any or all three of these areas, but I try.

They represent places where I have some influence, and I call upon them during interactions when I may have little or no influence over whether someone receives what they are asking for, what they need, or even what they deserve.

Certainly, I love being helpful. If someone asks for something I can reasonably give, I generally want to give it to them.

But we live in a time when the resources made available to meet people’s needs often fall short of the needs themselves. Sometimes the resources simply do not exist in sufficient quantity. Other times, resources may exist but are not allocated, accessible, or made available to the people who need them.

There are people whose work places them on the front lines of these limitations every day. They answer questions, receive requests, explain policies, and sometimes deliver disappointing answers to people whose needs are genuine and whose circumstances may be extraordinarily difficult.

I want to acknowledge the importance of that work and offer gratitude and support to the people doing it.

I also believe we must continue asking whether our systems are meeting people’s needs and whether there is more we can and should be doing. Learning how to communicate a disappointing answer should never become a substitute for questioning whether that answer needs to remain disappointing.

And a thoughtfully communicated no is still a no. The person may leave our interaction without something they genuinely need.

When possible, we should continue looking for ways to help, whether by explaining available options, connecting someone with another resource, or helping them navigate a different path toward what they need.

But even when those options are exhausted, there may still be something meaningful we can offer.

Our time. Our attention. Our willingness to listen carefully enough that someone feels understood. Our commitment to treating them with respect and protecting their dignity, even when the conversation becomes difficult.

We can make room, for the time we are together, for their circumstances to matter.

I may not be able to help someone in the way they hoped.

But I can still try to be helpful.

Brad Taylor