It’s hard to say no

Jack* approached me for coaching because he felt overwhelmed. He’d recently been promoted to Head of Finance and was being bombarded by demands from all directions.

He believed that he needed to keep on top of everything, “everything” meaning not only delivering what he was paid to do, but also dealing with everyone else’s requests.

So saying no didn’t feel like an option to him, even though he was becoming increasingly exhausted and resentful.

Drinking from a firehose
When you’re new in role like Jack, it can be a shock to the system to discover just how much you’re expected to deal with now you’re on the front line. Demands from your leadership, colleagues, your team, your clients. It can feel like you’re drinking from a firehose.

Yet you want to prove you’re up to the job. Like Jack, you can feel like you need to keep everyone happy or it will look as though you can’t handle the responsibility. Or they might think you’re difficult or not dedicated to the job in hand.

Which means you feel you can’t say no to – or negotiate – requests for fear of letting people down or muddying your reputation whether it’s being asked to attend a meeting, provide a report or take on a piece of work you haven’t got capacity for. Especially if it’s a senior stakeholder, or a demanding boss.

Then there’s your team.
When I started working with Jane*, she’d just taken on the role of Ops Director. She felt she needed to be available to her team members, to give them the answers when they asked for help.

And honestly? She liked helping them with problems she could solve when she felt so at sea in her new leadership role. However, now her team was so much bigger, this was making her life even harder.

If you’ve spent your day dealing with everyone else’s priorities like Jack and Jane, you might get to the end of the day not having made even a dent in your to-do list. You work late and at the weekends to make up for the time you’ve lost. You sacrifice time for yourself and with your friends and family. And you may feel as if you’re on the edge of burn-out, wondering if it’s worth it.

Perhaps that sounds familiar to you?

Saying no feels risky
Saying no doesn’t come naturally to us. It feels risky.

This makes sense when you think back to our ancestors. It wouldn’t have been safe to be on their own out on the savannah at the mercy of wild animals – much better to stay in a tribe. But we needed to “make nice” with our fellow cave-people to make sure we weren’t kicked out.

If you think of the organisation you work for as a modern-day tribe, our evolutionary legacy means doing things that avoid the risk of conflict, losing our reputation or being rejected. Even though it’s no longer our life at stake.

And when you’re feeling pressure, the swirl of negative thoughts in your head ramps up which means you’re even more vigilant for the risk of offending people.

Saying yes : a smart strategy?
In addition, we each develop our own unique survival strategies from an early age. For example, Jack had a volatile father and a dictatorial mother. He learned from a young age not to “poke the bear” (his Dad) and to do what it took to please his mother.

Keeping people happy was a smart survival strategy.

The problem is that whilst these strategies worked for us growing up, they become ingrained patterns of behaviour that we default to under pressure even when they’re no longer helpful. So if you learned to keep your demanding mother happy by always saying yes, an insistent boss or colleague will trigger the same response.

We’re not hardwired, but it’s difficult to change established habits. As one of my clients put it other day, “I can’t help saying yes”. It’s like his body says yes even when his brain’s shouting “No!”

Worrying about how to say no so it doesn’t sound rude can also get in the way. Saying yes or no can seem black and white, rather than the nuances inbetween like negotiating a deadline or packaging “no” in a way that leaves both parties feeling good.

When you say no, what are you saying yes to?
I was talking to a very stretched senior director the other day who is able to say no but then feels incredibly guilty afterwards.

We explored the idea : When you say no, what are you saying yes to? What matters more to you than what other people might be thinking about you?

For example : The impact you want to have in your organisation? Making positive change happen? Empowering your team? Seeing your child grow up? Prioritising your wellbeing so you can be the leader you aspire to be? Enjoying your life before it’s too late?

It’s hard saying no, but if you don’t put your priorities first, you’ll forever be drinking from that firehose, frustrated that you don’t have the time or energy to focus on what’s important and have the leadership impact you want.

Leadership isn’t about keeping everyone happy, it’s about making change happen.

What will saying no mean you can say yes to?

*Jack and Jane are fictional leaders based on real-life clients