Fake Requests for Help

When someone asks us for help, we sometimes have a positive, warm, emotional response. We can feel valued, flattered, respected, or appreciated. And often, these feelings fit the situation. The request for help validates our ability to contribute to the group effort. These feelings can be especially strong when we've had little contact with the person seeking help because these requests indicate something desirable about our reputations. Feeling respected and valued when you are actually respected and valued is an absolute good.

But people seek help for many reasons. Some do seek the help they're asking for, but others have hidden agendas. When people seek help for reasons other than the reasons they claim, there is a risk that destructive politics is afoot.

Below is a Feeling respected and valued when
you are actually respected and
valued is an absolute goodlittle catalog of situations that motivate people to ask for help for reasons beyond the help they appear to be seeking. It's useful to understand what motivates people to behave this way, and what you can do about these fake requests for help. In what follows, I'll refer to the Seeker of help as Sandra or Stephen, and the seeker's Target as Tom or Tilly. And I refer to the task in question as Marigold.

Here we go:

Offloading work

When trying to explain why Stephen might ask Tilly for help, getting someone else to do his work is one motive that comes to mind. Stephen might be overloaded. But he might also dislike the kind of work Marigold now requires. Or perhaps he anticipates a schedule conflict with some other task he prefers, or a conflict with a personal matter he doesn't want to disclose.

Transferring or distributing risk

Sandra might sense that working on Marigold entails some political risk that she would rather not bear. By enlisting Tom's assistance, she hopes to create an opportunity to mitigate some the risk by transferring it to Tom, in whole or in part. She might later be able to assert, "Oh, yes, that's the part of the work that Tom is doing."

Creating delays

Stephen might have an interest in delaying Marigold without being personally responsible for the delays. For example, one of Stephen's allies might be an advocate of an initiative that rivals Marigold strategically. By transferring some of the task to Tilly, Stephen hopes to slow progress in an excusable way for two reasons. First, Tilly is very busy with other work. And second, she's unfamiliar with the current status of Marigold and she'll need some time to familiarize herself with the task.

Flattering the target

Sandra might or might not actually need help with Marigold, but by asking Tom to help with the project, she hopes to flatter him — to communicate to him that she values and respects his contributions. Whether or not she actually feels that way is unimportant. Her request for help isn't sincere, and Tom would do well to maintain a skeptical stance with respect to Sandra's requests.

Concealing ignorance or incompetence

Among the more devious motives for Stephen to ask for help is his desire to conceal his inability to perform the work due to ignorance or incompetence. By recruiting Tilly, he can shift to her any part of the work that he doesn't understand. He might work alongside her if he wants to cast her in the role of tutor, to learn what he can, but that would be a relatively rare variant of this motive. More likely, he just wants Tilly to do the work, and then claim credit for much of her effort.

Last words

In Nature, these strategies are categorized as aggressive mimicry. For example, the margay cat has been observed emitting calls that emulate the calls for help among monkeys. When other monkeys approach, the cat attacks and often secures a meal. In the realm of organizational politics, people who use strategies like those described above are, in a sense, engaging in aggressive mimicry for the purpose of predation.

Rarely is a fake request for help the first fake request the seeker of help has ever made. If you suspect fakery, respond with caution. If you feel you can't decline outright, consider limiting what you offer, or delaying your availability. Limits and delays might compel the seeker of help to seek it elsewhere.  Top    Next Issue

Is every other day a tense, anxious, angry misery as you watch people around you, who couldn't even think their way through a game of Jacks, win at workplace politics and steal the credit and glory for just about everyone's best work including yours? Read 303 Secrets of Workplace Politics, filled with tips and techniques for succeeding in workplace politics. More info

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Workplace Politics:

The Attributes of Political Opportunity: The Finer Points

Opportunities come along even in tough times. But in tough times like these, it's especially important to sniff out true opportunities and avoid high-risk adventures. Here are some of the finer points to assist you in your detective work.

Telephonic Deceptions: I

People have been deceiving each other at work since the invention of work. Nowadays, with telephones ever-present, telephonic deceptions are becoming more creative. Here's Part I of a handy guide for telephonic self-defense.

Devious Political Tactics: Mis- and Disinformation

Practitioners of workplace politics intent on gaining unfair advantage sometimes use misinformation, disinformation, and other information-related tactics. Here's a short catalog of techniques to watch for.

Embarrassment, Shame, and Guilt at Work: Coping

Coping effectively with feelings of embarrassment, shame, or guilt is the path to recovering a sense of balance that's the foundation of clear thinking. And thinking clearly at work is important if you want to avoid feeling embarrassment, shame, or guilt.

Appearance Anti-patterns: I

Appearances can be deceiving. Just as we can misinterpret the actions and motivations of others, others can misinterpret our own actions and motivations. But we can take steps to limit these effects.

See also Workplace Politics and Workplace Politics for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming December 11: White Water Rafting as a Metaphor for Group Development

Tuckman's model of small group development, best known as "Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing," applies better to development of some groups than to others. We can use a metaphor to explore how the model applies to Storming in task-oriented work groups. Available here and by RSS on December 11.

And on December 18: Subgrouping and Conway's Law

When task-oriented work groups address complex tasks, they might form subgroups to address subtasks. The structure of the subgroups and the order in which they form depend on the structure of the group's task and the sequencing of the subtasks. Available here and by RSS on December 18.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenyrWpTxHuyCrjZbUpner@ChacnoFNuSyWlVzCaGfooCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info