Two Brief Notes on Butting

1. Stealth-Butting
Some of the worst Yes-But offenders are people who are convinced they never use them at all. Somewhere along the line they learned that “Yes, but” was a bad thing to say, so they eliminated the phrase from their vocabulary. However, their Yes-Buts never truly went away. They just went underground, to reemerge as what we call stealth-Buts. Stealth-Buts don’t contain the word but or even, in most cases, the word yes. The people using them generally have no idea that they’re secretly Yes-Butting. In fact, they often believe they’re communicating in a highly constructive and supportive way. But no matter how sophisticated the phrasing, this type of communication has the same problematic effects as a traditional Yes-But. Here are just a few examples:

Yes variations
I understand where you’re coming from…
I see your point…
That may be true…
I know that seems like the obvious solution…
You could say that…
While that’s one way to look at things…
You’re absolutely right…
Sure…

But variations
…however…
…nevertheless…
…on the other hand…
…still…
…only then…
…have you considered…
…it’s just that…
…and yet…

Even Yes-And can be a Yes-But in disguise — for instance, “Yes, I like your approach, and what we need now is something completely different.” If you’re arguing against what someone just said, simply changing but to and isn’t going to fool anybody.

2. The “But” Reflex
Nobody is a perfect communicator. We’ve all developed at least a few bad habits in the way we express ourselves. Often those habits are so automatic that we don’t even notice them. This became very clear in one team of top executives that we trained. We came in to observe one of their strategic meetings, and quickly noticed that whenever a particular person (call him Jim) spoke, he seemed to get resistance from others in the group.

We decided to start tracking Jim’s behavior. It turned out that he was one of the most vocal participants in the meeting, and every single time he made a comment, he started with the word “But.” This was true even when he was asking an otherwise open and neutral question (“[But] where do you think we can get this information?”) or building on what someone else had said (“[But] let’s see if we can get other departments on board with the idea.”). When we talked to Jim later, he said he had no idea he was doing that. It was only by gaining this awareness — making his unconscious habit conscious — that he could start to do something different.