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The Best Help Is Self Help
What do you think a leader's most important task is? Many people will respond with some version of getting more results.
It's natural to want to accomplish more. It's also natural to want to help others succeed. Leaders make speeches to encourage those they lead. Organizations prepare detailed plans to do more for those they serve. In doing so, most leaders will try to make it easier for those they want to help. That is often a mistake. Let's consider why.
Sometimes a great challenge provides an even greater benefit, despite whatever pain is felt along the way. I learned that lesson at about the age of five. My parents and I were visiting with aunts, uncles, and cousins when I became fascinated by a telephone booth. I easily entered the booth by pushing the folding door inward and began playing with the telephone cord and telephone directory.
Only after 20 minutes or so did I notice that the door had sprung closed behind me. And if I pushed hard, the door just closed tighter. It was a hot day, and it rapidly became unpleasant in the booth. I also needed to visit a bathroom.
Although all my family was nearby, they paid no attention to me . . . even when I shouted and banged on the glass. They just waved at me, thinking I was playing around.
I eventually realized that I had to pull to get the door open. But I was a very tiny fellow and couldn't reach up to the handle that was intended for making that action easy. Instead, I had to pull at hinges which had a tendency to pinch my fingers. After many trials and much frustration, I finally got out!
I raced off to tell someone of my ordeal . . . but nobody cared. That was a good lesson: I had better be prepared to get myself out of anyplace or anything that I went into. Since then, I've always studied how I might exit while considering whether I should enter. There's no doubt about it: Self help is the best help.
I was reminded of that lesson by Dr. Burra Ramulu, a former student of mine at Rushmore University where he studied how to become a more effective leader. In one course Dr. Ramulu helped those in his home village of Kasimpet, India, to live better lives.
Beginning with 60 adults in the village, he first helped them to appreciate the importance of innovative business models and 2,000 percent solutions (ways of accomplishing 20 times as much with the same time, money, and effort).
Then, a magical moment came when the villager students formed a cooperative that began creating and implementing 2,000 percent solutions to increase incomes, to reduce how much interest was paid on loans, to eliminate debt, to expand employment, and to improve personal wealth while giving each person a greater sense of self-worth and spiritual significance.
As Dr. Ramulu pointed out to me, "To fulfill the fundamental principle of teaching 2,000 percent solutions is to develop the students to create 2,000 percent solutions on their own."
Recognizing the significance of this principle, the village cooperative has become a source of much interest around the world among people who want to find better ways to eliminate poverty. Dr. Ramulu offered this advice to those working with the poor:
"I support the theory that self help is the best help to sustain.
"I would like to suggest to those leaders who wish to become leaders in overcoming social problems to involve the people experiencing the social problems to solve their own problems. The poor should be given the opportunity to take responsibility for their actions in order to build their capabilities.
"The poor should be trained to learn how to fish instead of someone giving fish to them. The leaders must strive to improve the capabilities of those experiencing social problems to succeed on their own by transforming the available resources at their door steps and also to look for other avenues that bring prosperity, instead of depending on and looking for the temporary help from others."
As I read those words, I recalled descriptions of the efforts to revive the city of New Orleans in the United States after Hurricane Katrina. While tens of thousands were homeless and lacked work, emergency aid was delayed for many days while workers were transported from faraway states to do work that those who had suffered the most from Katrina were ready, willing, and able to do.
To many people, those in need are viewed a little like most people see their pets: Feed them, play with them a little, walk them, and keep them from going where they might get hurt.
The last thing that many leaders who want to help the poor consider is to put poor people in charge of making improvements, while being satisfied with providing necessary support in terms of information and advice (when asked for).
You don't learn to ride a bicycle in a single ride, and most improvements in income and wealth take some learning, experience, and judgment to be developed as well. But one day, the training wheels can come off for each of us and independence is achieved.
Hundreds of billions of dollars have been sent around the world to eliminate social problems that continue. What is needed instead is to encourage people to solve their own problems . . . along with whatever information and skills they lack.
Self-help is the best help.
The same lesson holds true of gaining the experience to become a more effective leader: Choose challenges that seem too great for you so that you'll have to stretch your mind and determination (as I did in the telephone booth) to overcome what seems insuperable. Then seek solutions that emphasize self-help.
About the Author Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University, an online school, who often advises PhD and MBA candidates who wish to work on the economic improvement of lesser-developed countries. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your effectiveness and improve your career, visit http://www.rushmore.edu
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