What will your friends say about you in this situation?

Hi again guys, once again I am leaving you the notes from my latest podcast if you prefer to read it but I would encourage you to click on this link to listen to the podcast please: what will people say about you in this situation? 

Okay so this is a real situation I found myself in recently involving two friends. Let's call them Mr A and Ms B. I have known Mr A for over a really long time, he is one of my oldest friends. In contrast, I have only known Ms B for about two years and it was Mr A who introduced me to Ms B when I was working on a project, I needed to build a team and Mr A decided to be nice to Ms B, he suggested that I gave her a chance. Since then, I have gien Ms B one more chance like that - you see, in my industry, we sometimes use people for short term contracts and these contracts can be well-paid, even if they are short term and tied to a specific project. I was happy enough with the work that Ms B had done for me - like she wasn't exactly perfect, she has made some mistakes before (like, who hasn't) but nonetheless, she had a certain charm and sophistication about her that many clients liked. I also knew Mr A and Ms B were close friends for many years and they have even worked together at one point, but I didn't know her that well - not as well as Mr A in any case. 

Through Mr A, I knew about Ms B's tricky situation - she is very highly educated but her expertise was rather niche and she was unable to find work in what she had trained to do, so she had often found herself forced to take on work in the corporate world that was either out of her comfort zone or worse still, she also often found herself in situations where she was vastly overqualified for the work she was doing. It was a kind of situation that I sympathized with and that was why I was willing to help her. I wasn't really thinking of getting anything in return by helping her, apart from that satisfaction of being a good friend and of course, I was willing to help her because I knew she was a very good friend of Mr A.

So recently, another opportunity came up and I realized that Ms B was desperately looking for more work - she had once again been forced to take on a job that she was vastly overqualified for and she really did not like it at all, but she had bills to pay. Thus I thought, are you interested? I'm putting together a team for this and there could be a seat for you at this table, but you need to meet the project leader to see if you can work with him and if he thinks you'd be a good fit for the team. I can't make the final decision but I can tell him that you have come highly recommended. This was when things went very wrong - ooh boy. Perhaps Ms B was in a bad mood that day and she got really stroppy with me when it came to trying to set a time for her to speak to the project leader. The project leader was on a business trip and with his travels and time difference, it was difficult to set a time and Ms B said something quite rude to me when I had to cancel the call that we had set and set a new time for it to happen. I'm not going to repeat what she said here but she spoke to me as if I was the project leader's secretary and somehow it was my fault that the call wasn't going to happen at the time we had all agreed to. I kept my cool and told Ms B, look I'm sorry it sounds like you're very busy at the moment and if you're not interested I'm sorry for having disturbed you about this. She then lost her temper and wrote something really rude back to me. I didn't respond to that, the next day she messaged me again and said, "hello dear, are you free for a few minutes? I would like to clear the air with you." I ignored that message. I was still angry with her but I wasn't prepared to get into an argument with her. In any case, the project leader had told me that Ms B wasn't a good fit for what we need and he wasn't that interested in talking to her on this occasion. That decision was taken out of my hands, but still, I couldn't resist letting her believe that she had offended me to the point where I had the power to make that decision. Perhaps that was quite childish of me, but no, I'm not gonna tell her. I don't think she doesn't need to know the truth. 

I did feel conflicted, so I called Mr A and told him everything that had happened. What Mr A said to me actually surprised me, but in hindsight, I should have expected it. Mr A said, "did you know that about ten years ago, she was launching her own business and was struggling to get it off the ground, I brought her loads of new clients through my own network, Without my intervention, I don't think her business would have survived those first six months. Sure she said thank you, she brought me out for lunch and things like that, but I struggle to think of when she had ever helped me at work. It was always me helping her, I can't recall a single occasion when she ever helped me. She is the kind of person who wouldn't hesitate to ask for help but I don't recall her ever offering help to anyone." I have to give you some context, Mr A is a very highly accomplished businessman whilst Ms B's expertise lies in a very niche area, so whilst she is undoubtedly highly educated, in the real world, it was always going to be a lot easier for someone like Mr A or myself to help Ms B out rather than the other way around. "So, help her if you want, don't help her if you don't want - I don't care either way. What I can tell you is that she is one of those people who would never turn around and help you out in return. Maybe she can't, maybe she won't, but either way, just don't expect anything in return if you do decide to be generous and help her." 

Recently, I helped another friend out - let's call her Ms C. She is a lot younger than me and I did so without asking for anything in return (nor was I expecting anything in return). Yet she at least went to get me a big bag of candy and snacks to thank me, it was not the value of the gift but the thought that counts - it was her way of saying, I know this isn't much but I want you to know I have not taken your kindness for granted so please accept these snacks as a token of my appreciation. I would have gladly helped Ms B in much the same way, without expecting anything in return but when she got rude with me, I thought, I'm trying to help you yet you make it sound as if I'm the one disturbing you or begging you for help? This is why when I spoke to Mr A, he basically just shrugged his shoulders and said the equivalent of meh, I'm not surprised this happened, perhaps Ms B just needs to learn her lesson the hard way this time. He didn't feel compelled to plead for mercy on her behalf despite them being old friends. He told me that she was the kind of person who always received help but rarely offer it to others. This made me think, that's not right at all. Yes, I have received a lot of help from others along the way, but I also make it a point to always be generous, kind and helpful in order to spread that good karma and play it forwards. That should be the way: of course it is okay to receive help from others but you should always be prepared to be the one who offers that help as well. It feels wrong to only receive and never give. 

So if I were to ask one of your best friends about you, if we had a conversation just like the one I had with Mr A about you, what would your friends say about you? Would they accuse you of being like Ms B, of being someone who always receives help but never offers it? Or would they describe you as a kind and generous person who wouldn't hesitate to help others? You see, based on what Mr A told me of Ms B, I am far less inclined to help her in the future - what people say about you really does matter and I hope my close friends like Mr A will have some good things to say about me. 

There can be four categories of people: type 1 - those who don't receive help, but don't offer help. I suppose that's rather unfortunate because it sounds like they are quite isolated or even worse, they were brought up in such a harsh environment, surrounded by people who never offered them any help so they have never ever experienced what it is like to receive help, thus feel no compulsion in helping others. Then there's type 2: these are people who love to receive help but never offer it, there is definitely a sense of entitlement which creates this mindset. In Ms B's case, Mr A explained that there's a huge sense of self pity every time something goes wrong in her life - that somehow it is not her fault that things didn't go according to plan and when she does receive some help, she 'deserves' that help so of course she gladly accepts that help. There are so many reasons why someone could develop that sense of entitlement and I won't go into that in this podcast. Then we have type 3 - people who always offer help but either don't receive it or refuse it when they are offered help. Obviously, these are very generous people and it might be someone so rich and successful that most people assume that they really don't need any help, imagine trying to meet King Charles and wondering what you can do for someone like that. Then finally, there is type 4, people like Mr A and myself - we receive help and we give help in equal measure. We are surrounded by people who care about us and are willing to help us out, by the same token, we are always ready to help our friends out whenever the need arises. So if I were to ask one of your friends to put you in one of those categories, which one do you think they would assign you and what would this tell us about you? 

Do you think I too harsh on people who have not had the good fortune of having received the help from a kind person? Well, allow me to use the analogy of the Chinese bayberry. You might know it by its Chinese name Yang Mei, it was something that I have come across in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan and it is absolutely delicious if you can get your hands on some fresh ones. I have stumbled upon them in France before as well but never in the UK. So if you have tasted a bayberry, you'd be totally amazed by just how delicious it is and I'd like to think that you would want to share that experience with your friends and family - at least that's how I would react. By the same token, having experienced what it is like to receive help, to be at the receiving end of kindness and compassion, I'd like to share that with others. But then again, it might be possible that some people are inherently selfish. Their reaction might be to keep their joy a closely guarded secret, so they can keep all the delicious bayberries to themselves and not have to share even a single one. 

I'd like to finish by concluding that I would have been far more inclined to help Ms B if Mr A had given her a better character reference, but he didn't. I know what some of you are thinking - if you're going to help someone, then you should do it without expecting anything in return. Now I wasn't expecting Ms B to do anything in return for me, but I'd like to think that if I gave her the experience of what it is like to receive this kind of help from a friend, she would like to pass the goodwill on and help others but sadly, according to Mr A she is not that kind of person and now I am far less motivated to help her. So what do you think? Have I been too harsh on Ms B or did she get what she deserved?