Learn NOT to Say No

In this article, I'm going to share my thoughts on how to be a Yes Man just like the 2008 movie. Most people hate hearing "No" because "No" is a negative response. "No" makes us feel rejected, excluded, or denied (see this scene in Yes Man, the answer is yes). However, this concept is very counter intuitive because we were taught to learn how to "push back".

Introduction

I would love to say "Yes" to anything just like how Jim Carrey did in the movie but I am not sure if I would be as lucky as him. On the other hand, it makes no sense to say "Yes" to absolutely every request or opportunity. It backfired in the movie as well in case you care. Therefore, how do we be a "Yes Man" in real life with all the benefits but none the consequences? The first thing we need to learn is how NOT to say "No". If it makes no sense yet, continue reading...

The Struggle

I've worked with many people who struggled with situations where they needed to say "No". To one extreme, some never refuse requests coming their way, exactly like what Jim Carrey did in the movie after he attended the seminar. To the other extreme, some say "No" too often and make their partners less willing to work with them, just like what Jim Carrey did at the beginning of the movie. Most people are in the middle and struggled with figuring out when to say "Yes" and "No" because neither seems like a good answer.

I have observed such struggle very often from those with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) degree. My hypothesis is that problems in the STEM spaces are relatively more deterministic than problems in other spaces. A math equation is either right or wrong, a theory is either correct or incorrect, and etc. Being an engineer in heart, I am used to giving deterministic answers. A proposal should either be right or wrong, a plan would either work or not work, a solution could either be the best or not worth implementing, and etc. Following this mental model, when facing a problem, I would either say "Yes" or "No". More often, the answer is "No" because I believe I have better ideas. I failed miserably throughout my career when I did this.

There Exist Multiple Valid Answers

I have learned many lessons from my failures and mistakes, the most important one that is relevant to today's topic is that there exist multiple valid answers to most problems we face. After I learned that, I started to focus on finding all possible answers by trade-off all available parameters based on the situation instead of trying to find the "best answer". It was easy to lose sight of other aspects of the problem when I only focused on designing or building the "perfect technical solution" for a specific success metrics. I started to learn to pay attention to additional dimensions such as people's work life balance, the feasibility of our business, the amount of budget we have available, and etc. I wish I learned to look at problems this way sooner which could made myself a better person at work instead of being seen as a stubborner who only cared about the so called "best way to solve X in the long run".

After mastering this, we can start to put ourselves in the other person's shoe and try to understand the merits behind the proposal that we might say "No" to. Assuming good intention, there are always reasons behind things that we disagree with. Therefore, instead of saying "No", we can ask questions such as "Why do you think X is better than Y?", "How would your proposal handle situation Z?", and etc. This tactic worked a lot better than saying "I think doing Y is better than X because...", "Your solution would fail at situation Z", and etc. Through asking questions, we would work collaboratively to find alternatives as well as making compromises as we understand each other better. The goal should be to come to a conclusion that all parties would say "Yes" instead of everyone trying to convince everyone else that their solution is the best based on their own context. i.e. focus on finding the mutually beneficial solution.

Give Options, Not Rejections

The other important lesson, also mentioned in The Work Life Balance Myth, is that we need to figure out how to strike a balance between Scope, Cost, Quality, and Time when dealing with work. While it helps us protect our own WLB, it is also an amazing tactic to become a "Yes Man" at work. However, how to strike that balance is not straightforward.

We constantly receive requests where someone might ask "can you help us with project X by doing Y before date Z". If we say "Yes" to all of these requests because we want to be a nice person, it would actually end up hurting people (not so nice)! We could either break our promises because we accepted way too much work than we can handle and give our partners unwanted surprises (that work Y is not done by date Z, leaving them with no backup plan) or burn ourselves to meet all the promises we made and suffer terrible WLB. While we could wish that people are reasonable before they ask, however, it makes no sense for others to know the complete picture of our own situation, our workload, or our passion. Therefore, we have to accept that such requests (whether we could or could not accept them) will kept on coming to us and it is on us to figure out how to handle them.

To deal with this situation, the failing tactics I adopted in my career was to say "No" to the requests that were not reasonable to me. For instance, if I was fully booked, I would stop accepting new requests until I became available. At first, it was amazing! I was able to manage my load, I felt like I was one of those experienced people in the room who dare to say "No", and I thought this was how I mastered "push back". However, the unfortunate result is that people started to reach out to me less often because they think I am a "No Man" (refer to the scene I linked at the beginning of this article) or an unfriendly person who refused to help others.

Eventually, after observing those who were able to push back successfully while making a lot of friends, I realized that the tactic was not about saying "Yes" to everything and definitely not to say "No". When people come to us for help, they have an objective (or multiple objectives) in mind. They ask for help because they are not able to achieve the end result alone. We are not acting like partners if the only help we offer is to tell them "No, I won't help".

Our partners come to us for solutions that help them achieve the end result. However, most people don't reach out to us with just the end goal because it would sound like they are just asking us to do their job. For instance, people rarely ask us "can you help me launch project X". Instead, after careful thinking, people reach out to us with a specific task in mind that would contribute towards the end result, such as "can you help me with doing X before date Y". Therefore, the first thing we need to do is to figure out the intended end result instead of evaluating the feasibility of the ask as is. For instance, there are multiple factors in play here, here are some examples:

1. Is doing X the only way to achieve the result or are there alternative solutions?
2. Is date Y flexible or is that just the best case scenario?
3. Is me the only person who can help or can we also consider other people?
4. Is this more important than the work I have already planned?

After considering all possible scenarios, we could have ended up with multiple options that are acceptable to us, at least hypothetically. For instance, the result of the 4 example considerations mentioned earlier could have yielded the following options:

1. I can help you achieve the result if we do X1 instead of X
2. I can help you finish X by date Y1 instead of Y
3. I can help you finish X by date Y if we also get person Z to work with us
4. I can help you finish X by date Y if we can de-prioritize my current work to a later date

Once I mastered these skills, I started to become a "Yes Man" where I always offer help to others by negotiating terms that are acceptable to both of us. The tactic simply starts with offering the other person the options that are acceptable to us (funny thing, it is also here on S11E05 of The Big Bang Theory on how to deal with Sheldon, i.e. it might work even in extreme situations). In worst case, we would still be able to align on an option on pre-conditions. For instance, if the best option is "I can help you finish X by date Y if we also get person Z to work with us", the next step would be to validate if person Z is available to help. This is still better than "No, I'm not going to help you".

In the end, in most cases, our co-workers are reasonable people. Once we shared the context of our situation as well as the willingness to help by actively working with them on finding the best solution for their problem, all parties could compromise and make the best trade-offs collaboratively. However, this won't happen if we started the conversation with "No, I can't help you because ..."

Conclusion

Be a "Yes Man" and don't be a "No Man". Learn to look at all the parameters we can trade-off and practice how to find a mutually beneficial solution to the problem at hand. The current situation matters and our focus should be to strike a balance between all available dimensions or parameters. Always offer your help and assume the good intent of others. It is almost always possible to for all parties to settle on the terms that are acceptable to everyone as long as we are all willing to negotiate.