4

Create Power Parameters

MYTH

If I don’t do it, no one else will.

TRUTH

If I say no, others will pick up the slack, and that will be just fine.

In January 2014 I was a guest expert on CNN International’s World One with former host Zain Verjee. We were joking around and I asked her what she thought the most important two-letter word for women was. Zain came up with a great answer: Me! But that wasn’t what I had in mind. The two-letter word I was thinking of was No.¹

Let’s face it. We are all spread too thin. With our jobs, social obligations, home lives, child care, elder care, and community responsibilities—whatever your personal combination is—most of the time we are stretched, perhaps to the limit.

We diminish our power when we are in such a state. That is why creating power parameters—defining your boundaries, choosing your commitments, saying no when necessary, and protecting your time—is so important. Yet many of us struggle with asserting ourselves in this way.

When we set boundaries, we may feel shaky because we are not sure what someone’s reaction will be. But the payback is that we are being true to ourselves, knowing our limits, and prioritizing what we need. When we act in this way, we gain confidence. In fact, can we really feel confident if we are not authentic? I don’t think so.

In the Women and Confidence Survey, 42 percent of question respondents said they would “say no to things without feeling guilty” if they felt more confident. This chapter offers advice on how to negotiate power parameters with others and yourself and how to minimize guilt when making smart choices that benefit you but have consequences for those around you. We will explore saying no to what does not serve you, getting others to respect your boundaries, and the importance of making time for you.

Why is it so hard to say no?

Why do we say yes when we mean no? Is it because we are people-pleasers? As I’ve mentioned in previous chapters, many of us are taught as children to play nice and avoid making waves. I certainly was. For this reason, we may feel like we don’t have permission to say no.

Some of us find it hard to say no because we are afraid that friends or colleagues will think poorly of us if we turn them down. I have wasted a lot of time in my life trying to assess what people would think if I said no to them. I’ve failed to realize that I can’t control what anyone thinks whether I say yes or no, so it’s better to be authentic from the start.

In my early twenties I was taking part in a workshop that went toward my master’s in education. The leader was making the point that we need to set our boundaries. He rattled off several requests of me, one after the other, and I had to respond yes or no. I found this tough to do because I was not used to thinking about what I wanted, just what was best for everyone else. I needed some inner work and help from a professional to develop my voice and become comfortable with risking the displeasure of others if I said no. Now, my goal is to support other women in getting to that place as well.

People pleasing takes a heavy toll on us. If I am feeling stretched and I say yes when I really mean no, I either end up resenting the person who asked for my help or I resent myself because I should have declined. Being genuine is better than being nice and that includes saying no.

People pleasing can be particularly harmful for women in the workplace. In an article for The Nation, writer Jessica Valenti put it this way, “Women adjust their behavior to be likable and as a result have less power in the world.”²

For Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, wanting to be liked was one of the first things she had to let go of to be successful at her job. In Lean In for Graduates, Sheryl relates the story of her first formal review with CEO Mark Zuckerberg. She writes, “He said that when you want to change things, you can’t please everyone.”³

Jackie Hernández of Telemundo also warns of the pitfalls of being too agreeable. “It doesn’t get you where you need to be,” she explains. “If a man people pleases, it’s a different thing. When we do it, we look weak, not tough enough, because we just want people to be happy. The minute you find yourself just saying yes, you have to ask yourself why?”

If you find yourself about to say yes against your better judgment, don’t give in. Take a moment before you answer to remind yourself that your priorities are more important than acquiescing. As with digesting feedback, taking time before reacting can lead you to a different behavior.

A helpful tactic for saying no is being respectful but honest. If your coworker asks for help on something you know she can figure out for herself and you have your own time-sensitive projects to deal with, try saying something like “I’m on a deadline, and I can’t help you now. But what you’re doing is similar to how you handled the XYZ project. Use the same strategy.” This approach has the great advantage of letting someone down gently and also being truthful.

Here is another example of how one woman learned to say no with the help of a friend. This smart but too-agreeable woman was spread too thin and the stress started to take a toll on her health. Her friend insisted that she tell anyone requesting her time that she would have to check with her “scheduler” (in reality, her friend) before taking on a new project. If the request was not worth her time, she came back to the requester with, “I’m sorry; my scheduler has advised me there’s no room for anything new for the next several months.”

Sometimes we find it difficult to know when it’s in our best interest to say no. We know setting boundaries is important, but the line can be blurry. Here are some examples culled from my experience and that of other women on when saying yes is appropriate and when it is best to say no. You could probably write your own list as well.

Say yes when

• It is an emergency and no one else is left at work to help out.

• Taking the assignment will give you heightened visibility with top management.

• You’ve said no several times recently, and you don’t want to lose an office ally.

• What’s being asked doesn’t require much of your time.

Say no when

• You are overworked and one more commitment will totally overwhelm you.

• You’ve moved on to another job and a coworker from your former assignment is constantly asking for advice in the form of evening e-mails.

• You’re not that fond of the person asking for help, and you don’t want to go out of your way for him.

• You’ve been working late every night for a week and a half, and your family needs some quality time with you.

If it is unclear whether to say yes or no, write out the pluses and minuses of saying yes. Whichever column has more is the way to go.

Setting boundaries with yourself

Another reason why women don’t say no enough is that we feel we should be able to do it all. By letting go of a do-itall, have-it-all mentality, we give ourselves room to be better at what we can do and enjoy more of what we do have.

When we hold ourselves up to unachievable standards of productivity and excellence in our work and personal lives and something slips through the cracks, it can be hard to accept. In the Women and Confidence Survey, more than half of respondents who reported not feeling confident in their personal lives said that a major confidence detractor was not living up to their expectations of themselves. If impossibly high personal expectations and perfectionist behavior are undermining your confidence, maybe it’s time to be more realistic about what you should expect from yourself.

Kathy Waller of Coca-Cola is like so many women I know (including myself) who has had to work on letting go of unrealistic personal standards. “It’s not people that are the problem—it’s me putting pressure on myself. It’s easier to make better choices when I realize that,” Kathy shared. “I have gotten much better at recognizing when I need a timeout. I say to myself, ‘I’m going to have an overreaction unless I back off.’”

You may feel like you should be doing more, and you will encounter people who ask you to do unreasonable things in time frames that are impossible to meet. With awareness and the desire to assert what you need for your well-being, you can set limits so you don’t crash and burn. In the next few sections, we will explore how to do just that.

Make your no someone else’s yes

Charisse Lillie of Comcast used to feel like she had to do it all—she compared her overachieving tendencies at work to planning a dinner party for thirty-five people and taking on all the cooking, serving, entertaining, and most of the cleaning herself. Now she does the cooking but also involves others as part of the mix. On the nonprofit front she brags, “I call myself a great nominator because saying no gives me an opportunity to bring other people to the table. My no is somebody else’s yes.”

Instead of saying yes to one more responsibility that will take you over the top, think about how you can find an alternative that will be a win for everyone. Here’s an example:

Charisse received an honorary degree from a local college, and she was later asked to join its board. Doing so, however, wasn’t the right fit for her at the time. Instead of just saying no, she declined politely and then offered up the name of a woman whom she thought would be a terrific candidate. The result: “My colleague is happy, the president of the college is happy, and I’m happy,” exclaimed Charisse. She made her no a yes for all parties involved.

Negotiating power parameters

If you’ve made a habit of saying yes a lot, you may find it hard to break the cycle. That’s where power parameters come into play. Being clear to yourself and others about where you stand and what your priorities are can help you speak up even when you’re wary of saying no. Negotiating your power parameters is a way of asserting yourself and establishing your direction and goals.

How career women negotiate their promotions, salaries, benefits, et cetera is a widely studied area. The research shows that negotiating can be a difficult process for women because the consequences of standing up for ourselves can be much harsher than for men.⁴ Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg calls it “trying to cross a minefield backward in high heels.”⁵

Research suggests that women may not put themselves out there because both men and women hold female employees to a different standard. It makes sense not to piss off the boss. On the other hand, if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

These inequities are probably not going to change anytime soon, but we can still step up and negotiate powerfully for what we need now. The women interviewed for this book maneuvered around the unique difficulties women face as they advanced. Here are some of their strategies.

The first step in negotiating your power parameters is figuring out what is most important to you. Debbie Storey of AT&T, offered up a great metaphor for how to determine your personal and professional boundaries: “It’s a matter of assessing what you’re juggling at the time,” she explained. “With all the balls you have in the air, which ones are rubber—if you drop them, they will bounce for a while—and which ones are crystal—if they drop, you’ll never get them back. Those you need to set boundaries around.”

Early on in her career, Debbie learned to assert herself when the issue was important: “I was a single mom and my son was four years old. At work, I was the only one around the table who was female. The meetings would run over and I was the one sweating, concerned that my son wouldn’t be picked up in time from school.

“I went to my boss and asked for his help. I let him know I would work overtime as much as needed, but I had to know the days in advance so I could make the necessary arrangements. I also negotiated that I would not be the first person called when emergencies came up on weekends.”

Once you have determined which balls you’re juggling are rubber and which are crystal, think about what you can do to make the situation a win-win, like Debbie did. She needed to negotiate a power parameter around her family commitments, but that didn’t mean she was taking a backseat at work. To make sure her boss saw that, she offered concrete examples of how she could continue to step up at the office, such as working overtime when it could be planned in advance.

Shying away from uncomfortable negotiations that involve taking a stand and setting limits is natural. Lessen the anxiety by figuring out how to make what you want attractive to the other party. The most important step is careful forethought and framing.

For example, when negotiating for a raise, Sheryl Sandberg advises framing the discussion in terms of the common good. She recommends positioning yourself as connected to the company at large, by using we instead of I. “A woman’s request will be better received if she asserts, ‘We had a great year,’ as opposed to ‘I had a great year,’” she writes. With a simple pronoun change, your negotiation is reframed as what is best for the organization.⁶

The last point I want to cover about negotiation is allowing yourself to think bigger. That’s where confidence comes in. Ask for more than what you want, even if you think you won’t get it. Be bold. If you aim high, you are much more likely to end higher and be better off than you were at the start.

Confidence spark

You may know this already, but it’s a good reminder. The rule of negotiating is to find a way that both parties win. Beforehand, figure out where you will be flexible (the rubber balls) and what is nonnegotiable (the ones made of crystal). Let the person know at the beginning of your meeting that you are interested in creating a win-win situation for both of you. Do your homework. What does he need from you? How can you provide him what he needs and get what you want in return? For example, if you need to set a limit on your time, is there someone else you can suggest to do the remainder of the work? Of course, you’ll probably have to make some trade-offs, but that’s why they call it negotiating.

Balancing work and family— is there such a thing?

A few years back Ellen Galinsky, president and cofounder of the Families and Work Institute, changed the paradigm by suggesting that there is no such thing as “balance.” Rather, she thinks what we do each day is navigate between work and family life in a constant series of shifting priorities.⁷ Some days you give more to the office, other days it’s more about your family’s needs.

Call it whatever you want, the seeming tug-of-war between work and family will continue to be a challenge, particularly for women. Though balancing the demands of family and a career is something that men are beginning to grapple with as well, child care is still a responsibility that falls more heavily on women—not to mention housework, elder care, and other related duties.

Years ago work-life balance was considered a soft issue by some executives, secondary to the hard issues that deliver profits. But more and more, people are coming to realize that flexibility is one of the most important issues related to business. If corporations want to attract and retain talent, flexible work arrangements (such as job sharing, working from home, and flexible hours) are necessary. Many companies have these accommodations in place, and some organizational cultures have shifted so that employees are encouraged to take advantage of them. But a lot of institutions still have an unspoken culture that requires face time and very little deviation from the norm. Changing this will take time and a commitment from top-level management that is communicated to all levels of the organization. Creating a new norm needs to be seen as a priority tied to bottom-line profits as well as individual paychecks.

As you progress in your career, you will have trade-offs to consider, and how you deal with them depends on your personal situation—no one way is right for everyone. When my son was young and I had to juggle the responsibilities of work and family, I decided to leave the corporate workplace and start my own business. I thought I would have more control of my hours, which in some ways I did. But when you start a business you have to invest a great deal of time and money. There is no easy solution, but we can learn a lot from women leaders who are handling an enormous amount of responsibility as well as creating their power parameters around family.

I know a woman at an international finance company who was asked to take a top global job. She, her husband, and their two small children resided in the United States, and she didn’t want to move or have to travel three-quarters of the time. She knew if she hired the right team, they could do the bulk of the traveling and report back to her. In discussions with top management, this woman expressed her excitement for the assignment and presented her plan to have her team do the majority of travel. That was her power parameter.

To make sure that management understood her commitment to the job, she explained that she would definitely lead the larger, more-critical meetings where strategy was rolled out internationally and her presence would be necessary. In the end, she received the promotion on her terms, and she did an excellent job in her new role. And when her children were older, she actually did take a plum position overseas.

Jill Campbell of Cox Communications is another powerful leader who was able to set boundaries: “I don’t work a zillion hours. I can separate the work and the play part of my life. The time that I have with my daughter is most important to me. I have to create those chunks of time. We have a nice breakfast in the morning, I drop my daughter off at school, I’m home at a decent hour, and we have dinner as a family.”

Her negotiation is that she has her phone with her 24/7 to stay on top of what’s happening. “I feel better if I can check my e-mail to keep connected.”

There is no road map for how to manage our family and work commitments. We learn as we go along and accept that things change over time as our needs and the needs of our loved ones change.

Saying yes to yourself

Saying no can give rise to feelings of guilt, but how about trying to see guilt in a new way? As we assert ourselves, the uncomfortable feeling we experience might not be signaling that we’re doing something wrong but rather that we’re finally doing something right—for ourselves.

Why relegate yourself to the last spot on your to-do list? This problem is so prevalent that I wrote an entire book on the topic called Time for Me: Simple Pleasures for Women Who Do Too Much.⁸

Say yes to taking the time for simple pleasures, whatever those may be for you. Start by identifying and getting rid of time bandits, such as guilt, worry, people pleasing, and perfectionism, which I know can be a tall order. But by leaving room in your schedule for the things that nourish and replenish you, you might actually start finding it easier to check off all the other to-dos on your list. For most of us, saying yes to ourselves is an immediate confidence and productivity boost.

Get creative with how you can carve out some me time for yourself. You probably already have in place some things you enjoy. Why not double up on your personal time by doing two at once, like calling a friend when you’re exercising. Ask your family in advance which events you can’t miss, and make the others negotiable. Be aware of time bandits that eat away at your precious hours. Get a self-care buddy so you can keep each other on track.

These are just a few suggestions. Navigating work life is a complex issue for all of us, and neither side of the equation should be taken lightly.

Confidence spark

In your day planner, make sure to schedule not only your business and family obligations but also your me-time activities. Although you have a certain amount of flexibility, put in pen the personal activities that are nonnegotiable— like doctor visits and a monthly girls’ night out. Taking care of yourself will foster your growth on all fronts.

What would you do?

Power tools

• Say no. Saying yes when you are too stretched never yields a good result. You will probably end up resenting the person and yourself.

• Remember that saying no can be someone else’s yes. Think of turning something down as an opportunity for another person to advance.

• Be aware of when you put unrealistic demands on yourself. Treat yourself with kindness and draw the line.

• Negotiate what you need. Being clear on what your priorities are and what trade-offs you’re willing to make can help you speak up even when you’re wary of saying no.