Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Key takeaways
- Saying yes to everything at work, even at capacity, costs senior leaders the thinking time their role depends on.
- Time management techniques rarely stick, because the yes comes from a belief underneath the behaviour.
- These beliefs, or success scripts, usually made sense earlier in a career, when being available got you noticed.
- Changing the pattern means naming the behaviour, finding the script behind it, rewriting it, and building the environment to hold the change.
Saying yes to everything at work
Earlier this month, I ran a workshop for a room of senior women. We spent the morning looking at the ways of working that got them where they are, and which of those were now costing them more than they gave.
Saying yes to everything at work, even when you’re already at capacity, came up again and again.
It shows up in ways that are easy to miss. You take on the extra work when your team is already full, because someone has to. You pick up what a colleague hasn’t delivered, because it’s quicker than having the conversation. You’re still doing the hands-on part of your old role alongside the bigger one. And your thinking gets done first thing, late in the evening or at the weekend, because the working day is back-to-back.
Underneath it there’s often a worry: if you’re not visibly busy, you’re not adding value.
Saying yes at capacity costs more than your evenings
When you’re senior, saying yes at capacity looks like a personal time-management issue. The cost lands somewhere else too.
In a Harvard Business Review piece, Dorie Clark cites a survey of 10,000 senior leaders in which 97% said strategic thinking was the most important thing for their organisation’s success. In another study, 96% of leaders said they didn’t have time for it.
When every yes goes into the diary, the thinking time is the first thing to go. It doesn’t have a meeting invite, so there’s no one waiting for it.
Why time management tips rarely fix it
Most advice on saying yes to everything at work is about technique. Prioritise with a matrix. Block out focus time. Learn a few polite ways to say no.
They help for a week or two. Then a request comes in from someone senior, or from a colleague who’s clearly struggling, and the yes is out of your mouth before you’ve thought about it.
That speed is the clue. When a behaviour happens faster than you can decide it, there’s usually a belief underneath doing the deciding for you.
The belief underneath the yes
I call these beliefs success scripts. They’re rules about what success requires that we picked up early, usually from people we trusted, and have never gone back to check.
I talk about where they come from in my TEDx talk, Where Your Idea of Success Really Comes From. My own school exercise books had “good girl” written in red ink. Do what’s asked, do it well, and you’ll be rewarded.
For leaders who say yes at capacity, the script tends to sound like one of these:
- If I say no, they’ll think I’m not committed.
- A good leader doesn’t let anyone down.
- Being available is part of the job.
- If I want it done properly, I’ll do it myself.
And underneath the script there’s usually an identity: I’m the one people can rely on. Saying no feels like a threat to who you are, which is why it’s so hard to do.
Why the script made sense once
These scripts weren’t mistakes. Early in your career, being the person who always said yes probably got you noticed. You took on the extra project, you were there when it mattered, and it paid off.
So the behaviour that earned you the seat is now making it harder to hold. The job has changed and the script hasn’t. At your level the work is judgement, direction and developing the people around you, and all of that needs time you’ve already given away.
How to start changing it
I use four steps with leaders, and they work in this order.
Recognise. Name one behaviour you want to change. Be specific. “Saying yes to every meeting request from my director’s team” is something you can work with. “Taking on too much” is too vague to act on.
Review. Find the script behind it and what it costs. Ask what you’re afraid would happen if you said no, and who taught you that.
Rewrite. Write a new script that works for you now. It needs to be something you’d actually believe in the moment the old one shows up, so “my time matters” probably won’t hold. Something like “the most useful thing I can do for this team is protect the time I think in” might.
Rebuild. Build the practice and environment to hold it. This is the step most people skip, and inside an organisation it matters most, because you’re working inside a structure someone else designed. It might mean a conversation with your manager about what you’re dropping, or telling your team you’ll reply to requests by the end of the day rather than on the spot.
The rewrite is where the change happens. The rebuild is what makes it last past the first busy week.
If this sounds like you, or your team
I run Rewriting Your Success Scripts as a workshop for leadership teams, and I work one-to-one with senior leaders who want to change how they work.
If either would be useful, book a free consultation and we’ll talk it through.
Usually because of a belief you picked up early in your career, such as “if I say no, they’ll think I’m not committed”. It made sense when being available got you noticed. At a senior level it takes the time you need for the work only you can do.
Start by noticing the moment you say yes and what you were afraid would happen if you didn’t. Then write a new rule you can believe in that moment, and change something around you to support it, such as a set time for replying to requests.
A success script is a belief about what success requires that you absorbed early, usually from family, school or your first workplace, and have never gone back to check. It drives behaviour until conditions change and it starts costing you more than it gives.
It depends on how and what you say no to. Saying no to work that isn’t yours to do frees time for the work that is, and at a senior level that work is judgement and direction. It helps to explain what you’re protecting the time for.
Techniques work on the behaviour, and the yes usually comes from a belief underneath it. Until you’ve found and rewritten that belief, the old behaviour tends to come back the next time you’re under pressure.
