TBM 424: Why We Help (And How To Stay Helpful)

A quick ask: I’m doing positioning research for the product I manage, and I have a goal of running 50 short sessions over the next couple weeks. It’s 30 minutes. I’ll share a short presentation/demo, then spend the rest of the time on feedback and questions. I’d really appreciate the help, especially if you work in product operations, program management, or working on an “AI operating model” transformation. Any help is appreciated!

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I have been thinking a lot about self-care, especially for people who find themselves pulled into helping people and making things better. The desire to help can be a gift. It can make you notice pain other people have normalized. It can help you imagine futures that are more coherent, humane, and effective. It can give you the energy to push against inertia. And it can give you the patience to nurture something that others might give up on too quickly.

But it can also become a source of pain and overwhelm.

You can see something that others do not see yet. You can imagine a better future that is not yet accessible. You can spend enormous amounts of energy pushing against a system that may not be ready, willing, or able to shift.

So part of the work is not just learning how to catalyze change. It is learning how to relate to your own impulse to help: what activates/triggers it, how it shapes your judgment, how much (and what type of) energy it demands, and how it might trigger a response in others.

Especially now, in the current environment, it is critical to meter your efforts. There is a never-ending parade of stimuli: things to learn, teams under strain, leaders under pressure, abuses of power, shifting priorities, fear, ambiguity, layoffs, and people trying to make sense of what comes next.

You have to pace yourself, and understand why you do what you do.

The Four Impulses

When you care about helping, different situations can activate different impulses.

You may be pulled toward advocating for a method, relieving pain in the system, serving a mission, or helping people build agency. These are not fixed personality types. They can overlap, combine, and shift depending on the situation.

Each impulse has a gift. But taken too far, each one can become a trap. And because each impulse carries an implied claim about what should happen (and what is broken), it is also liable to trigger certain people around you. In other words, each impulse can be kryptonite for someone.

Way-Driven

“This group would be better off if they could learn, adopt, or inhabit this way of working.”

The way-driven impulse is activated by belief in a particular method, model, practice, philosophy, or way of working. There is a sense of, “I have seen what this can do, and this group would benefit from it.”

This impulse is not necessarily dogmatic. It often comes from care. The desire to help meets passion for the approach, and that creates a powerful drive. But when this impulse is leading, the group’s pain tends to be interpreted through the lens of the way.

Trap: The method becomes more important than the people it is meant to help.

Kryptonite: People who are allergic to orthodoxy, frameworks, jargon, or being “converted.” They may experience this impulse as rigid, acting superior, or naïve, even when the method has real value.

Tension-Absorbing

“This does not have to be this way. There must be a more coherent, humane, effective future this group can reach.”

The tension-absorbing impulse is activated by pain in the system: tension, incoherence, waste, ambiguity, misalignment, unfairness, or avoidable suffering.

When this impulse is leading, something in the body reacts to the gap between what is happening and what seems possible. There is a pull to resolve the tension, defend people, protect the group, or make the situation more coherent. The helper instinct gets triggered.

Trap: Felt urgency becomes a substitute for the group’s readiness, consent, or agency.

Kryptonite: People who dislike emotional pressure, moral intensity, or being implicitly cast as part of the harm. They may experience this impulse as too sensitive, dramatic, over-involved, or destabilizing.

Mission-Driven

“This problem matters too much for the current system to keep failing at it.”

The mission-driven impulse is activated by a cause, outcome, or problem that feels too important to keep failing at.

When this impulse is leading, tactics become secondary. Methods, coalitions, arguments, compromises, and operating models are judged by whether they move the mission forward. The motivating force is not the elegance of the method or the felt pain in the room, but the importance of the outcome.

Trap: The importance of the mission becomes permission to override people.

Kryptonite: People who place high value on relationships, local knowledge, fairness, or careful process. They may experience this impulse as pushing too hard, moving too fast, or treating people and context as secondary to achieving the goal.

Agency-Building

“People need the power, relationships, confidence, and leadership to act for themselves.”

The agency-building impulse is activated by blocked capacity. The concern is not only whether the group reaches a better future, but whether people build the power, relationships, confidence, and leadership to shape that future for themselves.

When this impulse is in the driver’s seat, the work is less about personally resolving the tension, installing a method, or advancing the mission through one’s own effort. The focus is helping the group develop a shared language, organize around common interests, build relationships, practice leadership, name power dynamics, and increase its ability to act.

Trap: Respect for self-determination becomes an excuse to withhold needed structure, expertise, or protection.

Kryptonite: People who want clarity, decisiveness, expertise, or relief from ambiguity. They may experience this impulse as indirect, slow, overly facilitative, or unwilling to lead.

Personal Identity

These impulses can also attach to your personal and professional identity.

• You may take pride in understanding a particular method, practice, or way of working. You may have spent years developing that craft. So when someone dismisses the method, it may not feel like they are only rejecting an idea. It may feel like they are dismissing something you have worked hard to become good at.

• You may identify with your ability to sense incoherence, pain, or tension in a system. That can be a real strength. But if people do not see what you see, or seem unwilling to respond to it, it can feel lonely, invalidating, or maddening.

• You may tie part of your self-worth, safety, or sense of purpose to the mission. If the mission stalls, gets diluted, or is treated as optional, it may not feel like a normal strategic disagreement. It may feel like something important about you, your values, or your reason for being there is being threatened.

• Or you may see your strength in your ability to step back, foster agency, and help the group act for itself. If others demand quick answers, decisive direction, or heroic leadership, you may feel misunderstood or pulled away from what you believe real help requires.

Identity can give these impulses depth, commitment, patience, and craft. But it also raises the stakes.

When an impulse becomes part of your identity, resistance to the impulse can feel like resistance to you. A critique of the method can feel like a critique of your expertise. A lack of urgency can feel like a rejection of your values. A leader’s dismissal of tension can feel like a dismissal of your perception. A demand for more direction can feel like a rejection of your belief in agency.

That is when it becomes harder to stay curious.

Power

These impulses, and the identities they become connected to, are channeled through your relationship with power: both the power around you, and your own.

The first layer is your relationship to people with power.

A person with power may be able to bless the change, block it, ignore it, hijack it, protect it, or distort it. They may be the person you need to influence. They may be the source of the problem. They may be a genuine advocate who still struggles to help. They may say they support the work, but hesitate when it requires real political capital.

When one of your change impulses meets someone else’s power, it can trigger strong feelings. You may feel anger when power is used carelessly. You may feel helpless when people with authority will not act. You may feel fear when the source of power is also the source of threat. You may feel urgency when people are being harmed and the people who could help remain quiet.

These experiences can also stir some of your deepest feelings, sometimes reaching back to childhood experiences with authority, safety, fairness, or belonging. That can make these moments extremely hard to navigate, and the intensity of your reaction may reflect more than the present situation alone.

You might ask yourself:

• Who am I expecting to use power here, and what am I expecting them to do?

• Am I reacting to what this person is doing now, or to what they represent to me?

• Am I waiting for permission, protection, or courage from someone who may not provide it?

• What feeling is most active in me right now: anger, fear, disappointment, helplessness, urgency, or something else?

The second layer is your relationship to your own power.

You may have more influence than you realize: credibility, expertise, relationships, access, judgment, language, or the ability to make something visible. You may also have formal authority: a role, title, budget, team, decision right, or the ability to approve, deny, prioritize, protect, delay, or expose.

That can bring up its own set of feelings, energy, and tension. You may underuse your power because you do not want to be coercive, political, self-important, or unfair. You may overuse it because the pain feels intolerable, the mission feels urgent, or the better future feels obvious. You may hide your power behind “just helping.” You may deny your power because admitting it would mean admitting responsibility.

This can cut deeper than people expect and bring up strong emotions. It is deeply personal. Your relationship to your own power may touch old experiences of responsibility, exclusion, shame, fear, guilt, pride, or helplessness.

You might ask yourself:

• What power do I actually have here, formal or informal?

• Am I underusing it, overusing it, or pretending I do not have it?

• Am I hiding influence behind the language of helping?

• What responsibility comes with my place in the system?

• What would using my power carefully look like here?

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One important note: there is a whole other angle here around who is expected to help.

The burden of noticing, translating, smoothing tension, naming harm, educating others, or holding the group together is not evenly distributed. There is a large body of work around emotional labor, cultural taxation, identity taxation, office housework, and emotional tax that points to a similar pattern: the work of making a system more humane often falls disproportionately on people who are already carrying more of the cost.

In many organizations, people from underrepresented groups are typed as helpers and asked, implicitly or explicitly, to do extra emotional, cultural, and political labor. They may be expected to make pain legible, soften the message, protect others from discomfort, represent a group, educate colleagues, or help the system improve while also absorbing the effects of the current system.

That deserves more attention than I can give it here. But I wanted to call it out.

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Power and Impulse Combined

Combined, these impulses and power dynamics can create a familiar spiral.

(If you aren’t in the mood for a story, just skim this section.)

Imagine a situation where someone senses real tension and incoherence in a group. Their tension-absorbing impulse is active. They see people struggling, and they feel pulled to name the pain, reduce it, or protect people from it.

A leader responds with something like, “Well, why didn’t the managers deal with that?”

That may be a reasonable question. But for someone whose tension-absorbing impulse is active, the temperature rises quickly. It can feel like the person with more power is avoiding the pain that power helped create, or at least has some responsibility to address.

From there, the situation can escalate.

The person trying to help may assume that the people closest to the problem are not really in a position to name it publicly. That may be true. They may have said things privately that they do not feel safe saying in the room. They may have real reasons to be cautious. But the helper may also misjudge it. They may underestimate the group’s agency, overestimate the danger, or start shouldering something the group has not asked them to shoulder.

Then, because they want to make progress, they reach for a practice as a next step: a better meeting, a clearer operating rhythm, a retrospective, a decision log, a working agreement, a way to surface tensions more safely. That may come from care and experience. But it can also trigger someone else’s kryptonite.

For the leader, the tension-absorbing impulse may already feel like emotional pressure, moral intensity, or an implicit accusation: “You should have noticed this,” or “You are partly responsible for this pain.” Then the way-driven impulse shows up too, because the proposed next step is a practice. Now it can sound like, “And here is the process you should have been using all along.”

To the leader, it may feel like the helper believes a practice can solve a power problem. It may sound naïve, procedural, or overly earnest. They may hear, “If we just ran the right ritual, the tension would go away,” even if that is not what was meant.

And if the leader has power, their skepticism may hit the helper harder. It may not feel like ordinary disagreement. It may feel like being dismissed by someone who has the power to dictate reality. If the leader says, “I don’t think that’s the issue,” or “This feels like process for process’s sake,” the helper may feel reduced to the “process person,” even if they are trying to point at something deeper.

Now the situation is charged on multiple levels.

The helper’s tension-absorbing impulse may be kryptonite for someone who dislikes emotional pressure or being implicated in harm. Their way-driven next step may be kryptonite for someone who is allergic to frameworks, rituals, or being “converted.” The leader’s power may be kryptonite for someone sensitive to being dismissed by people with authority.

The helper may be reacting to what feels like power deflecting responsibility. The leader may be reacting to what feels like someone reducing a messy leadership situation to a framework choice. The helper may be assuming the group cannot safely say publicly what they have said privately. The leader may be assuming the proposal reflects naivety about how change really happens.

And on and on it goes…

A Few Observations

The obvious one: this takes an incredible amount of energy and patience. Not just the work of changing the system, but the work of noticing what is getting activated in you, what is getting activated in others, how your identity is getting pulled in, and how power is shaping the interaction.

As your energy gets depleted, you are more likely to get pulled in. And once you are pulled in, you are more likely to escalate the situation. You may push harder, read resistance less generously, over-identify with the pain, reach too quickly for a practice, turn disappointment into anger, or begin to threaten—subtly or directly. And when escalation turns into threat, you often diminish your odds of creating the change you were hoping for.

Understanding your relationship to power is critical. That includes your response to other people’s power and your relationship to your own. Both can get very personal, very quickly. Power can touch old experiences of authority, fairness, safety, belonging, responsibility, shame, helplessness, or being dismissed.

Understanding your relationship to identity matters too. The impulse may be connected to something you take pride in: your craft, your values, your ability to sense tension, your commitment to a mission, or your belief in helping people build agency. When that identity gets touched, resistance can feel less like disagreement and more like a rejection of something important about you.

Each impulse to change carries its own trap, and each can trigger people around you in different ways. The way-driven impulse can sound like conversion. The tension-absorbing impulse can sound like accusation. The mission-driven impulse can sound like pressure. The agency-building impulse can sound like ambiguity or abdication.

The point is not to stop caring. The point is to notice what caring is doing to you, how it is landing with others, and whether you still have the energy and perspective to help.

This is where Edgar Schein’s work on helping is useful. Schein captured the paradox well: “All too often, to our bewilderment, our sincere offers of help are resented, resisted, or refused—and we often react the same way when people try to help us.”

From the inside, the impulse to help may feel generous, careful, and well-intended. But from the outside, it may land as pressure, judgment, superiority, rescue, or control. The other person may feel exposed, corrected, diminished, or put “one down,” even if that was not the intent.

This is why helping requires more than care. It requires attention to the relationship your help is creating. Are you increasing the other person’s capacity and agency, or are you making yourself the one who sees, knows, carries, or fixes? Are you helping in a way that the other person can actually receive, or are you adding another layer of pressure to an already charged situation?

For someone pulled into making things better, Schein’s warning is a useful check: sincerity is not enough.

Coming Back to Self-Care

This is why self-care matters.

Not self-care as a vague reminder to take breaks, but self-care as the discipline of staying in the right relationship with your own desire to help.

If you are someone who notices pain, imagines better futures, and feels pulled to intervene, you need ways to conserve your energy and keep your perspective. Otherwise, the very thing that makes you useful can start to work against you. You may become emotionally overinvested, assume action is needed before conditions are right, or push harder than others are ready for. Over time, this can lead to frustration, poor judgment, or burnout.

Self-care, in this context, is not checking out. It is learning to stay useful without becoming consumed.

It means asking: What impulse am I responding to? How do I personally identify with that impulse? What part of me needs this to be seen, valued, or vindicated? What power dynamic am I reacting to? Am I helping in a way that others can receive?

The goal is not to care less.

The goal is to care with enough clarity, pacing, and humility that your help remains helpful.

A quick ask: I’m doing positioning research for the product I manage, and I have a goal of running 50 short sessions over the next couple weeks. It’s 30 minutes. I’ll share a short presentation/demo, then spend the rest of the time on feedback and questions. I’d really appreciate the help, especially if you work in product operations, program management, or working on an “AI operating model” transformation. Any help is appreciated!