And finally, he may just say this: “You’re too much like hard
work. I’m going to find someone who says Yes more quickly than
you do.”
In a 2002 Harvard Business Review article, “Beware the Busy
Manager,” Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal suggested that
only 10 percent of managers had the right focus and energy to
work on the stuff that matters. To be frank, 10 percent sounds high
to me. But most likely you can think of someone in your
organization who seems to be able to “hold the line” and stop that
aggregation of small tasks and additional responsibilities that, for
the rest of us, eventually consume our lives. That person might not
be the best-liked person in the organization—the need to be liked
drives that Drama-Triangle Rescuer response of “Yes, I’ll do
that”—but she’s likely to be successful, senior and respected.
And that’s because she knows how to say Yes more slowly than
you do.
How to Say No When You Can’t Say No (Part 2)
It’s awkward saying No to something, because actually you’re
saying No to someone. And now people are involved, so we’re into
the messy awkwardness of dashing hopes, stomping on toes and
having people think that you’ve let them down.
One secret from the world of facilitation, which we saw in a
different context in the discussion about Coaching the Ghost, is to
create a “third point”—an object that you can identify as the thing