How to Say No at Work
How to say no at work?
Last month a client shared the dark side of expertise. Through the program, she has found her brand and expertise - being the go to person when it comes to anything to do with options trading - and has been getting great traction with leadership.
However, she’s also now the clearing house for any little thing that comes up around options. Her vision is to be operating options strategy, building tools for her firm, being in touch with the Street and making high level decisions.
Yet her day to day is taken up by emails requesting meetings, meetings and requests to do all the options work for her co-workers who simply don’t know enough yet to do it themselves. And this keeps her from settling in and doing the actual strategic work she should be doing.
Sound like anyone you know?
Here’s how she got unstuck from doing all the doing.
In session, she realized a few things:
- She HAD to delegate - to teach folks how to fish
- To set boundaries - options calls only happen for 2 hours on Thursdays. She doesn’t touch deals under $2M. This forces her traders to be more resourceful.
Notice she’s not saying no.
She’s putting guardrails around her yes until no is feasible.
Saying no to doing is saying yes to deciding.
BIG NEWS: I’ve done the same. In Nov 2021 I onboarded my last 1x1 client. If you’d like to work with me, you’ll have the opportunity in a hybrid online course and group coaching offering. I’m saying no to 1x1 so I can say yes to scaling my impact by serving more clients at a more accessible price while creating time to continue to improve the offering and strategizing new ways to serve my students and directions for the org.
What old habit do you need to say no to right now?
Let me know! DM me on Linkedin, with 2 sentences about your story. I read every message and would love to hear from you.