Why Being Helpful Can Become Expensive

One small request rarely looks like a career decision. Could you take the notes? Help the new colleague? Pull the material together before Monday? You can do it, it needs doing, and saying yes gets the meeting moving. The cost becomes clearer when those small requests have occupied the time you meant to spend on work that would build your own next step.

Then comes the familiar compliment: ‘She is so helpful.’ It may be warmly meant. You may be proud of it. But when the conversation turns to your future, it can be surprisingly difficult to explain how all that helpfulness is helping you.

That is why The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work, by Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund and Laurie Weingart, belongs on my Reading Shelf. It examines the gap between work an organisation needs and work it rewards, and asks who ends up doing the work in that gap.

I see the relevance in coaching. Women take on tasks because they believe those tasks are necessary. They care about the result and can see what needs doing. Yet the work that would develop their own career keeps being postponed. The No Club gives us a way to examine that pattern without treating care and responsibility as character flaws.

Useful work and career progress do not always meet

The authors use the term ‘non-promotable work’ for tasks that benefit the organisation but contribute little to the person’s advancement. That distinction matters. We are talking about work that often has a good reason to exist, which makes it harder to question who should do it.

I have no wish to create a workplace where everyone is so busy being strategic that nobody organises the team lunch. That would be a rather hungry version of progress. I do want us to notice when being the person who always helps becomes an unofficial part of someone’s job, with no corresponding recognition or adjustment to her other responsibilities.

One finding gives this a very concrete size. In a professional services firm the authors studied, women spent about 200 more hours a year than men on non-promotable tasks. Linda Babcock describes this finding in her overview of the book. That is a finding from one organisation, not a number to attach to every woman’s working life. Even so, it makes the accumulated cost of ‘just one small thing’ easier to see.

Those hours have to come from somewhere. They may displace work that develops expertise or creates a visible business result. They may spill into the evening, taking time that was meant for family, rest or something that has absolutely nothing to do with work. Both deserve our attention.

The expectation starts before the request

A useful part of the research behind this book is that it looks beyond the moment a woman says yes. In a 2017 study published in the American Economic Review, Babcock and colleagues found that women were more likely to volunteer, to be asked to volunteer, and to accept requests for the tasks studied. The expectation that women would agree appeared to be an important driver.

That helps explain why advice about better boundaries can feel incomplete. By the time the request reaches you, someone may already have decided that you are the obvious person to ask. Your track record of saying yes makes that decision easier next time. You can examine your own response, but the way work gets allocated also needs attention.

The authors describe a particularly revealing discovery from their own No Club. As they became better at refusing unrewarded tasks, they noticed that the work often went to another woman. Their individual workload had improved; the wider pattern could continue.

For me, this is the point that makes the book worth discussing beyond a conversation about saying no. Someone has to decide whether the task is necessary, where it belongs and how it will be shared or recognised. If each woman has to negotiate her way out separately, we leave the allocation process remarkably comfortable.

People work can be leadership work

There is a distinction I would keep firmly in mind while reading. Mentoring a colleague, developing a team or resolving a conflict can be important leadership work. Calling it non-promotable simply because it involves people would miss the point. In some roles, that work is central to the contribution someone is employed to make.

Consider a leader who helps two teams reach a decision that has been holding up delivery. Describing her contribution as ‘being helpful’ would make it sound much smaller than it is. Her judgement may have enabled the work to move. That deserves to be named and recognised. I explore this in The Value SHIFT: From ‘I Work Hard’ to ‘This Is My Impact’.

Now consider the same leader repeatedly arranging meeting logistics because everyone knows she will get it done. The task still needs an owner, but that does not explain why it keeps becoming hers or what she should stop doing to make room for it.

The useful question is what the work means in this particular role. Does it use her expertise? Is it part of her agreed responsibilities? Is its contribution recognised when performance and opportunities are discussed? These questions help separate valuable work that is being described poorly from extra work that needs to be distributed differently.

Look at what your helpfulness is postponing

In coaching, I want to look at both sides of a commitment: What the task contributes and what accepting it leaves less room for. A week can be full of sensible decisions and still take you further away from the career you want.

Perhaps you want experience with a different part of the business, but the project that would give you that exposure keeps slipping. Perhaps you need time to develop a skill, build relationships beyond your immediate team or work out what you want next. These things are easy to postpone because nobody is standing at your desk waiting for them. Somebody is usually waiting for the helpful thing.

I would also read the word ‘promotable’ with your own ambitions in mind. A bigger title may be exactly what you want. You may also want deeper expertise, a different role or a working life that leaves you enough energy to enjoy the rest of it. Career decisions need to make sense for the direction you have chosen. Recognition matters, but it is not the only measure.

This is the question I would bring to the next request: What will I have less room for if I say yes? It makes the trade-off more honest. You might still choose to help. You can also ask for a different arrangement before a one-off favour becomes something everyone quietly expects.

Start with one recurring request

Here is how I would put the book’s distinction to work. Choose one recurring task you took on because somebody needed to do it. Give yourself ten minutes to look at it properly. This is my suggested reflection, rather than a framework taken directly from the book.

·         What does this task contribute, and where is that contribution recognised?

·         Why does it belong to me? Is that part of my role, a deliberate choice, or simply what happened last time?

·         What does it leave less room for, and what arrangement would be fairer?

Your next step might be to make the contribution part of your agreed objectives. It might be to rotate the task, simplify it or stop doing something that is no longer needed. If a colleague could take it on as a useful development opportunity, agree that openly and make sure they have the capacity and support. Passing it to the next helpful woman would reproduce exactly the problem the authors identified.

A conversation with your manager could start like this: ‘I’m spending time each week coordinating this work. It matters, but it is taking time from the project we agreed was a priority. Can we decide who should own it and what needs to move?’

How much room you have to renegotiate depends on your role and working conditions. Choose a change you can realistically influence. If the issue extends beyond one task, When Your Calendar Has Room for Everything Except You offers a broader way to review what to remove, redesign, delegate, renegotiate and protect.

Leaders have a part in this too

If you allocate work, The No Club is relevant to how you lead. Before asking the person you know will say yes, look at what she is already carrying. Then look at who receives the assignments that build experience, access and recognition. The two views belong in the same conversation.

Some shared tasks can rotate. Others need a named owner, proper time and an explicit place in the role. Where work is important to the organisation’s success, leaders should examine why it does not count in performance discussions. Repeatedly thanking someone for essential work while overlooking it when opportunities are allocated is a practice worth changing.

Your own willingness to carry extra work may have helped you succeed. As a leader, you also have the opportunity to make it easier for other people to contribute without depending on that willingness every time. That is a practical way to act on the book’s argument.

Why I recommend this book

I recommend The No Club to women who are well regarded, frequently asked for help and unsure why their contribution is not opening the opportunities they want. I would also put it in the hands of leaders who want to understand what their dependable people actually spend their time doing.

Its value is in giving us language for a pattern that can otherwise feel like a private difficulty. The part I would keep returning to is how work gets assigned. A woman can become clearer about her choices, and her organisation can become more deliberate about what it asks of her. Both are worth working on.

I would like ‘she is so helpful’ to remain a compliment. I would also like the next conversation to include what she contributed, what she wants to develop and which opportunities will allow her to do that. She should have something to show for her working week beyond everyone else being relieved.

Make room for your own next step

If this has made you wonder how much of your role has grown around other people’s needs, bring that question to a Career Clarity Call. We can talk about what you want your work to make possible, where the current arrangement gets in the way and whether coaching would be useful. Book a Career Clarity Call.

Sources

Babcock, Linda, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund and Laurie Weingart. The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work. Simon & Schuster, 2022. Book details and opening chapter.

Babcock, Linda, Maria P. Recalde, Lise Vesterlund and Laurie Weingart. ‘Gender Differences in Accepting and Receiving Requests for Tasks with Low Promotability.’ American Economic Review 107(3), 2017, pp. 714–747. Research paper.

Babcock, Linda. ‘The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work.’ Next Big Idea Club, 30 May 2022. Author’s overview, including the professional services finding. Read the overview.