Ask The Coach

Ask the Coach appears regularly in New England In-House. Two expert executive coaches, Dr. Lew Stern and Linda Lerner, share their thoughts and ideas in answering your questions on complex management and leadership issues and difficult work situations.

We are excited to be able to bring together the depth of experience and insights that these two coaches offer. The topics for this question and answer format will be based on your questions and those most frequently asked by their clients. Lerner and Stern will respond to one or two questions and we reserve the right to edit questions for clarity and length.

Have a question? Send it to:[email protected]. (No names will be published.)

Question: In our company, the general counsel’s office consists of three of us. There is the general counsel, the legal secretary, and myself. I’m a staff attorney. I joined the company three years ago following my graduation from law school. My boss, the general counsel is usually out of the office. He travels a great deal with the CEO on business and he is frequently at executive management meetings and the like.

As a result, I am often the person who everyone in the company sees as the face of the general counsel’s office and I get most of the requests for legal work that has to be done. The myriad of day-to-day items and my participation in major projects such as our acquisitions all add up to an enormous work load.

My problem is that I have a hard time saying no. I feel very responsible to the managers and employees that call or come to see us with their legal questions and problems. I want to be helpful and I also want to advance my career, so I say yes to satisfy their needs. Now, I’m beginning to feel that I am operating on overload and my stress level is quite high. I do not have an aggressive personality at all. I know that I probably can’t continue at this pace and my wife is also concerned. Do you have suggestions for dealing with my situation?

Answer: It can feel great to be the “go-to” person in a company where everyone knows that you’re the guy who will get the job done and do it well. When you establish a routine of taking on work and accomplishing it with apparent ease, people want to do business with you. You somehow fulfill their requests and solve their problems. Your colleagues in the company don’t see all the other demands that are made on your time.

You certainly want to do a good job and expand your capacity as an attorney but how you do it and at what cost to yourself and to your family is key to the kind of success you will have. As a relatively new lawyer, the work habits that you establish now are critical because they will impact the way you perform your work for the remainder of your career. We all tend to operate in patterns and these patterns, like habits, get harder to change the longer we are entrenched in them.

You say that you are not aggressive, but there are very effective ways to be assertive, without being aggressive, and still be capable of skillfully saying “no.” Each of us prefers to avoid conflict and saying no often brings up our fears of a potential disagreement or the concern that someone might think less of us. It is helpful to ask yourself, what am I personally afraid of? What do I imagine might happen if I say no?

We sometimes develop automatic responses like saying “yes” without thinking and adding “no problem” or “I’ll get back to you with an answer in the morning.” It is very helpful to notice your own responses and patterns of behavior and that can be the first step in beginning the process of changing them.

Over time, an excessive workload will usually lead to feelings of being overwhelmed and even to burnout if it goes unchecked for long periods. Without a boss who is present to acknowledge your good work and even more important, to protect you from excessive demands, you need to be on top of this for yourself before it becomes more serious.

Here are some ideas to consider for addressing your reluctance to say “no.” Consider these in the context of your organization’s culture and its particular set of organizational politics.