One sentence has been stuck in my head all day:
"Find your way to yes."
It wasn't the headline of the presentation. It wasn't on a slide. It was mentioned almost in passing.
But I haven't stopped thinking about it.
As leaders, many of us are trained to evaluate risk. We protect budgets. We enforce policy. We ask hard questions. That's part of the job.
Over time, though, I wonder if we unknowingly train ourselves to become experts at finding reasons to say no.
What if our responsibility isn't to say yes to everything, but to earn the right to say no?
That means asking ourselves a different set of questions.
Did I understand the problem they were trying to solve?
Did I see the request from their perspective?
Did I explore alternatives?
Did I look for a path that accomplishes the goal while still protecting the organization?
Sometimes the answer will still be no.
But that "no" should come after we've genuinely tried to find a way to yes.
I think that's the difference between being a gatekeeper and being a leader.
A gatekeeper protects the door.
A leader first looks to see if there's a responsible way to open it.
That simple shift in thinking may change the way I lead.
What do you think? Is a leader's first responsibility to evaluate risk, or to explore possibility?