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When do we say ‘yes’?
12 May 2022
When do we say yes?
Sometimes we say yes, despite reservations or the costs (financial or otherwise) to ourselves, because saying yes fits with the things we believe in and care deeply about; they resonate with our values. Last month, my husband, daughter and I flew to Australia for 3 weeks to see my grown up stepchildren who are living and working out there. We agonised for ages over whether or not to commit to this big, expensive, logistically-complicated journey at a time when we were both busy with work and Covid was still disrupting travel. In the end, we came to the simple realisation that being together as a family, and showing my stepchildren in this way how much we love them, mattered more to us than anything else. So off we flew and our time together, the fun we had and the memories we brought back were priceless (even if the credit card bill made us blink). In the context of work and careers, Adam Grant’s excellent book Give and Take explores why ‘givers’ - people who say yes to helping others out of value-driven motives with no expectation or desire for personal reward - are more successful over the longer-term than ‘matchers’ who seek mutual benefit or ‘takers’ who see life and business as a zero sum game where they are only chasing their own gain, invariably at others’ expense. ‘Matchers’ want to share out the pie equally, ‘takers’ compete for the biggest slice and ‘givers’ bake more pie by helping others succeed.
More prosaically, demands on our time at work come in thick and fast. When should we say yes to these? Obviously sometimes we have no choice if we value our job, but it’s rarely that black and white. If a request for an urgent turnaround or deadline comes at a high price for us, then we can often negotiate the scope or explore the possibility of an extension. Recent research by Ashley Whillans, Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School and author of Time Smart: how to reclaim your time and live a happier life, shows that when it comes to asking for extensions, we typically fear we’ll be judged negatively or our request turned down. But many employees ‘overestimate the extent to which their bosses care how fast they complete their work’, and quality of output generally trumps speed. Deadlines are extendable more often than we think.
Saying yes doesn’t have to mean an outright commitment without any counterproposal. If you’ve received a request, an invitation or another kind of work/business opportunity requiring an investment of your time and expertise for free, this can be a hard one to decide particularly if you work independently or run your own business. We might say yes if there are valuable non-financial benefits we might ask for in exchange, such as the opportunity to raise our profile, grow our network, test out new skills, agree a quid-pro-quo or a land a coveted introduction to another individual or organisation.
Then there’s the serendipity factor, when saying yes can trigger unexpected conversations and chance connections that open up rewarding opportunities you’d never previously considered. I recently spoke for free as a panellist at a professional networking event, and it ultimately led to a professionally valuable introduction and a potentially exciting collaboration.
Or maybe we say yes simply because that kind of opportunity brings us joy, fulfilment, connection, friendship or variety. In short, because it makes us - and others - feel good. And who would say no to that?
Sometimes saying yes feels like stepping off a cliff into the unknown without a safety harness: we can feel wracked with doubt and fearful of failure or humiliation. But sometimes it’s a case of ‘now or never’, and as a good friend told me when I was contemplating a major career decision ‘if you don’t try, you’ll always wonder what might have been and you’ll never know the answer. Even if you try and fail, you’ll be wiser from it, and another door may open in its place’. She was absolutely right.
I’m not advocating that we relinquish all control over our diary our workload and our life. We all need boundaries, downtime and time when we’re not available to anyone else. But pausing to reflect now and again on our motivations and our mindsets for saying 'yes' can help us to avoid being steamrollered by life and instead, to craft a life well-lived.
*The episode with Leonard Ng (Episode 3, Series 2) airs Monday 16th May
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