A Better Question Than ‘How Can I Help?’
Avoid creating emotional labor for the person you’re trying to help
Your co-worker is struggling, and you want to do something to support them. You fire up your workplace’s internal chat. “Just checking in!” you write. “Do you want to talk about it? What can I do?”
Before you award yourself the Nobel Peace Prize, take a step back.
Over the past month and a half, as millions took to the streets to express grief and pain following the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, Black people in workplaces around the country were bombarded with awkward inquiries from non-Black colleagues about how they were “holding up,” whether they were “okay,” and questions about what to do to “help.”
The reasoning behind the questions may seem totally sound — who could know better what your colleague needs than the person themself? But in asking, you’ve actually given them another task, and a difficult dilemma.
“When Black folks are faced with this open-ended question, we are faced with two impossible choices,” wrote Tiffany Dockery in ZORA. “Minimize our emotions for the sake of workplace civility or risk reopening an emotional wound we’ve been working hard to heal.”
