Receive the person on their own terms before judging their need
Before deciding what someone needs, take up their situation as they describe it and set aside your own motives for helping.
Why it works
The philosopher Nel Noddings, in her book Caring, uses the term “one-caring” for the person who gives care. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes her view as receiving the cared-for on the cared-for’s own terms and setting aside selfish motives, with ethical action arising from natural caring and from the memory of being cared for. On this page’s reading, attending to the other person’s framing before applying a rule guards against replacing their need with the helper’s picture of it.
How to do it
- Before offering help, ask the person to describe the situation in their own words, and do not interrupt to correct it.
- Write back what you heard, in their terms, and ask whether it is right.
- Notice any motive of your own that wants to fix, impress or be needed, and set it aside for the moment.
- Offer help in the form they described, or ask what else they would want.
Evidence
The one-caring and the setting aside of selfish motives are described in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Sander-Staudt), which gives no inline citation for them. The practice applies that description and has not been tested. (anecdotal)
Noddings’s Caring was not read for this page. IEP notes that obligation is strongest toward those capable of reciprocity and weakens with distance, so this practice is not a general rule for every relationship.
Sources
Common mistake
Mistaking the helper’s wish to be helpful for the other person’s need. Receiving someone on their own terms often means accepting a smaller offer than you wanted to make.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Carol Gilligan’s Ethics of Care, Explained
- Look at one decision through justice and through care
Take one decision you face and ask it twice: what does fairness require, and what do the people involved need from me?
- Judge the reasons someone gave, not the sex they are
Before reading a colleague’s position as “caring” or “principled” because of who they are, check what they actually argued.
- Check who carries the caring load before calling it care
When a decision is framed as caring for others, ask who ends up doing the caring and what it costs them.
- Name the specific people a decision makes you responsible to
Before settling on a principle, list the particular people you are responsible to and what each one is counting on from you.
- Retell a hard choice as a story of relationships over time
Before stating the rule that settles a hard choice, tell it as a sequence of relationships: who depends on whom, and how that has changed.
- Trace a caring task through noticing, owning, doing and receiving
Follow one act of care through four phases: noticing the need, taking responsibility for it, doing the work, and seeing how it is received.
Related concepts
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Torbert’s Seven Action Logics of Leadership
Seven ways leaders make sense of pressure, how common each is, and how to work with your own
- The Construct-Aware and Unitive Stages of Adult Development
Seeing the self and its stories as constructions — what it looks like, how rare it is, and what it does not promise
- Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development, Made Practical
Six stages of moral reasoning, how they are scored, and how to work with the reasons you give
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