Introduction to offering support
When you sense others need help, you can provide social support through both spoken and unspoken communication. There are 5 types of social support:
- Informational support is when you communicate facts, information, advice, or feedback.
Example: You utilize tools from HPRC’s sleep guide to help your team manage their operational fatigue. - Tangible support is when you offer material resources such as goods (money, food, etc.) or services (transportation, housework, etc.).
Example: You drop off a meal to a friend who’s had a death in the family. - Network support is when you boost another’s sense of belonging through letting them know they’re not alone, spending time with them, or connecting them with others who can offer support.
Example: You connect your spouse with a family readiness or support group. - Esteem support is when you boost another’s confidence, self-esteem, and their belief in their skills and abilities. This can include offering compliments or validation.
Example: You compliment your teammate on their signature strengths. - Emotional support is when you express caring, concern, love, empathy, or encouragement.
Example: You hug your friend and, after listening to them share their struggles, ask them if they feel better.
Social support emotionally benefits both the sender and the receiver of supportive messages. Receivers cope better with stress, feel less lonely, and are better able to accomplish their goals. They also have a stronger belief in their ability to be successful. Senders of social support are happier and less stressed.
How to offer support
Though there are many reasons why you might offer social support in your personal and professional interactions, these 4 ways are probably most relevant to you as a Service Member:
- Offering support to help someone during a stressful time.
Social support can help others through stressful times, such as deployment or injury, by increasing their self-esteem, resilience, or positively reframing how they think about their stress. Social support provided during deployment helps Service Members utilize better coping strategies and build resilience. Additionally, transitioning to civilian life is often a stressful time for Service Members. Providing high levels of social support to your fellow Service Members not only helps lower their stress, but can help them adjust to civilian life.
During stressful times, social support can be especially helpful when it comes from a fellow Service Member. For example, offering your battle buddy social support can reduce the stressfulness of military training and military stressors in general. This is because Service Members have many shared experiences and understand what others are going through. So support coming from a fellow Service Member can be seen as more credible and as particularly helpful.
- Offering support to promote feelings of belongingness.
Social support helps Service Members and their partners feel connected to others. Although network support is meant to enhance someone’s feelings of belongingness, other kinds of social support can as well. For example, social support during initial military training from instructors can help new Service Members feel like they belong in the military. Because of their status, availability, and expertise, instructors are in an important position to provide informational support, such as training environment info or performance feedback. Additionally, social support from civilian sources, such as family and friends, can also boost “belongingness.” Family and friends can offer emotional support by expressing positivity and encouragement for the Service Member’s military career.
Social support can also help military partners feel like they belong. Friends who offer social support can help them feel less lonely during their partner’s deployment. And Service Members who provide social support to their partners can help them find meaning among the challenges and demands of military life.
- Offering support to build protective health factors.
Social support is an important protective factor for Service Members, lessening the negative effects of stressors and disease. Specifically, social support is one of the strongest protective factors against PTSD for Service Members. High levels of social support from teammates or civilian sources decreases the risk of PTSD for Service Members and Veterans. And offering social support before, during, and after deployment can be effective at reducing PTSD symptoms. Also, social support from teammates or civilian sources can lessen the severity of depression symptoms in both male and female Service Members.
- Offering support to improve team performance.
Social support, especially from leaders, can improve team performance, effectiveness, productivity, and morale. Leaders who provide social support to Service Members enable them to better deal with challenges and their personal needs. Support from leaders motivates Service Members to put continuous effort into their performance.
Social support from leaders and teammates can also improve team performance by helping to reduce work-related stress, such as being on duty for long periods of time, chronic fatigue, or issues with other Service Members. Leaders can offer social support to their people through off-duty group activities and team-building activities.
Ideas for how to adapt offering support
Some people find it difficult to accept social support from someone who makes them feel like they’re inadequate or indebted to the person giving it. Inappropriate social support can have the opposite effect from what you intend—instead of decreasing stress, it can actually increase it. So it’s important to match the social support you give to what the other person will accept.
Some “contextual clues” to help you figure out what type of social support to provide are:
- Life stressors: How do you perceive your stressor?
- If the life event is unwelcome or negative, such as an injury, then emotional support is helpful.
- If the life event is welcome or positive, such as promotion, then informational support is best.
- Personal stressors: What’s the context of your stressor?
- If the stressor involves a relationship, such as marital conflict, then network support is needed.
- If the stressor is personal, such as financial insecurity, then network support is less helpful and another type of social support is better.
- Managing stressors: How do you handle your stressor?
- If the stressor is controllable, such as when someone thinks they can solve their own problems, then tangible support is helpful.
- If the stressor is uncontrollable, such as when someone thinks they can’t solve their problems, then informational support is helpful.
- If the stressor can’t be eliminated, then emotional and network support can help manage the stressor.
- Esteem support works well for both controllable and uncontrollable events.
If you’ve known the person for a while, you can also try giving them the type of support they seemed to prefer in the past. Or, you can try giving them the type of support they’ve given others—this can clue you into what type of support they’re comfortable getting. For example, maybe they enjoy deep conversations, so you might offer emotional support. Or, maybe they're always offering rides to people, so you might offer them tangible support.
If you’re still unsure about which kind of support to provide, ask them and provide empathy. Saying something vague like, “Let me know if you need anything,” is asking them to tell you how you can be useful to them. These kinds of questions only add to the emotional burden of someone already needing support.
Some other good offering support examples include:
Tangible support: “I know you’re feeling stressed, so could I cook dinner for you this week? Is that something you’d be interested in?”
Emotional support: “I’ve been thinking of you. Want to meet for coffee this week to talk?”
But! Don’t be offended if they decline your offers of social support. The timing might not be right for them, or you might be missing the mark with the type of support you’re offering.
Reflection
To help you think about when to pick-up your social support tool and improve your communication toolbox, reflect on:
- What type of social support do I feel most comfortable offering?
- What type of social support do I feel most comfortable receiving?
- When could I try to offer a different type of social support in the future? For example, when could I offer emotional support? Network support? Tangible support?
- Which relationships in my life do I already communicate social support?
- How has communicating social support in those relationships affected them?
- What relationships in my life do I want to make sure to communicate social support?
- How do I think communicating social support in those relationships will affect them?
- What’s my plan to improve my use of social support?
- What resources can I use to improve my social support communication skills?
- What’s my plan if I’m missing the mark when offering social support to someone?
- When is it appropriate to ask for feedback?
- What other communication skills can I try?
Additional resources: Offering support
Check out these other HPRC articles about offering support:
- Social support and Total Force Fitness
- Social support to prevent burnout
- Social support and #GotMySix
- Social support to cope with pain
- Social fitness and performance
