A lack of planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on yours.
You know, I get it.
Executive women are very often service-centred leaders. The idea of letting somebody down, whether or not it’s our responsibility to help them, is anathema to us. We inhale it with the ‘good girl’ principles of supporting, of fixing, of caring, of pleasing that we breathe in from our earliest days.
And don’t get me wrong. Service-centred leadership is powerful, impactful, invaluable leadership. It’s a leadership style that comes easily to many women, and often contributes to our effectiveness in developing teams and achieving outcomes far beyond those immediately evident.
BUT
When we consistently put others’ needs ahead of our own, we burn ourselves and our teams out.
When we consistently put others’ urgencies ahead of our own priorities, it becomes impossible to achieve our own objectives in a reasonable timeframe. And so we work longer and harder and tireder and with less effectiveness. It’s a recipe for failure.
When colleagues or clients or other stakeholders ask for urgent help that will disrupt your own priorities, you’ll often know immediately whether that request is reasonably something you should accommodate. You might recognise a pattern of your or your team’s time and attention being taken for granted. You might mutter under your breath, “Here we go again,” and catch the eye-rolls of your team members.
What you perhaps won’t notice is your adrenaline kicking in to deal with the urgent demand, the cortisol flooding your brain, your heart rate picking up along with your breathing, your system galvanising to respond. This is how your body has learned to react to somebody else’s unreasonable demand. It’s a stress response that doesn’t match the actual threat, but you’ve responded that same way so many times, the neural pathway is dug deep.
It can be hard to respond differently in that moment.
Here’s what I’d like you to try instead.
When you first receive the request, I want you to pause and take it in. You don’t need to respond just yet. Even if you’re in a situation (in person, for example) that means you need to respond immediately, you could try saying, “Let me think about that for a few minutes and come back to you.”
Right there you’re buying yourself time and breathing space to check in with your own priorities.
After that you have some options at your disposal, and the mental bandwidth and emotional calm to explore them.
One option might look like, “Yes. That supports my own objectives and I can see that by prioritising it, I can meet my own priorities more easily.”
It might look like, “Yes. I’m able to assist. However, I have some pressing priorities of my own that will compete with this for my attention. How can you help me achieve my objectives so I can help you achieve yours?”
It might look like, “Yes, I’m happy to assist, but not yet. I have priorities I must attend to first and I could give you what you need when those priorities are met.”
It might look like, “Thank you for thinking of me but I’m unable to help. Perhaps you could try xxx.” (in which xxx may be an alternative person or an alternative strategy — but this is a suggestion from you, not a question, and the responsibility for finding an alternative rests with the person asking, not with you.)
If it’s your boss asking, it might look like, “I can see this is important to you. Which of my current priorities would you like me to push back so I can take this on?”
It might look like, “No.”
As others have said before me: “No.” is a complete sentence. It doesn’t need explanation or apology. For some of us it takes practice, and if it feels like you might struggle with saying no, then start by simply saying it to yourself, quietly, under your breath if you have to. No. No. No. Then start saying it louder. Get comfortable with that word, because if you’re an executive woman often feeling overwhelmed at work and or at home, there’s a good chance you’re not saying it often enough.
What I want to emphasise is that none of these options is “maybe”. Buy yourself time to check in with yourself or with your team, and then decide — yes, with whatever conditions need to be attached to the yes so you can still fulfil your own priorities, or no. But don’t prevaricate, and don’t create a monkey weight of indecision for your own back or a prolonged uncertainty for the other person. Decide, and say it.
Whether it’s a lack of planning or some other circumstance that’s caused an urgent request of you, it serves you, your team and your organisation best if you can take the time and space to think before you respond.
Don’t worry. You’ll nail it!
