Last week I wrote about saying ‘no’ in some situations but I’ve been feeling a bit uncomfortable about it.
There’s been a bit of a nagging feeling in my stomach (although it could just be last nights curry).
Anyway, I wanted to explore the other side of the coin to give a rounded view.
I read a great book by Danny Wallace a few years ago called ‘Yes man’, where a mystery man on a late-night bus told him to ‘say yes more’ and it had a profoundly positive effect on his life. It focused on his personal life rather than work, but my post last week got me thinking about it.
At work it’s very important to say yes.
Yes I will take that action.
Yes I can pass on that information.
Yes I can put a photo of a dead badger in the weekly report.
It shows you are willing to take part. It shows you are committed to getting things done. It creates opportunities to engage with people.
My post last week was designed to challenge that we should always say yes.
Like I’ve said in the past we are in control of our own destinies and have a choice about how we communicate.
It is very important to say yes, and we should say yes more than we say no, but it should not be our default answer to everything.
It’s dysfunctional to always say yes, because your work load will become very hard to manage and you will not have control over your own destiny.
It’s also dysfunctional to always say no because people will just stop asking and you will ostracize yourself. (BOOM – check me out, I used the word ‘ostracize’!)
So it actually would have been better to have said last week that whilst it’s important to say yes, it’s also ok to say no (sometimes).
OK, I think I feel better now. But I did just do a massive fart. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone for the Madras….