Many of us who work in software support are ‘people pleasers’. We want to make people happy. We want people to like us, and we want people to like the software that we support.

One way to encourage people to like us AND the software we support is to say ‘yes’ as much as possible- Or so we think, and maybe feel deeply.

However, saying ‘yes’ to everything can and does cause problems.

Someone wants a change to a BP (maybe add an additional approval step to a business process) and we say ‘Sure, we can make that change.’

Then, after the change is in place, someone else may come and say, “Why did you make that change? You just added 2 extra days to the process and now we have to chase people down for the extra approval step! Please take it back out!”

Or-

Someone may come to you and ask, “Can you update XYZ data in Workday for me? I don’t have time to do it right now, but I know it is important.” We have the access to do what they want, but should we? We want the data to be correct, but we also don’t want to be doing the user’s work either.

Anyone in software support can quickly come up with a dozen other scenarios where they are tempted to say ‘yes’ to things that are ‘quick fixes’ in the moment and may make people happy at that moment but have long-term negative impacts. 

This can be compounded if you are short-staffed, for a variety of reasons. This means that you inherently have more work than you (and your team) can get done. So, what do you do?

You/your team can just work more hours. But there is a long-term cost to that as well. Over time, people will begin to resent companies having the expectation that they will just work extra hours (which may or may not be paid) and key people may just leave.

Sometimes leadership makes budget decisions to cut costs or not to add extra FTEs, which impact you. The question is, after they cut costs or don’t provide extra help, are they willing to reduce their expectations of you/your team as well?

Another area we need to consider saying ‘no’ to is certain meeting requests. If you are like me, you get lots of requests to attend meetings that others think are important for you, or maybe they just want to ‘keep you in the loop’. They may even invite one or more of your team members to it as well. But is attending the meeting really the best use of your time? Maybe just one person from your team should attend (and update the rest of you later), but not everyone that they invited.

Saying ‘no’ is often hard. I am a people pleaser at my core. Maybe you are as well.

For me, when I have said ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ to protect myself or my teams, I have received pushback, as you can imagine. But this also protected me and my teams from burnout and being overwhelmed. It also created a tighter-knit team, because they knew I had their back.

There are seasons where you just have to push through and get all the stuff done. I’ve done many large projects in my life which required extra hours and effort for a season. But that can’t become the norm for you or your teams. 

If you are a manager, you have the extra responsibility to stand up for your team to protect them. They often don’t feel like they have the authority to say no, and they are probably people pleasers as well. Have them forward the email/request to you and then you can respond to the requestor. Then you can say ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ for them.

Having appropriate approval processes in place for requests helps to set reasonable expectations and tracking for your users and leadership. These are critical for your long-term success. 

But you have to start with an acknowledgment that saying ‘no’ to certain requests is necessary and critical to you, your team, and your life (both at work and at home).

How about you? How have you balanced saying, yes, no, or not yet?