Too much of a good thing is bad

Suppose you wanted your techie friend to help you set up a website. How would you proceed?

Instinct would probably say
Go to friend, say “Hey can you help me set up a website? Thanks so much” and friend helps.

Most self help books would say “You don’t just keep asking people for help.. you should always look for a way to compensate. Or you try to find out what is in it for them”

So, you go and tell him
“Hey you like to do tech stuff right? I thought you would find it interesting to help me set website..” and well, since you put it in his terms, he is more willing to help.

Makes sense, right?

Not always.

Now Imagine yourself in the place of this friend.

What if the person asking you for help was wrong about fact that you would find it interesting to help you set up a website? Or what if you do find it interesting, but you have more interesting things to do? But being the nice person that you are, you wont tell your friend “no I dont like setting up websites.”. WHy not? Because it causes a stalemate. You understand that he needs your help to set up a website, you will help - not because it is interesting but because you naturally want to help a friend. And when you do something like that, all you want your friend to do is to appreciate the favour. Genuinely. Thats all.

But when your friend thinks HE is doing YOU a favour by giving you the opportunity to do something interesting, things screw up. There is an expectation mismatch. You feel your friend owes you one and your friend feels he has partially compensated by making it interesting for you. This is when you feel manipulated.

Let me clarify. I understand the intentions are good. Nobody wants to screw anyone. But there is unnecessary complication because of false assumptions that are made. Which leads to an expectation mismatch.

So we need to find a balance between being natural and following strategies to influence people. I believe by nature most people are nice. They want to help. And they will help just to feel the satisfaction of making someone’s life easier.

And another important point to note is that if you want to help someone, it is important to realise that what the person wants may not be the same as what you think the person should want. And as right as you might sound to yourself, to the other person, you might sound equally wrong. Be wary of perspectives.
Dont generalise.  If you must make systems, understand that all systems are based on assumptions that we easily lost track of. And these assumptions might not always hold.