As most helping professionals know, there is a fine line between helping, controlling, and enabling. Finding that sweet spot doesn’t come with a treasure map and an X marking the spot. It comes with experience and a willingness to ask yourself some difficult questions. I know, because at different points in my career, I functioned at both ends of the continuum.
You can see these tendencies everywhere: coaching, counseling, parenting, leadership, teaching, even friendships. Really, in any relationship where you believe you know what’s best for someone else and you are attempting to influence them to do what you think they should.
The Subtle Takeover
We often begin with good intentions, although sometimes our own needs are mixed in. If someone’s decision will affect your life in some way, your intentions might be selfish. I remember when I had a friend who wanted to move far away from the town we lived in. She was the person I hung out with more than anyone and it would have been a terrible loss for me had she moved. You better believe, I pointed out all the ways I could see why moving wouldn’t be a good choice for her. Ironically, she is still there and I’m the one who moved away.
When I worked in foster care and the kids would have the chance to return to their family and the family had been abusive, I know I gently tried to convince them to stay where I knew they were safe. I truly regret some of those conversations now, not because I wanted them safe, but because I was sometimes more invested in my preferred outcome than in helping them evaluate their own choices.
And if they resist the subtle cues, you may escalate to:
- I need you to quit.
- I need you to leave the relationship.
- I need you to apply for the job.
- I need you to study.
- I need you to follow through.
This is what it can sound like when helping someone pursue their goal quietly turns into pursuing our goal for them.
Why Helpers Take Over
Choice Theory® reminds us that all behavior is purposeful. So what purpose might this quiet, or not-so-quiet, takeover serve?
Caring and fear. Most people enter the helping profession because they genuinely want to help. They like people and want to help them be happier. As a younger, inexperienced professional, I believe keeping foster kids away from the people who abused them was always best with no thought to the experiences they needed to go through for their own growth and development.
Sometimes it’s fear. In both of my examples, fear was a factor—with my friend, it was fear for myself and with the foster child, it was fear for them. When fear is driving us, it can become harder to distinguish protecting someone from controlling them.
Expertise and ego. You’ve studied hard to earn your degree and gained experience in the field, so it’s natural to believe that you know best from your more educated and experienced position. I will never forget a conversation I had with my supervisor over almost 40 years ago now. We were disagreeing about the approach to be taken with a client and he was frustrated that I didn’t agree with him. I asked him, “Don’t I have a right to my own opinion?” He replied with the line that prompted me to start the job search for something different, “Of course you do, but when I express my more educated, experienced position, you should see the light and come over to my way of thinking.” That blew up in his face. I realized I couldn’t work for someone who thought that so within a month, I was on to greener pastures.
Occasionally it’s ego. I believe it was ego that caused my supervisor to utter those fateful words to me so long ago. A person might be so certain they have the right answer, they are shocked when someone wants to go against their advice.
Impatience and wanting evidence we’re effective. I know patience is considered a virtue, but when they were handing it out, I think I might have been last in line. I’m not the most patient person. How does this play out in a helping relationship? When we allow impatience to get the best of us, we may try to short-circuit the person’s process by pressuring them to act before they’re ready.
Sometimes we want evidence that we’re effective, so we try to get those we work with to take the path that will give that to us. I can remember when No Child Left Behind was the order of the day in schools. In theory, I agree with that statement, but they system created an incentive for teachers to become more controlling because their own outcomes were now tied to student performance. Their paycheck often depended on it. This is never good in the helping professions because it mixes our goals with the other person’s goals.
Discomfort watching people struggle. Most people going into the helping professions have a strong propensity toward kindness. Kindness can sometimes slide into rescuing. We become desperate to save this person from their pain, forgetting that sometimes natural pain, rather than pain imposed by someone else, can become a powerful teacher and catalyst for change.
Helping Without Taking Over
Being a helping professional is messy. We don’t control another person’s process, no matter how much we may sometimes wish we could. We can help build a need-satisfying relationship, clarify the desired outcome, uncover obstacles, expand choices, provide information, and ask questions—but we can’t manufacture desire or motivation. Those are inside jobs.
The second tenet of Choice Theory is: “All we can give or get from other people is information. How they or we deal with that information is our choice.”
When Their Choice Isn’t What You’d Recommend
This is where the helper’s work gets harder, particularly when you hold tight to your version of the outcome you think is best.
Helping without controlling doesn’t require us to become indifferent to outcomes. We can care deeply, offer what we know, ask good questions, express concerns, and even hope someone makes a particular choice. The challenge is remembering where our influence ends and their agency begins.
The question you need to ponder is: Can you remain helpful when someone chooses something you wouldn’t?
Self-Evaluation is Your Friend
Whenever you find yourself in this territory, it may be time to honestly ask yourself:
- Whose desired outcome is this?
- Am I working harder than they are?
- Would I still respect them if they chose differently?
- Am I helping them think or trying to get them to agree?
- Am I disregarding their readiness?
- Am I confusing the consequences their choice may have for me with ownership of the choice itself?
- Have I lost sight of the benefits of encouraging a person’s agency?
- Am I trying to rescue them from natural consequences that might provide important information?
- If they choose differently than I would, can I remain connected without trying to punish, persuade, or withdraw my respect?
Helping doesn’t require us to become indifferent to outcomes. We can care deeply, offer what we know, ask good questions, express concerns, and even hope someone makes a particular choice. The challenge is remembering where our influence ends and their agency begins.
Reflection:
Where might you be working harder toward someone else’s change than they are?
Interested in strengthening your coaching skills?
If you want to learn how to help people clarify what they want, evaluate their choices, and move toward their goals without taking over their process, explore the Academy of Choice online coach training program.
