Why do the people who need the least help from you, appreciate it the most?

Like you, I have helped many people in my life, sometimes with minimal effort, sometimes with massive effort. Have you noticed that often the people that needed the smallest amount of help are the ones who most vigorously express their thanks? Meanwhile, others, for whom you have toiled day and night, seem ungrateful? I think there is a reason.

It is hard to gauge the contributions of others

Some people routinely put in a great deal of effort to achieve. They have studied hard at every stage of their life, and are accustomed to figuring things out. In the modern era, when facing a problem, they automatically turn to Google, Wikipedia, YouTube etc, to try to solve it.

Only after studying the material in depth, trying out multiple solutions, and failing, do they turn to others for help.

You can recognise these requests for help instantly.

1. They describe where they are stuck, concisely and clearly.
2. They leave out detail that doesn’t matter.
3. They volunteer where they have searched for information, and say which avenues they explored, and which they didn’t, with reasons. They show intelligence and curiosity.
4. They explain why they think it must, nevertheless, be possible.
5. As you talk through the problem, they try to shut off some avenues you suggest because they have tried them, but engage in intelligent conversation if you think their previous attempts may have been flawed.
6. While you are explaining your suggestions, they jump up and say, “Ah, that’s brilliant!” and run away before you have finished.

You didn’t have to finish your explanation, because they were only missing one piece of the puzzle. With that help, they know they can fit the rest together. Even though it may take them more time to do the remaining steps themselves, they enjoy the sense of achievement.

Nevertheless they tell everyone how brilliant you are. “I was being driven completely mad by this until X pointed out Y. Then it was easy!”

Subcontracting an entire task can become a habit

At the other end of the spectrum are the people who have always done the bare minimum. Just enough studying to pass the exams. Just enough work to not get fired. They can well be highly organised and successful people, but their routine when they find a question is to find a corresponding person to answer it.

They can keep their mental inbox clean and tidy. A question? Subcontract it to person X. A problem? Subcontract it to person Y.

Such people can be highly efficient, by avoiding unnecessary work. The problem is that key insights come from unnecessary work. When facing a challenge, it is not necessary to gain an understanding of the field, when you can just ask someone to give the answer. Indeed, you can get by very well and have a happy life, without it ever being necessary to understand anything.

Necessary is not the same as worthwhile.

When the apple fell from the apocryphal tree, it was not necessary for Isaac Newton to discover gravity.

He could have just eaten the apple. It would have been more efficient. Luckily for us, he did more than was necessary.

Don’t blame them!

When you have carried out their task for them, they may appear unappreciative. This because they genuinely do not understand what you have contributed.

They have never invested hours, days and weeks, to gain a command of material that enables them to solve problems. Such an investment, for uncertain gain, is inefficient. Since they consider you to be a sane person, they assume you would not have invested such vast effort.

Therefore when you deliver the completed goods, they say “thanks!” as common courtesy, but have no grasp of the effort you have put in.

More importantly, they have not even the tiniest inkling of the value of the effort you have put in over the years, to get yourself into the position of being able to do the task for them.

It’s actually not their fault.

Arguments over contribution

In my work, as a research scientist, I have sometimes seen arguments over the relative value of the contributions. Scientific publication conveys this through the order of listing of authors. Of the junior researchers, i.e. the ones who did the hard work, the one who did the most is listed first, and then the others in descending order. Of the seniors, it is reversed, with the one who did the most listed last. (So the contribution of a middle author is assumed to be, shall we say, “limited”!)

In my career I have seen about a dozen disputes over authorship order.

Always, it starts with a person with little insight who feels aggrieved about their proposed share of credit. “Why are X, Y and Z listed in front of me? They hardly did anything!”

Sometimes, people fail to reach agreement by discussion, and come to me to adjudicate.

This is difficult, because the very fact that this bedraggled group has assembled in my office indicates that one of them has a complete failure of insight.

More commonly, the squabbling occurs internally, and I receive a stream of text messages of complaint about the unreasonableness of the other parties.

My approach

I wish I had a pat answer on how to solve it. It is embarrassing and painful all round. In the end, I generally fudge something together to keep the peace. In almost all cases the allocation of credit ends up unfair, with the complainant receiving more credit than they deserve.

I am not proud of saying this, but I am human, and I don’t like prolonged conflict within the group.

However, in the aftermath, I explain to all parties separately my reasoning for the resolution I handed down from on high. The originally-aggrieved party is delighted. But the others are not.

“Why did you give in to X?” come the new complaints. Rarely do the people who get personally “demoted” in authorship directly voice their unhappiness direct to me: they are too wise to be seen as self-serving. These new complaints come from people who have not personally lost from my adjudication, but just want the reward system to be visibly fair.

It is only then that I explain to them my full context. Some people put enormous effort into bringing a project to fruition, and recognise the true value of the input of others. This can be in effort expended during the project, or effort previously expended making themselves able to make their contribution to the project. Other people do not do this, and therefore do not understand.

It is cruel to expect them to understand.

However, there is a silver lining!

“Now you can who values your contribution and who doesn’t, you can decide with whom you want to work in future, can’t you? They have told you something about themselves that you couldn’t get out of a million pages of CV.”

Did I ask you to read this story?

In this story I have set out why I think we should seek out those who have done everything they can to solve their challenge, and only come to you when they are absolutely stuck having tried everything they can think of. When you give them what they need, they will fully appreciate how valuable that contribution is, i.e. how difficult it would have been for them to get themselves into the position of being able to solve it themselves.

When I am “demoting” the credit of some of my team members in response to complaints from another, I will refer the people being “demoted” to this article to help them understand.

Finally, if you are in my group, and have been in a dispute about credit, have been “upgraded” by me over the protests of others, and have not been directed by me to read this article, you know what that means, don’t you?