After more than a decade in internal communications, 12 years in-house and now nearly 2 years as a consultant, I've noticed a problem that seems to cut across organisation size, industry and culture. It's a problem so fundamental and so ingrained in our profession that many of us don't even question it anymore.
We simply cannot say no.
Let's look at an example I'm sure is familiar to many of you. It's Monday afternoon, your proactive plan for the week is all done and you know what's a priority to work on this week. You're on top of your game. Then a stakeholder messages you: "Quick favour, could you just review this article and send your suggested amendments by tomorrow? Shouldn't take long." Despite the fact that you've already planned your work aligned to your strategy and your week is already mapping out and full, your fingers instinctively and immediately type: "Sure, happy to help!"
Is this you? Do you default to saying yes to stakeholder requests?
Well you're not alone. In a workshop last week, I asked a room of communications professionals to raise their hands if they'd worked on a low-value, non-priority task recently simply because they'd defaulted to saying "yes" to a stakeholder request. Every single hand went up. I thanked them for their honesty and admitted this is something I've often struggled with myself.
Working in internal comms can be really bloody lonely. I know, I've been there.
Maybe you're the only internal communicator in your organisation. Or maybe you're a communications leader who is expected to have all the answers. You're probably facing challenges that other people in your organisation rarely understand.
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Why do we default to saying yes?
This is so curious, isn't it. Why do communications professionals have this extreme inability to say no? Or maybe we should flip it around and ask why we get stuck into a cycle of always saying yes? What's driving this?
I'm going to generalise here, so please challenge me on this if your experience has been different, but the type of people who are drawn to work in communications tend to be super nice, helpful people who are prone to people-pleasing. We really want to help others succeed, we want to make them happy and we want them to like us. All of this makes it pretty hard to say 'no' when stakeholders ask us for things, because it goes against our instincts to help them.
There are other reasons too. We are afraid of being seen as 'difficult' if we say no to a stakeholder. We need to have positive working relationships with stakeholders in order to work well across the business, but we worry about damaging these relationships if we say no. And maybe we are actively avoiding uncomfortable conversations. It's easier just to say yes and do the work, isn't it, rather than have a potentially fraught conversation about why it's not a priority.
I wonder as well if our own lack of strategy and priorities is a factor here too. I talk to communication professionals all the time who do not have any sort of strategy in place, which means they can't easily figure out what constitutes high-value work. Instead, they often work in a reactive way where we default to a "first come, first served" approach or even "whoever shouts loudest gets my attention".
But what is this costing you?
I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately and thinking about why it's so problematic. Because I think there are huge risks and costs to us, as communication professionals, if we always say yes to our stakeholder requests.
For example, if you say yes to everything then you're going to find yourself super busy and spread thin on many different talks. This is going to result in a dilution of the quality of your work, and you'll find yourself delivering "good enough" work rather than excellent work. Keep doing this over time and it will diminish your reputation in the business as well as your own sense of pride.
Another cost is the postponement of strategic work. Because when we say yes to everything, we operate in a very reactive way in which we focus on urgent tasks rather than important ones. And what you'll find is that strategic initiatives (the work that is aligned to your strategy and will really make an impact on the business) gets perpetually postponed. Things like relationship building, in-depth evaluation, strategic planning, running focus groups... we know that these things are important but we push them to the end of our to do list when we are overwhelmed with urgent tasks, don't we?
And we are overwhelmed with urgent tasks because we keep saying yes, yes, yes when stakeholders ask us to do things. Do this for long enough and you'll find your work has absolutely no alignment to your core purpose or strategic priorities - you're just a pair of hands available to whoever asks.
And related to this is the opportunity cost of always saying yes. Every time you say “yes” to something, you are automatically saying “no” to something else. Because you have limited time, right? There's only so much you can do. So if you say yes to making that poster for Debbie in Finance then you are inadvertently saying no to reviewing your editorial calendar or revising your strategic objectives. You need to be fiercely protective of your time and spend as much of it as you can on stuff that matters. And guess what, you can't do that if you're always saying yes.
And last but definitely not least, there's a real risk of burnout if you're always saying yes. Because continually saying yes just makes your to-do list longer and longer and this normalises unsustainable workloads. You'll find yourself extremely busy, overwhelmed, suffering from chronic stress, not sleeping and constantly worrying about work. You feel like you're a failure because you can't ever seem to get to the bottom of your to-do list, and you haven't got any mental space to even consider the fact that half of your to-do list is low-value busywork that you shouldn't be doing at all.
So here we are, talented communications professionals trapped in a cycle of saying "yes" that diminishes our impact, derails our strategic work and pushes us toward burnout. If you're nodding along to this, know that you're not alone, and more importantly, you're not failing. You're caught in a systemic pattern that affects our entire profession. This is not an individual problem, it is a collective one.
Now that we've explored the problem, it's time to consider solutions. That's what I'll focus on in next week's newsletter. I'll share practical strategies for saying "no" effectively which will help you protect your strategic priorities without destroying your stakeholders relationships.
Your 'homework' for now, should you want some, is to reflect on what you've just read and look within yourself to figure out why YOU have difficulty saying no. Are you prone to a bit of people pleasing? Are you afraid that people won't like you? Are you worried about ruining professional relationships?
Understanding where you're starting from is the first step toward change, so begin there. Figure out what's driving you and let's pick this up together next week.
Thanks for reading and stay curious,
Joanna
Find me on YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and check out my book
Want to work together?
- Join The Curious Tribe. This is my membership community for ambitious, curious communicators who want to achieve more in their roles and have fun at the same time. Membership allows you to work directly with me for 12 months, make deep connections with other communication pros who 'get it' and improve your skills through training and learning. More info here.
- Ready to review your channels and content but don't know where to start? Download my practical Internal Comms Audit Playbook to guide you through a DIY audit - no expensive consultant needed. This has ready-to-use templates and checklists to give you a systematic way to do your own audit which you can repeat every single year. Get it here.
- Take a shortcut. I've developed a collection of tried-and-tested templates, checklists and how-to guides for the key processes you'll need in your role as an internal communicator. You can download my Internal Comms Cheat Sheets here.
- Enroll in my course, "How to use ChatGPT as your personal assistant". This is a practical, on-demand course where I'll show you 38 specific ways to use ChatGPT to help you in your job as an internal communicator. You can enroll in the course here.