Stop Pretending to Look Busy

Why turning away colleagues looking for help could damage your bottom line

A coworker comes to you seeking help with a task. Do you: (a) roll your eyes, (b) act busy, or (c) lend a hand?

If you’re leaning toward A or B, you’re not alone, but you may be stunting your company. A study by Stine Grodal, assistant professor of strategy & innovation, suggests a culture of help-giving and -seeking is crucial to an organization’s positive dynamic.

“Helping allows workers to gain new knowledge of their colleagues’ work—insights that increase their ability to manage ill-defined or otherwise hard-to-coordinate tasks,” says Grodal. “We find that helping a colleague solve a problem creates feelings of joint accomplishment and emotional engagement, which stimulates workers to seek unconventional solutions and thus be more innovative.”

Grodal encourages managers to signal that help-giving is valued in their organizations. Gold stars might not be the answer, but Grodal does suggest implementing a reward system, such as a “help-giver of the month” award. An organization Grodal and her colleagues studied tried to establish a more formal online help system, but found it ineffective, she says. Employees who needed help immediately didn’t have time to wait for a response, while requests were often bogged down by emails discussing who would handle the issue.

Better to approach it the old-fashioned way.

“The advantage of an informal system is that it maintains both the workers’ intrinsic motivation to help and the important element of engagement in the helping routine,” says Grodal. “Some of the most engaging moments happen during impromptu face-to-face interactions.”