When Being Useful Stops Being Enough

We have basic needs as humans. Being part of the tribe. Feeling relevant.

A leader I worked with found the way they could achieve this was by jumping in to help.

Answering questions that hadn't been directed at them. Clarifying things that were still forming. Offering something nobody had asked for.

When we explored how they wanted to show up, they noticed it themselves. The behaviour was small but it was constant.

From the outside it looked like contribution. To them it felt like contribution. But the more we explored it, the clearer it became that a lot of it wasn't about the other person at all.

They were doing it for themselves.

Because being useful had become a way of proving they belonged. Of staying relevant. Of making sure people knew they were across it.

And crucially, while they were busy doing that, they weren't doing their own thinking. So involved in other people's problems, they'd stopped sitting with their own.

Plus, every time they stepped in, they took something away from the people around them. The chance to find their own answer. To sit with uncertainty long enough to think it through and own the outcome rather than receive it.

They were doing it for validation. It was keeping them from their own thinking. And it was quietly getting in the way of the people they thought they were helping.

Three costs. None of them initially visible.

The restlessness they'd felt finally made sense. It wasn't that anyone was questioning whether they belonged. They were ignoring their own garden while attending to everyone else’s.

When you’re being useful, who is it really for?

When Being Useful Stops Being Enough