Last week we gave you a strategy for transforming your own Yes-Buts. Now we're going to move on to what to do when other people Yes-But you. Even if you’re someone who doesn’t Yes-But very often, there are bound to be at least one or two people in your life or work who do. Have you found a consistent, reliable, and effective way to respond? If not, keep reading!
Step 1. Awareness
Can you tell when you’re being Yes-Butted? You probably notice something, but you may not fully understand what’s going on. Say you’ve been suggesting lunch options to your friend, and he has a “But” for every idea (“The food’s good, but it’s expensive,” “Yeah, but it’s too far away”). After a little while you might start noticing that you feel irritated. You might begin to have negative thoughts about your friend (he’s annoying; he’s argumentative; he’s so hard to please). This is a natural response. As we explained in the introduction, whenever a conversation fails it’s very tempting to blame the other person. The problem is that this severely limits your options. If it’s your friend that’s the problem, you need to find yourself a new lunch date. If, on the other hand, you can trace the problem to a specific communication behavior (Yes-But), you have a lot more flexibility. You don’t need to abandon your friend. You just need to talk to him differently.
This approach lets you do something constructive with your irritation. Instead of stifling it (trying to pretend you’re not annoyed) or venting it (snapping at your friend), you can use it — take it as a cue to get curious about what’s happening. You can do this in any frustrating conversation. See if you can identify the particular types of communication that are fueling your frustration. If it turns out that the other person is Yes-Butting, try using the strategy we’re about to describe.
Step 2: Action — Join and Explore (again)
If you paid attention to the post on controlling your own Yes-Buts, here’s some good news: You can use the exact same strategy to respond to someone else’s Yes-Buts. Think back to our example of the argument about national security and human rights. Just because Charles Yes-Butted first, that doesn’t mean he’s the only one who could make a positive change. The Join and Explore strategy could work equally well for Ruth:
Charles: Yes, national security concerns are important, but we can’t allow those considerations to erode the basic fundamental protections for individual human life and dignity. (Yes-But)
Ruth: You know, I agree with that — I do think we need to keep fundamental human rights protections in place. (Join #1) A lack of regard for human life and dignity is part of what makes terrorist attacks so appalling. (Join #2) In trying to protect our society, we shouldn’t abandon the basic principles that the society is based on. (Join #3)
What do you think is the best way to balance human rights concerns with issues of public safety in the face of an imminent threat, such as a potential large-scale attack? (Open question)
Or, Are there any circumstances that you think would justify suspending a few individuals’ rights to protect the lives of others? (Open question)
As soon as you master the art of joining and asking open questions, you have the skills to transform any polite fight — no matter who said the first Yes-But.
The Upshot: At any point in a Yes-But conversation, switching to joining and asking open questions can help you understand other points of view, get your viewpoint understood, reduce everyone’s level of frustration, and start to develop a collaborative solution.
Plan B: What to Do When You Can’t Find a Way to Join
There may be times when you get Yes-Butted and your automatic response isn’t another Yes-But; it’s just plain “No!” No matter how hard you try, you can’t find anything you like or agree with in the other person’s idea. In that case, you might choose to skip the joining and go straight for an open question, like “What makes you say that?” or “What led you to that conclusion?” Be sure to keep your voice tone neutral, without any harsh or sarcastic edge (“What makes you say THAT?!”).
If the person’s idea seems crazy, extreme, or stupid to you, that’s all the more reason to start off with a question. There’s a good chance that at least one of you has information the other person doesn’t have. For instance, suppose you’re discussing layoff decisions with a colleague, explaining what a tough time you’re having. She says, “But you really should have gotten rid of David already,” and this seems extreme and unfair to you. It may turn out that your colleague knows something about David that you don’t know. We saw a situation like this in one small company, where the firing of a long-time employee had led to a great deal of conflict within the staff. As we worked with the group, it became clear that many people were uninformed or misinformed about exactly what this person had done (including threats and sexual harassment).
If all else fails, if even open questions don’t seem to work, one other option is to simply say, “I disagree” or “I have a different opinion” (again, making sure your voice tone stays neutral). While this isn’t as helpful as the other strategies for building mutual understanding, it does avoid the mixed message of a Yes-But. For that reason, it’s less likely to get an argument going.
Step 3: Practice
Keep looking out for our Yes-But Exercises (we've posted 3 so far and there are more to come) to keep building your awareness and skill with Yes-Buts.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Yes-But Exercise #3 - Yes-Butting on Purpose
Practice having a conversation entirely in Yes-Buts. This is more fun to do with a friend, but you can also do it on your own, thinking up Yes-Buts in your head, writing them down on paper, or even saying them out loud to yourself. Get creative. See how many different ways you can say “Yes” and “But” without using those words directly. This exercise will help build your awareness so that when Yes-Buts happen naturally — coming from you or from someone else — you’ll have an easier time recognizing them and remembering to try to do something different.
Yes-But Exercise #2 - Your Personal Yes-But Alerts
The most important Yes-Buts to recognize are the ones you use yourself. Unfortunately, these are also the most difficult to recognize. When you’re just starting out, we recommend asking a few people close to you to serve as your personal “Yes-But Alerts.” As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, you could ask them to give you some subtle sign (like touching their nose) every time you use a Yes-But. Or they could simply stop you and say, “Yes-But,” or point out what happened after the conversation is over. Do whatever works best for you. Over time, you’ll find that you start catching yourself, becoming your own best Yes-But alert.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Yes-But Exercise #1 — Fly on the Wall
As promised, here is the first of several Yes-But exercises; others will follow every few days. We’ll be sharing a variety of different types of exercises, so you can use whichever ones work for you and skip the others. They'll get progressively more challenging as we go on. We hope you will find these useful in building your Yes-But savvy.
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Exercise 1 — Fly on the Wall
Look for opportunities to listen for Yes-Buts in contentious conversations that don’t directly involve you. It’s a lot easier to notice a Yes-But pattern when you’re on the outside looking in, rather than stuck in the middle of it. This may happen in a meeting when your coworkers start arguing over the latest budget numbers, or in a store when you overhear children protesting about the candy or toys they’re not allowed to buy. Perhaps the easiest way to find a Yes-But conversation is by turning on the television. From confrontational interviews and political debates to petty arguments on sitcoms and reality shows, there’s no shortage of polite (and impolite) fights on the small screen. See how many Yes-Buts you can catch, and notice what kinds of effects they have on communication. What’s the impact on people’s ability to make decisions, solve problems, or understand each other’s point of view? When do they seem to help someone achieve his or her goals? When do they get in the way?
(If you come up with any questions or observations in doing this exercise, we'd love to hear them!)
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Exercise 1 — Fly on the Wall
Look for opportunities to listen for Yes-Buts in contentious conversations that don’t directly involve you. It’s a lot easier to notice a Yes-But pattern when you’re on the outside looking in, rather than stuck in the middle of it. This may happen in a meeting when your coworkers start arguing over the latest budget numbers, or in a store when you overhear children protesting about the candy or toys they’re not allowed to buy. Perhaps the easiest way to find a Yes-But conversation is by turning on the television. From confrontational interviews and political debates to petty arguments on sitcoms and reality shows, there’s no shortage of polite (and impolite) fights on the small screen. See how many Yes-Buts you can catch, and notice what kinds of effects they have on communication. What’s the impact on people’s ability to make decisions, solve problems, or understand each other’s point of view? When do they seem to help someone achieve his or her goals? When do they get in the way?
(If you come up with any questions or observations in doing this exercise, we'd love to hear them!)
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Building Your Fitness with Yes-Buts
In our last few posts, we've talked a lot about Yes-Buts — the problems they can cause in conversations, when and why people use them, all the different forms they can take, and even how not to deal with them effectively. Now it's time to start looking at strategies that can actually work well.
Yes-Buts are so common, at least in American culture, that they affect all of us in one way or another. You may not use this type of communication very often, but the odds are you do it at least some of the time. (If you’re convinced that you don’t, try checking that out with a few people who know you well. You may be surprised!) Plus, even if you never Yes-Butted anyone yourself, you’d still have to face plenty of other people doing it to you, which can be extremely challenging.
To avoid getting caught up in polite fights, you need to know both how to change your own Yes-Buts and how to respond effectively when someone Yes-Buts you. We’ll teach you how to do that, and also how you can effectively intervene in other people’s conversations — for instance, what you can do when you’re leading a meeting and the discussion starts turning into a Yes-But debate. For each skill, we’ll follow a basic three-step program for behavior change: first building awareness, then learning new actions to take, and finally using repeated practice to turn those actions into a habit.
Transformation Skill: Controlling Your Own Yes-Butting
If you’re someone who tends to Yes-But a lot, learning how to do it less can make a huge difference in your communication. We’ve seen many people successfully kick the habit using the process that you’re about to learn.
Step 1: Self-awareness
The first step is to build your awareness of what it is that you’re doing. This takes practice. Remember that you can Yes-But without ever saying Yes or But. You may have a more subtle Yes-Butting style. (Be sure to read about “stealth-butting” in our earlier post.) See if you can notice what happens to you when someone gives an opinion or suggestion that you disagree with. Do you start to feel tense or agitated? Do you have trouble fully listening to the other person because your mind is so busy coming up with counter-arguments?
When you’re just starting out, you might not realize that you Yes-Butted someone until a few hours or days after the conversation is over. Over time, you’ll find yourself noticing your Yes-But thinking in the middle of a conversation. Eventually, if all goes well, you’ll be able to prevent a Yes-But argument before the first But comes out of your mouth.
As you develop this awareness, it can be helpful to keep track of the situations where you tend to get triggered. When do you Yes-But the most? Is it when your daughter asks to stay out past her curfew? When you’re talking with your friends about politics? Or when a colleague presents a new proposal that you think is too ambitious? Once you know that, you can make an effort to be particularly attentive in those situations. You might even ask a few people you trust to speak up when they catch you Yes-Butting (so long as they can do it graciously, without being too critical — maybe giving you a subtle nonverbal cue like touching the tip of their nose or some other hand signal). One man we remember had that happen accidentally. After going through a communications training he decided to teach his two sons about Yes-Buts, thinking that this might help them to stop arguing so much with each other. What he didn’t expect was that they’d start noticing how often he Yes-Butted them, which he soon learned was many times per day!
Step 2: Action — Join and Explore
Suppose you notice that you’re about to Yes-But and you manage to catch yourself in time. Now what do you do? Let’s take an example. Your spouse suggests taking a two-week vacation, and you stop yourself from automatically saying, “That would be nice, but my work schedule won’t allow it.” What do you say instead? You could just change the subject or try a noncommittal Uh-huh, but then the important information you have would never get into the conversation. Every Yes-But contains two important messages: 1) an agreement (you think a two-week vacation sounds great) and 2) a new, different or competing idea (you can’t imagine taking that much time off from work). The challenge is finding a way to communicate these ideas that makes it easier for the other person to hear them. The most effective method we’ve found is a strategy we call Join and Explore.
Join
Think of the Join as the Yes part of your Yes-But with more meat on the bones. Instead of saying a superficial, token “Yes” or “Sure” or “That would be nice,” you mention three specific things that you genuinely like or agree with in what you just heard. In our vacation example, you might say, “I’d love to spend two weeks away with you. One week often doesn’t feel like enough time to fully relax. And that way we’d be able to go someplace farther away, without worrying so much about the long flight or jet lag.”
Once you’ve sincerely joined with someone’s idea, the person is much more likely to be receptive to what you say next. In general, people are more relaxed and open with others who seem to be similar to them or on their side; anyone who comes across as being too different or too antagonistic will tend to provoke a defensive reaction. This is why we recommend joining three times, rather than one or two — it often takes three for people to feel that you honestly hear them, understand them, and can relate to what they’re saying. Just remember that your joins need to be genuine. When people try to fake this strategy, they usually come across as insincere.
Explore
So far, so good. You’ve fleshed out your Yes with three sincere, specific joins. Now comes the tricky part: expressing your concern — in this case, your worry about taking so much time off from work — without phrasing it as a “But.” In our experience, the best way to do that is to incorporate your concern into an open-ended question. In this case, you might ask, “Do you have any ideas about how I could fit a two-week trip around my work schedule?”
Consider what a difference this simple change can make in your communication. In a Yes-But conversation, there are two fixed sides. All your energy goes into arguing over which side is right: yes vs. no, two-week vacation vs. no two-week vacation. By asking an open question, you redirect that energy into constructive problem-solving. Instead of deciding “We can’t do that,” you start exploring, “How can we?” This helps both you and the other person to stay curious about new possibilities that you haven’t considered before. For example, you and your spouse might end up brainstorming some creative solution to your vacation dilemma. Maybe you’ll think of a way to combine leisure travel with a work-related trip; do some work remotely while you’re away; reassign one of your time-consuming projects; or fit in a few hours of overtime each week in the months before you leave. Not only will you avoid a fight, but you’ll also increase the chances of getting what you both want — a nice long vacation that doesn’t conflict with your work responsibilities.
Joining and Exploring on a Charged Political Issue
While many Yes-But arguments deal with practical decisions (planning a vacation, meeting, or party, hiring a new employee, or making budget cuts), some of the most heated debates involve larger legal or political issues. Topics such as abortion, gay marriage, gun control, and defense policy challenge people’s core beliefs and values. When you hear an opposing viewpoint on one of those issues, the temptation to argue can be almost irresistible. At a minimum these sorts of conflicts can be very frustrating. In worse cases they can seriously damage relationships, leaving colleagues, friends, or family members feeling alienated from one another.
The Join and Explore strategy gives us a more productive alternative. We’ll demonstrate this by applying it to a controversial issue that often gets discussed in polarized, black-and-white terms: the tension between national security and human rights. In the following dialogue, Ruth is in favor of prioritizing national security, and Charles is in favor of prioritizing human rights.
Ruth: National security concerns should take priority over individual human rights. (Opinion)
Charles: Yes, national security concerns are important, but that doesn’t make it okay to abandon our basic fundamental protections for individual human life and dignity. (Yes-But)
Ruth: Sure, those are great ideals. However, when we’re face-to-face with terrorist threats, that kind of idealism can put thousands or even millions of lives at risk. (Yes-But)
Charles: It’s easy to say that, but then you could use that argument to justify terrible human rights abuses! (Yes-But)
(And from here, the argument could continue on indefinitely.)
Now let’s back up to the start of the conversation and see how it could go a little differently. Imagine that as Ruth makes her first comment, Charles notices his reaction and realizes he is about to Yes-But. At that point he might be able to shift his focus from what he doesn’t like about Ruth’s opinion to what he can genuinely agree with (his joins):
Ruth: National security concerns should take precedence over individual human rights. (Opinion)
Charles: I agree that national security needs to be one of the country’s top priorities. (Join #1)
Attacks by terrorists can claim hundreds or thousands of lives. (Join #2)
Clearly, whatever security or intelligence measures were in place before the September 11th attacks weren’t sufficient to prevent those tragedies. (Join #3)
Charles’s next step would be to ask an open-ended question that addresses his concern, while still leaving room for Ruth to give her opinion freely. This is tricky. It would probably be much simpler for him to think of Leading questions that back Ruth into a corner, like: Don’t you think that sometimes the focus on security goes too far? Don’t we also have a responsibility to take human rights into account? Here are a few examples of genuine open questions Charles could ask:
Are there any cases where you think human rights need to come first? Or any particular human rights that you think should never be violated?
What are the limits? How would we know if we’d gone too far in infringing on individual rights?
Can you think of any ways in which protecting human rights might be compatible with promoting national security?
What steps can we take to promote national security that don’t infringe on individual rights — or that actually enhance those rights?
There’s no way to predict how will Ruth answer this type of question. Nothing Charles can do will guarantee a constructive response. But because he started out by joining with Ruth’s opinion, she’s more likely to be receptive and give his question some serious thought.
We wouldn’t expect that Ruth and Charles would end up in perfect agreement with each other. However, so long as neither person has radically extreme views — for instance, believing that anyone who disagrees with our government’s policies should be put in jail, or that there should be no security at airports because it violates the right to privacy — there will be some areas of common ground. Exploring those together will give them a good shot at developing a certain level of mutual understanding and respect. They may even discover that they can learn something from each other.
Step 3: Practice
Over the next few weeks, in between our regular posts, we’ll teach you a variety of different exercises you can try on your own to build your Yes-But fitness.
As for our regular posts, our next topic will be response skills — what to do when you get Yes-Butted by somebody else. Stay tuned!
Yes-Buts are so common, at least in American culture, that they affect all of us in one way or another. You may not use this type of communication very often, but the odds are you do it at least some of the time. (If you’re convinced that you don’t, try checking that out with a few people who know you well. You may be surprised!) Plus, even if you never Yes-Butted anyone yourself, you’d still have to face plenty of other people doing it to you, which can be extremely challenging.
To avoid getting caught up in polite fights, you need to know both how to change your own Yes-Buts and how to respond effectively when someone Yes-Buts you. We’ll teach you how to do that, and also how you can effectively intervene in other people’s conversations — for instance, what you can do when you’re leading a meeting and the discussion starts turning into a Yes-But debate. For each skill, we’ll follow a basic three-step program for behavior change: first building awareness, then learning new actions to take, and finally using repeated practice to turn those actions into a habit.
Transformation Skill: Controlling Your Own Yes-Butting
If you’re someone who tends to Yes-But a lot, learning how to do it less can make a huge difference in your communication. We’ve seen many people successfully kick the habit using the process that you’re about to learn.
Step 1: Self-awareness
The first step is to build your awareness of what it is that you’re doing. This takes practice. Remember that you can Yes-But without ever saying Yes or But. You may have a more subtle Yes-Butting style. (Be sure to read about “stealth-butting” in our earlier post.) See if you can notice what happens to you when someone gives an opinion or suggestion that you disagree with. Do you start to feel tense or agitated? Do you have trouble fully listening to the other person because your mind is so busy coming up with counter-arguments?
When you’re just starting out, you might not realize that you Yes-Butted someone until a few hours or days after the conversation is over. Over time, you’ll find yourself noticing your Yes-But thinking in the middle of a conversation. Eventually, if all goes well, you’ll be able to prevent a Yes-But argument before the first But comes out of your mouth.
As you develop this awareness, it can be helpful to keep track of the situations where you tend to get triggered. When do you Yes-But the most? Is it when your daughter asks to stay out past her curfew? When you’re talking with your friends about politics? Or when a colleague presents a new proposal that you think is too ambitious? Once you know that, you can make an effort to be particularly attentive in those situations. You might even ask a few people you trust to speak up when they catch you Yes-Butting (so long as they can do it graciously, without being too critical — maybe giving you a subtle nonverbal cue like touching the tip of their nose or some other hand signal). One man we remember had that happen accidentally. After going through a communications training he decided to teach his two sons about Yes-Buts, thinking that this might help them to stop arguing so much with each other. What he didn’t expect was that they’d start noticing how often he Yes-Butted them, which he soon learned was many times per day!
Step 2: Action — Join and Explore
Suppose you notice that you’re about to Yes-But and you manage to catch yourself in time. Now what do you do? Let’s take an example. Your spouse suggests taking a two-week vacation, and you stop yourself from automatically saying, “That would be nice, but my work schedule won’t allow it.” What do you say instead? You could just change the subject or try a noncommittal Uh-huh, but then the important information you have would never get into the conversation. Every Yes-But contains two important messages: 1) an agreement (you think a two-week vacation sounds great) and 2) a new, different or competing idea (you can’t imagine taking that much time off from work). The challenge is finding a way to communicate these ideas that makes it easier for the other person to hear them. The most effective method we’ve found is a strategy we call Join and Explore.
Join
Think of the Join as the Yes part of your Yes-But with more meat on the bones. Instead of saying a superficial, token “Yes” or “Sure” or “That would be nice,” you mention three specific things that you genuinely like or agree with in what you just heard. In our vacation example, you might say, “I’d love to spend two weeks away with you. One week often doesn’t feel like enough time to fully relax. And that way we’d be able to go someplace farther away, without worrying so much about the long flight or jet lag.”
Once you’ve sincerely joined with someone’s idea, the person is much more likely to be receptive to what you say next. In general, people are more relaxed and open with others who seem to be similar to them or on their side; anyone who comes across as being too different or too antagonistic will tend to provoke a defensive reaction. This is why we recommend joining three times, rather than one or two — it often takes three for people to feel that you honestly hear them, understand them, and can relate to what they’re saying. Just remember that your joins need to be genuine. When people try to fake this strategy, they usually come across as insincere.
Explore
So far, so good. You’ve fleshed out your Yes with three sincere, specific joins. Now comes the tricky part: expressing your concern — in this case, your worry about taking so much time off from work — without phrasing it as a “But.” In our experience, the best way to do that is to incorporate your concern into an open-ended question. In this case, you might ask, “Do you have any ideas about how I could fit a two-week trip around my work schedule?”
Consider what a difference this simple change can make in your communication. In a Yes-But conversation, there are two fixed sides. All your energy goes into arguing over which side is right: yes vs. no, two-week vacation vs. no two-week vacation. By asking an open question, you redirect that energy into constructive problem-solving. Instead of deciding “We can’t do that,” you start exploring, “How can we?” This helps both you and the other person to stay curious about new possibilities that you haven’t considered before. For example, you and your spouse might end up brainstorming some creative solution to your vacation dilemma. Maybe you’ll think of a way to combine leisure travel with a work-related trip; do some work remotely while you’re away; reassign one of your time-consuming projects; or fit in a few hours of overtime each week in the months before you leave. Not only will you avoid a fight, but you’ll also increase the chances of getting what you both want — a nice long vacation that doesn’t conflict with your work responsibilities.
Joining and Exploring on a Charged Political Issue
While many Yes-But arguments deal with practical decisions (planning a vacation, meeting, or party, hiring a new employee, or making budget cuts), some of the most heated debates involve larger legal or political issues. Topics such as abortion, gay marriage, gun control, and defense policy challenge people’s core beliefs and values. When you hear an opposing viewpoint on one of those issues, the temptation to argue can be almost irresistible. At a minimum these sorts of conflicts can be very frustrating. In worse cases they can seriously damage relationships, leaving colleagues, friends, or family members feeling alienated from one another.
The Join and Explore strategy gives us a more productive alternative. We’ll demonstrate this by applying it to a controversial issue that often gets discussed in polarized, black-and-white terms: the tension between national security and human rights. In the following dialogue, Ruth is in favor of prioritizing national security, and Charles is in favor of prioritizing human rights.
Ruth: National security concerns should take priority over individual human rights. (Opinion)
Charles: Yes, national security concerns are important, but that doesn’t make it okay to abandon our basic fundamental protections for individual human life and dignity. (Yes-But)
Ruth: Sure, those are great ideals. However, when we’re face-to-face with terrorist threats, that kind of idealism can put thousands or even millions of lives at risk. (Yes-But)
Charles: It’s easy to say that, but then you could use that argument to justify terrible human rights abuses! (Yes-But)
(And from here, the argument could continue on indefinitely.)
Now let’s back up to the start of the conversation and see how it could go a little differently. Imagine that as Ruth makes her first comment, Charles notices his reaction and realizes he is about to Yes-But. At that point he might be able to shift his focus from what he doesn’t like about Ruth’s opinion to what he can genuinely agree with (his joins):
Ruth: National security concerns should take precedence over individual human rights. (Opinion)
Charles: I agree that national security needs to be one of the country’s top priorities. (Join #1)
Attacks by terrorists can claim hundreds or thousands of lives. (Join #2)
Clearly, whatever security or intelligence measures were in place before the September 11th attacks weren’t sufficient to prevent those tragedies. (Join #3)
Charles’s next step would be to ask an open-ended question that addresses his concern, while still leaving room for Ruth to give her opinion freely. This is tricky. It would probably be much simpler for him to think of Leading questions that back Ruth into a corner, like: Don’t you think that sometimes the focus on security goes too far? Don’t we also have a responsibility to take human rights into account? Here are a few examples of genuine open questions Charles could ask:
Are there any cases where you think human rights need to come first? Or any particular human rights that you think should never be violated?
What are the limits? How would we know if we’d gone too far in infringing on individual rights?
Can you think of any ways in which protecting human rights might be compatible with promoting national security?
What steps can we take to promote national security that don’t infringe on individual rights — or that actually enhance those rights?
There’s no way to predict how will Ruth answer this type of question. Nothing Charles can do will guarantee a constructive response. But because he started out by joining with Ruth’s opinion, she’s more likely to be receptive and give his question some serious thought.
We wouldn’t expect that Ruth and Charles would end up in perfect agreement with each other. However, so long as neither person has radically extreme views — for instance, believing that anyone who disagrees with our government’s policies should be put in jail, or that there should be no security at airports because it violates the right to privacy — there will be some areas of common ground. Exploring those together will give them a good shot at developing a certain level of mutual understanding and respect. They may even discover that they can learn something from each other.
Step 3: Practice
Over the next few weeks, in between our regular posts, we’ll teach you a variety of different exercises you can try on your own to build your Yes-But fitness.
As for our regular posts, our next topic will be response skills — what to do when you get Yes-Butted by somebody else. Stay tuned!
Monday, May 17, 2010
A Non-SAVI Response to Yes-Buts
One of our readers just brought to our attention a great example of a non-SAVI response to Yes-Butting. (Thanks, Candace!)
Source:
"The Worst Words to Say at Work: 9 common words and phrases that will make you sound noncommittal, undependable, and untrustworthy"
by Linnda Durre, Forbes.com
7. "Yes, but . . ."
This is another excuse. You might give your team members suggestions or solutions, and they come back to you with "Yes, but . . ." as a response. They don't really want answers, help, or solutions. You need to call the "Yes, but . . ." people out on their avoidance tactic by saying something like "You know, Jackie, every time I offer you a suggestion you say, 'Yes, but . . . ,' which makes me think you don't really want to solve this problem. That's not going to work. If you want to play the victim, go right ahead, but I'm not going to allow you to keep this up." After a response like that, you can be assured that the next words you hear will not be "Yes, but . . ."!
________________
A few things to notice about this approach:
1. The emphasis is all on the people, not on the way they are communicating. Instead of addressing Yes-Buts, the author focuses on "'Yes-But' people." She shifts our attention from external behavior, which we can all objectively observe (the person is using Yes-Buts) to internal motivation (e.g., the person is trying to avoid the problem by making excuses), which we can only guess at. If we accept the claim "They don't really want answers, help, or solutions," we're presuming to know what's going on inside the head of anyone who says "Yes-But" — quite a bold claim! (Many of you will recognize this as a "mind-read," an assumption about other people's thoughts and feelings stated as if it were a fact.)
2. Since the Yes-But people are (presumably) the problem, the solution seems to be to shut them down, to teach them a lesson so they'll stop doing what they're doing. There's no sense of any larger context (e.g., what factors may be contributing to a lot of Yes-Butting) or larger goals (e.g., to help these people communicate in a more constructive way) — much less of any useful information the Yes-Butters might have. (Consider: "Yes, we want to meet the deadline, but the product hasn't passed the safety inspection yet." or "Yes, this is an exciting idea, but it violates our contract.")
3. Let's look at the details of the proposed strategy. What type of behavior would the author use to respond to a Yes-But?
a. "You know, Jackie, every time I offer you a suggestion you say, 'Yes, but . . . ,'
--This statement has elements of fact in it (the person has Yes-Butted more than once), but the generalized "you do this *every* time" makes it more of an attack. And while it's possible you could say it in a non-hostile tone, it would be hard to do it with no edge at all. Therefore, we're pretty confident calling this an attack.
b. "...which makes me think you don't really want to solve this problem."
--Here's another mind-read. Because it's an accusatory one, we'd call this an attack as well.
c. "That's not going to work."
--In another context, this could be a discount (criticizing another person's ideas or intentions, rather than criticizing them personally), but here it comes across as blameful, if not threatening. (The implication being, your attempts to avoid solving this problem won't work.) Thus, another attack.
d. "If you want to play the victim, go right ahead, but I'm not going to allow you to keep this up."
--Hmm, what could this be? Ironically, it takes the form of a Yes-But, the very behavior the author is railing against, but again the hostility pushes it into attack -- with a bit of sarcasm thrown in for good measure.
So there we have it -- one clear strategy for responding to a Yes-But: Attack the person who's Yes-Butting. The author is right that the next words you hear probably won't be "Yes, but." Attacks turn a conflict away from the subject matter being discussed, making it more personal. If the original Yes-Butter gives any response at all, it is likely to be self-defense or a counter-attack.
Happily, there are other, more promising options for dealing with Yes-Buts. We'll turn to them in our next posting.
Source:
"The Worst Words to Say at Work: 9 common words and phrases that will make you sound noncommittal, undependable, and untrustworthy"
by Linnda Durre, Forbes.com
7. "Yes, but . . ."
This is another excuse. You might give your team members suggestions or solutions, and they come back to you with "Yes, but . . ." as a response. They don't really want answers, help, or solutions. You need to call the "Yes, but . . ." people out on their avoidance tactic by saying something like "You know, Jackie, every time I offer you a suggestion you say, 'Yes, but . . . ,' which makes me think you don't really want to solve this problem. That's not going to work. If you want to play the victim, go right ahead, but I'm not going to allow you to keep this up." After a response like that, you can be assured that the next words you hear will not be "Yes, but . . ."!
________________
A few things to notice about this approach:
1. The emphasis is all on the people, not on the way they are communicating. Instead of addressing Yes-Buts, the author focuses on "'Yes-But' people." She shifts our attention from external behavior, which we can all objectively observe (the person is using Yes-Buts) to internal motivation (e.g., the person is trying to avoid the problem by making excuses), which we can only guess at. If we accept the claim "They don't really want answers, help, or solutions," we're presuming to know what's going on inside the head of anyone who says "Yes-But" — quite a bold claim! (Many of you will recognize this as a "mind-read," an assumption about other people's thoughts and feelings stated as if it were a fact.)
2. Since the Yes-But people are (presumably) the problem, the solution seems to be to shut them down, to teach them a lesson so they'll stop doing what they're doing. There's no sense of any larger context (e.g., what factors may be contributing to a lot of Yes-Butting) or larger goals (e.g., to help these people communicate in a more constructive way) — much less of any useful information the Yes-Butters might have. (Consider: "Yes, we want to meet the deadline, but the product hasn't passed the safety inspection yet." or "Yes, this is an exciting idea, but it violates our contract.")
3. Let's look at the details of the proposed strategy. What type of behavior would the author use to respond to a Yes-But?
a. "You know, Jackie, every time I offer you a suggestion you say, 'Yes, but . . . ,'
--This statement has elements of fact in it (the person has Yes-Butted more than once), but the generalized "you do this *every* time" makes it more of an attack. And while it's possible you could say it in a non-hostile tone, it would be hard to do it with no edge at all. Therefore, we're pretty confident calling this an attack.
b. "...which makes me think you don't really want to solve this problem."
--Here's another mind-read. Because it's an accusatory one, we'd call this an attack as well.
c. "That's not going to work."
--In another context, this could be a discount (criticizing another person's ideas or intentions, rather than criticizing them personally), but here it comes across as blameful, if not threatening. (The implication being, your attempts to avoid solving this problem won't work.) Thus, another attack.
d. "If you want to play the victim, go right ahead, but I'm not going to allow you to keep this up."
--Hmm, what could this be? Ironically, it takes the form of a Yes-But, the very behavior the author is railing against, but again the hostility pushes it into attack -- with a bit of sarcasm thrown in for good measure.
So there we have it -- one clear strategy for responding to a Yes-But: Attack the person who's Yes-Butting. The author is right that the next words you hear probably won't be "Yes, but." Attacks turn a conflict away from the subject matter being discussed, making it more personal. If the original Yes-Butter gives any response at all, it is likely to be self-defense or a counter-attack.
Happily, there are other, more promising options for dealing with Yes-Buts. We'll turn to them in our next posting.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
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.
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.
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