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Here’s the hard truth: saying ‘yes’ all the time doesn’t make you a good leader – it compromises your productivity and makes you exhausted.

Have you ever tried to answer every call, every email or every question thrown your way the instant it arrives? So many people (and I used to be one of them!) think responding immediately somehow makes them a better leader. But research flips this notion on its head. Studies have shown that multitasking can actually drain your productivity by up to 40%. That's right—it's akin to functioning after pulling an all-nighter at work.

So let’s talk about the hidden driver that might be pushing you to say yes and how to set boundaries that only enhance your leadership.

The Illusion of Urgency

Now, why are we so eager to answer every ping, every call, every plea from friends or colleagues? Are these interruptions genuinely urgent? More often than not, the urgency is an illusion, magnified by an inner drive—a hidden need for approval. We think it makes us helpful, indispensable even, without considering the wear it places on our mental reserves.

Social Self vs. Professional Self

Steve Chandler, an author and coach I really admire, speaks of the ‘social self’ versus the ‘professional self’. Growing up, we were socialised to be liked, to fit into society's neatly defined edges. But this ingrained desire to be accepted doesn't always serve us well in our professional lives. Without realising it, we import our social habits into our workspaces, where they can tether us to outdated modes of behaviour, prompting us to say yes far too often.

Revisiting Old Programming

Remember Lois P. Frankel's idea in Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office? Women, she observes, are often conditioned to be nice above all—to put others' needs ahead of our own, to speak softly and to acquiesce readily. But when we cross the threshold into the professional realm, this approach can be more hindrance than help. I encourage you to examine where this ‘good girl’ syndrome might be hindering your ability to say no when you really need to.

Crafting Your Professional Self

So, what's the solution? Crafting your ‘professional self’ is key. This doesn't mean masking your true identity, but rather developing a version of yourself that operates with intention, respect, and, importantly, boundaries. It's about deciding what you need to prioritise and understanding that saying no is sometimes the most empowering step you can take towards authentic leadership.

Embracing Discomfort for Growth

True, saying no feels awkward—I’m the first to admit it triggers discomfort, but it’s necessary if you want to shed that programmed need for approval. As you carve your professional path, you'll find that authentic alignment with your values and boundaries feels far more fluid.

If you’re feeling stretched thin and trying to please everyone by saying yes, it’s time to pause and reflect. Consider whether those yeses are truly benefiting your leadership journey. My call to you is to design a professional self that respects your personal time while enhancing your work integrity.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. How do you manage the balance between your social and professional selves? Sharing your experiences could be just the insight someone needs. Let's start a conversation in the comments below.
[/vc_column_text][vc_tta_accordion style=”flat” shape=”square” color=”white” active_section=”3″ no_fill=”true” collapsible_all=”true”][vc_tta_section title=”Transcript” tab_id=”1716528090603-cfde93dc-583317165356843821716536535162″][vc_column_text][00:00:36] Vesna: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. My name is Vesna. Today I am gonna talk about why saying yes doesn't make you a leader. It makes you exhausted. Is it productive to answer every call as it comes through? Every email, every notification, every question from your team, is it important to answer them

as they come through? And some people think, yes, some people think it's a strategy that it's [00:01:00] more effective to answer everything as it comes through, but studies have shown that multitasking reduces productivity by up to 40%.

So it's equivalent to going to work after doing an all-nighter. That's how productive you are, right? So multitasking doesn't allow us to get more done. It's very disruptive, and I can't remember, I remember reading research that it takes us about 25, 30 minutes to get back on track on the task that we were doing prior to being disrupted.

Okay? So it actually takes us a long time to get back into deep work, which is why when we are there, we want to stay there. So why are we so responsive? Okay? Why are we jumping on things immediately? Why are we answering calls from friends, from family? Why are we answering team questions straight away?

Are they urgent? And do we need to be notified immediately of something that's happened on email or social media?

do we need to be saying yes to everything? Especially if you're time poor as it is, does it make you a leader? Does it make you an effective business owner? Or not I [00:02:00] always used to see everything as urgent, and there's still a bit of that there. I wanna do everything at once, right?

And I always just think if I just put it on my list, it'll get done. It'll be a stretch, but that's okay. It'll get done. And my coach is always saying to me, I promise you, nothing is ever that urgent. Nothing is ever that urgent. And she must have said it around a hundred times by now, and it's finally sunk in because nothing is really ever that urgent.

Okay? We make it urgent because of a hidden. A need that we have, which I'm gonna talk about today.

So if you feel the need to respond to everything and perform any favor that anyone asks you, then this is a podcast for you. So let's consider that why you or me or others are accepting these requests. And it looks like it's being helpful, right? It looks like we're serving people as being helpful and we're addressing concerns, but actually there's a hidden need for approval.

it shows up in our work and, in our life, and it's part of our early programming, right? In the early years, there's a author, Steve Chandler. He's written [00:03:00] about 30 books. he's a coach for coaches. He is also a speaker, but he is written a lot of books and he has this great distinction called social self versus Professional Self.

And he said. When you understand this distinction, it really frees up people in areas of creating wealth and prosperity. And the social self is what, from the time that we were born, we were taught how to interact with society, right? to be likable, to be accepted by society. Okay? And there is an automatic desire to be liked as part of this programming. Being liked was important for, you know, survival. I guess going back to our kind of hunt to gather a days being accepted in our group or in our tribe was very important. But even as our younger self being accepted into a social setting or into society, we had to have certain mannerisms and the way of communicating and our behavior and our actions in order to be accepted. accepted.

Now this can show up in our professional self. So what happens is, is that we [00:04:00] bring our social self, this programmed version of us that's completely automatic. It's our default self. It's not authentic. It's been programmed into us. We bring that in our professional setting, it makes it very hard to advance and succeed.

 It's the same kind of notion. Dr. Lewis Frankl, she wrote that book, why Nice Girls Don't Get The Corner Office? I love her work. And it's the same thing as, as young girls, we were programmed to be nice girls, okay? To be agreeable, to think about others' needs before our own, to, you know, be careful of our language.

So it's really softened and we use a lot of words. All the ways that we can be liked and accepted. Okay. In order to to get ahead. Okay. But coming into the professional sense, even Lois Frankl said is just not sufficient. Right. We need to bring this professional self that Steve Chandler talks about.

We have to create it. We have to author that. We have to decide what our professional self is because if we're answering. Every email and every concern from our [00:05:00] team or our customers we're on their becking call, then it doesn't look very professional. It doesn't look like we have boundaries. So we're not, showing people our boundaries.

We're not showing our team our boundaries, and it starts to have this ripple effect through your business and the organization I have worked with. CEOs that run quite big businesses and have, you know, 200 plus team, and they don't have this professional self, right? This is a crossover from social to professional and they don't have boundaries.

They don't show boundaries or teach boundaries to their team. And so everyone was always communicating even late into the night. So not only is that exhausting for team, it kind of wears people down that have a personal life, right? And it's exhausting for everybody. And so. I want you to consider this.

Your professional self has boundaries, has priorities, has the things that you want to do, which means that you can't say yes to everyone, and it does mean that you are going to feel triggered. It's going to feel uncomfortable [00:06:00] saying no because of that hidden need for approval that's being trained into us.

As soon as we let someone down or we say no, it feels icky. It feels off, right? But it's an important part of the transition into showing up as your most powerful self, as your professional self at work. Okay? That's the place to be professional. And eventually as you transition into that it feels so much more smooth.

It feels really authentic to show up that way.

So if this is you, if you find yourself, you know, being there for everybody, doing everyone's work or saying yes, or being super responsive or feeling icky when you don't answer a text message straight away, like someone's going to be offended or think that I don't like them, whatever it is. Just know that that's being programmed into you.

That's not really your authentic self, okay? And if you want to show up more authentic and professional, then you have to create what that looks like for you. In order to respect your time with your family, with your business, with your, [00:07:00] with your life. You have to create a professional self. So let me know in the comments below, was this helpful?

And how would you want to show up knowing that there is a social self and a professional self? How do you wanna show up every day?

[/vc_column_text][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Links” tab_id=”1716535392600-7bbf13d5-b61c17165356843821716536535162″][vc_column_text]Website: vesnahrsto.com

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