I have been taking MIT’s Neuroscience for Business course, and during the second week, the professor discussed an experiment that I have continued thinking about long after the lesson ended. It involved The Young Ones, a BBC program inspired by psychologist Ellen Langer’s earlier work on aging and expectations. A group of older adults spent time living in an environment designed to recreate life as it had been decades earlier. Part of the experience involved removing some of the assistance they had grown accustomed to receiving. Things they believed they could no longer do, or that other people routinely did for them, suddenly became things they were expected to attempt again. Even carrying luggage upstairs became significant because there was no one automatically stepping in to say, “You shouldn’t do that. Let me get it for you.”

The example was presented in the context of neuroplasticity, but I found myself thinking about something else. If our brains continue adapting in response to what we repeatedly ask them to do, what happens when the people around us stop asking us to do things? More specifically, what happens when people who genuinely care about us begin doing things for us because they believe they are helping? There is an uncomfortable question embedded in that idea: Can helping someone sometimes contribute to the loss of the very capability we are trying to protect?

My first thought was about caregiving. If someone we care about begins struggling with a task, our natural inclination may be to step in. We carry the bag. We retrieve the object. We complete the household task. We answer the question. We take over the responsibility. Sometimes that help is absolutely necessary, and there are very real physical, neurological, cognitive, sensory, and environmental limitations that require assistance. Assistive devices and accommodations can increase someone’s independence rather than diminish it. A walker that allows someone to continue moving through the world independently is not taking away capability; it is enabling it.

But there may also be situations in which we begin helping because something has become difficult rather than because it has become impossible. We may be uncomfortable watching someone struggle. We may worry about their safety. We may simply be able to complete the task much faster ourselves. After enough repetitions, something the person once did slowly or with difficulty becomes something they no longer do at all.

That distinction has stayed with me: Are we enabling capability, or are we replacing it?

There isn’t a simple answer because the same behavior can represent either one. Carrying something for another person might remove a genuine barrier, or it might remove an opportunity for them to continue using an existing ability. Providing technology to compensate for a limitation might dramatically expand someone’s independence. Automatically taking over a task because we assume it will be difficult might gradually reduce it. The important question isn’t whether assistance exists. It is whether that assistance increases someone’s ability to participate and exercise agency or unnecessarily substitutes for something they could still safely do.

Thinking about caregiving led me back to Carol Dweck’s work on fixed and growth mindsets. I most often encounter growth mindset in discussions about children and education. We want children to understand that struggling with something now does not necessarily mean they will never be able to do it. Ability can develop through experience, practice, strategies, feedback, and support. Yet there is no reason that principle should stop mattering when someone becomes an adult. If anything, our fixed assumptions about adults may be more difficult to recognize because they can sound like established facts rather than beliefs.

We say that someone “isn’t good with technology,” “doesn’t handle change well,” “isn’t a leader,” “isn’t creative,” or “needs a lot of hand-holding.” Outside of work, the labels may sound different: “Dad can’t manage that anymore,” “Mom shouldn’t be doing that herself,” or “It’s easier if I just take care of it.” Sometimes those conclusions are accurate and the assistance is necessary. The problem arises when an observation about someone’s current difficulty becomes an assumption about their permanent capacity without being reconsidered.

This made me realize that fixed mindset isn’t only something we can have about ourselves. We can have a fixed mindset about someone else.

That matters because our beliefs about another person’s capabilities influence how we behave toward them. If I believe someone cannot do something, I am less likely to give them an opportunity to try. If they receive fewer opportunities to try, they receive fewer opportunities to practice. If they have fewer opportunities to practice, their capability and confidence may decline or simply never develop. Eventually, the resulting behavior can appear to confirm the assumption with which I started.

This is where the connection to leadership became impossible for me to ignore.

Leaders have considerable influence over the environments in which other adults develop. They decide who receives a challenging assignment, who attends a meeting, who gets to present, who is trusted to solve a problem, who receives another opportunity after making a mistake, and when someone needs assistance. A leader who concludes that an employee “isn’t ready” may begin protecting that employee from the very experiences that could help them become ready.

The same dynamic that can occur in caregiving can therefore appear in the workplace in a different form. Instead of carrying the bag, we carry the problem.

Someone comes to us with an issue, and we solve it. Someone struggles with a task, and we take it back. Someone doesn’t immediately understand a new system, and we give that responsibility to the person who already knows how to use it. Each individual decision may be reasonable. Repeated over time, however, those decisions can create an environment in which some people continually exercise and expand their capabilities while others have fewer opportunities to do so.

That doesn’t mean leaders should stop answering questions or turn every request for assistance into a coaching exercise. In fact, I think that approach creates a different problem. If an employee asks a straightforward question and every response is “What do you think?” or “What have you tried?”, they may eventually become frustrated and stop asking for help. Sometimes people need information. Sometimes they are overwhelmed. Sometimes they have already struggled with the problem long enough. Sometimes the most supportive and efficient response really is, “Sure, here’s how you do it.”

Development should not require manufacturing unnecessary difficulty.

The challenge, then, is determining what kind of support the person actually needs. Someone encountering a task for the first time may need direct instruction. Someone who has done it several times may need a reminder. Someone who knows how to do it but lacks confidence may need reassurance. Someone who routinely hands problems to a supervisor before attempting to solve them may benefit from being encouraged to think through the next step. Treating every situation the same would ignore the very individual capability we are supposedly trying to develop.

I think of this as calibrated support: providing enough assistance to make participation, learning, and success possible without automatically taking over the parts someone can reasonably and safely do themselves.

There is an important humility required in that idea because the person providing support does not always know what someone else is capable of. Caregivers can underestimate the abilities of the people they care for. Leaders can underestimate employees. Teachers can underestimate students. Parents can underestimate children. We can also overestimate someone’s ability and leave them without support they genuinely need. The goal isn’t to continually push people toward independence regardless of circumstances. It is to remain curious about their capacity rather than assuming we already know its limits.

From a systems-thinking perspective, this becomes even more interesting because what appears to be an individual limitation may partly reflect the environment surrounding the individual. Imagine a supervisor who believes an employee lacks initiative and therefore provides very detailed direction. Because the employee receives detailed direction, there are fewer opportunities to make independent decisions. Eventually the employee becomes accustomed to waiting for direction. The supervisor observes that behavior and concludes, “See? They don’t take initiative.” The system has begun reinforcing the original belief.

Something similar could happen in caregiving. A person struggles with a task, so someone begins doing it for them. Because they no longer perform the task, they receive less practice doing it. Over time, they may become less confident attempting it or actually lose some of the capacity involved. Their increasing dependence then appears to confirm that taking over was necessary in the first place.

These loops are uncomfortable to consider precisely because they can grow out of care. No one involved has to be controlling, dismissive, or intentionally limiting another person. We can unintentionally reduce someone’s opportunities for mastery while sincerely believing that we are making their life easier.

That may be the part of the Young Ones example that has stayed with me most. It isn’t an argument that people should be denied assistance or that limitations can be overcome through willpower. It is a reminder that difficulty and inability are not necessarily the same thing. When we automatically remove difficulty from another person’s life, we should at least consider what else we might be removing along with it.

Perhaps that is why the implications extend far beyond aging or leadership. The people around us are part of the environment to which our brains and behavior continually respond. Their expectations influence the challenges we encounter, the opportunities we receive, the risks we are encouraged to take, and sometimes what we eventually believe about ourselves.

Whether we are leading an employee, caring for someone we love, teaching a student, raising a child, or simply helping another person, perhaps the better question is not “Should I help?” It is “What kind of help does this person need from me right now?”

Sometimes the answer will be to step in completely. Sometimes it will be to provide an accommodation or tool. Sometimes it will be to teach. Sometimes it will be to answer the question without turning it into a lesson. Sometimes it will be to stand nearby while someone attempts something difficult.

The challenge is resisting the assumption that because someone needs help with something today, we already know the limits of what they might be able to do tomorrow.