The Importance of Help-Seeking and Giving Environments

Article provided by Dr Richard Goater, Director of Staff Development and Human Resources, Hale School

One of the greatest challenges for HR professionals in schools is to maintain a positive influence on the organisational culture and values. Staff are frequently comatose by compliance and the daily churn of work, so understandably they have little receptivity for any new messages or agendas. Anything we provide needs to be in small-sized chunks and to be relevant and “sticky”, so it maintains impact with the least cost to them.

I recently came across a useful cultural piece by University of Pennsylvania academic, Adam Grant that may have some purpose for HR professionals, staff and potentially students. It’s a simple sound bite of an idea around three types of people in organisations and, importantly, an underlying concept that needs to be in place for one of those types to flourish.

Adam’s hypothesis, which he sets out in his seminal publication, Give and Take, is that success for and in organisations is increasingly dependent upon how we interact with others and that most people operate as either ‘takers’, ‘matchers’ or ‘givers’. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others, and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.

The propensity of these different styles in organisations has a significant impact on culture and collective success. While some givers do get burnt out, Adam found that most of them achieve extraordinary things within a diversity of different industries.

So how do we enthuse and support the givers? Interestingly, the answer lies in creating environments and cultures in which others feel safe to ask for help. Help seeking can be a risky business as it demonstrates a vulnerability and openness that could be abused. Theoretically, the more people seek help, the more others can give. So, I hope we can support the givers and the help seekers by encouraging those environments that matter to each.

Dr Richard Goater is the Director of Staff Development and Human Resources at Hale School. Dr Goater has worked in a wide range of roles in education over his 30-plus year career, originally as a teacher before moving into pastoral care roles, then senior administration. He completed his PhD in leadership dynamics, teams, and culture in 2020 and is passionate about supporting others to extend their leadership potential so that they can better facilitate and sustain the needs of their teams and organisations.

Richard will be a panellist at the People and Culture stream discussion on performance management plans at the upcoming Educate Plus international conference.