How can I help?
For starters: don't be a prick
In the corporate leadership canon, servant leadership is an approach to leadership where the number one job is to serve the team, by removing obstacles and creating conditions where your team can do great work. This approach was popularised in the 70s by Robert K. Greenleaf, a management researcher and former AT&T executive. Although I do not advertise myself in this way, it is a style that definitely resonates with me. When I onboard managers and they ask me about management style, I tell them that for me a manager is not a “boss”, and I want them to picture the manager of Taylor Swift, or a football team manager. Their goal is to maximize the performance of the talent they have available, not bossing people around.
According to the servant leadership style, a leader is not supposed to be an answer machine or to call all the shots. Instead, they ask questions that help the other person clarify what they need. This is where “How can I help?” or “What can I do for you?” comes into the picture. Often described as “The Lazy Question” (I wrote about it here), it is a standard question in a leader playbook. It is called “lazy” because it stops a leader from over-investing in solving someone else’s problem in their head, and forces the other person to specify what “help” actually means. This is genuinely useful and also conveniently efficient for a leader who typically has a packed calendar and limited time.
So the original intent is pretty clean: be a leader who serves and not just mandates, by asking how you can unblock your team members. This is why this phrase keeps showing up in manager training content. What nobody tells you though is that you have to master how you deliver this question.
First of all, you need to ask that question at the right moment, and only if it’s really needed. If you start the meeting with “What can I do for you?”, you immediately assume that the other person is in trouble or something, while maybe they just want to share some wins or progress, for awareness. So the answer to “What can I do for you?” is technically “just listen and update your mental database with who is doing a good job”. Wait for the other person to actually go in a direction that signals that some help is needed. It shows that you actually paid attention, you have an understanding of the problem space, and you are interested.
“How can I help?” is only a good question if your answer creates an obligation. If you ask it and then do nothing, you have performed support without actually providing support. Although it is called the lazy question, a plain “How can I help?” with nothing else is too lazy. You will not break coaching 101 if you throw in some high-level categories of help:
Do you want air cover?
Do you need advice?
Do you need me to talk to X person?
Do you need me to make a decision?
Do you need me to remove a dependency?
The best help a leader can provide is structural: priorities clarified, scope reduced, success criteria rewritten, teams reconnected, process simplified. Make the offer of help real, rather than corporate posture.
Most importantly though, do not ever, ever, ever, ever start a conversation with someone at your level with “How can I help?” or “What can I do for you?”. Never, under any circumstance. Unless you want to be a massive and obnoxious prick.
Between peers, the default relationship is reciprocal. You are supposed to be solving together. When you say “How can I help?” you are subtly reframing the relationship where you are the capable helper, and the other person is the stuck helpee. This is priming to assert superiority. It is a power move that hides behind generosity. It is being a massive prick. Do not be a massive prick.
A few years back, when I was an EM, I had a peer EM that was doing this all the time in our weekly 1:1. She always started the meeting with “What can I do for you?”. She was play-acting Director with me. I had recently joined the company and she had one year tenure, so in the first couple of meetings I took the question as a generic offer for onboarding help.
But then she kept saying this all the time, it was a pattern and a premeditated behaviour, clearly trying to assert dominance with me. After the first few meetings my answer to “What can I do for you?” became “well, nothing. How are you? All good?”. I moved the conversation towards a peer 1:1, although she never stopped doing that.
Obviously I placed her in the prick bucket since then, and tried to avoid crossing paths if possible. I later discovered that when my boss left for another role and he was looking for his replacement, she went for the spot. She did not get it because it was a very long shot (she also had low awareness apparently), and in the end she left soon after, but that is another story.
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