First Of All - Do No Harm! - Society

The employee is going through a difficult divorce. She became irritable, whiny. She constantly makes mistakes (she is an accountant), and this affects the entire department. There are already rumors that she will be fired. How can you help her overcome her condition? Irina, 38 years old

As you know, helping in a situation when they do not ask for help is a thankless task. Is your employee asking for help? If so, which one? How exactly can you help her? After all, you will not improve her relationship with her husband. Don't speed up or reverse the divorce. You will not help in the division of property if this is also the problem. You will not reassure a woman with the words "everything will be fine" if at the moment she is experiencing the most real catastrophe.

Or maybe she should understand right now that everything is extremely bad. And then it will be simply impossible if you do not take the most active actions, burn the bridges behind you and cut the Gordian knot of relations? Or maybe, on the contrary, the divorce needs to be slowed down? What if she has to see and fix the problem in herself, for something to ask her husband for forgiveness, perhaps for the first time in her life to meet him with a hot dinner and feminine tenderness, and not with the words “Where have you, scoundrel, disappeared again ?! ".

You say, "There are already rumors that she will be fired." Have you ever heard stories about how the main impulses in their lives for career takeoff and personal success were received by people as a result of just such dismissals that occurred during the most difficult turning points in life?

How to help without even knowing the ultimate goal of help? How to help if you don't ask for help? How can you not create what the people call a "disservice" by your actions or even your words? Are you sure that your help will not be regarded as a gross interference with your personal life or even fate? Can you guarantee that after years you will not receive an explicit or hidden reproach that, if it were not for your “good” advice, if she refused your “help”, and everything would be fine? Have you heard that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", or a similar vernacular expression - "do not do good - you will not get evil"? Why do you think, with all its absurdity, it still exists today? Maybe even you yourself have already had to "step on such a rake"?

There will always be Eskimos who give the Congolese instructions on how to behave in the worst heat

Stanislav Jerzy Lec

First of all, you should think about how not to harm the help. Do not assume that the commandment "Primum non nocere!" (“First of all - do no harm!”) Exists only for those who are dressed in a white robe and hold a scalpel in their hand. No, this commandment exists for everyone who considers it possible for himself, under any pretext, to penetrate into the personal space of another person. Please tell me if an electrical outlet sparkles in your office, do you rush from it to the phone to call an electrician?

And if the main working program starts to malfunction in the computer, don't you attach a sheet with a bold inscription "Do not turn on!" until the "system administrator" rushes in? And if an employee, pulling out a screwdriver from under the table, goes to the outlet above your desk or a colleague who is coming from a smoke break sits down at your computer with the words “okay, right now, we'll fix everything ourselves”, will you protect your workplace and personal space from them? ?

What feelings will you have, what thoughts will come to your mind in such a situation? Obviously, the very first and most normal, adequate reaction will be … fear, fear, fear of harming, spoiling, breaking, making things worse. Why, when with might and main "sparks", "hangs" or even more completely "breaks" a person, we are ready to rush to him with arrogant confidence - "right now we will help, right now we will fix it"? Even being a close friend or girlfriend of a “broken” person, how will we differ from a colleague who is self-confidently directed to “help” our outlet or computer work better?

What will be revealed in the behavior of the "assistant", if not that he really does not really care about the outcome of the situation - what exactly you, and not him, will eventually have to answer for fire safety or for a software failure that disrupted the work of the entire department. Even the most decent and sympathetic person, having done harm, in this case will only mutter guiltily: “Well, I'm sorry, I probably didn't need to …” But decent and sympathetic does not mean smart. Note that the smart in such cases will not immediately "rush" to help, the smart one will first of all think about how not to harm. And if he suspects the likelihood of causing even more harm with his help, then … he will not help! He will leave this role to someone else.

A lot of decent responsive employees who rushed to you with their screwdrivers and wires, rustling with reference books on the go, most likely consider him a sluggish type, indifferent to your trouble. At this time, he will be busy looking for those solutions to the problem that will definitely not harm you, while necessarily reducing, not increasing the share of your responsibility, and most importantly, options for help will be offered to you of your choice. It is also possible that he will carefully turn to you with a question (after all, this is your computer and your outlet), that maybe you just need to give the computer more time to restart, and the outlet could not stand it only because it was recently connected to it device not matching power.

Don't participate, don't help, and don't try to help! Offer your help and your participation. Try to do it in a subtle way, best of all in a delicately interrogative form. And only after receiving, no matter how expressed - in words or with a look, but a completely clear affirmative answer, you can ask the employee what exactly, from her point of view, your help could be. In 99 cases out of 100, your help will consist only of your participation. The employee will decide everything else on her own or with the help of a specialist, or it will be resolved over time.