I was recently consulting with a business owner who was looking to hire a new OBM for her coaching business. As we were discussing the qualities that she wanted the ideal candidate to have, she said, “I want them to be a ‘yes’ person—I want them to be as excited as I am about new ideas I have and ready to jump straight in and run with things.”
And while I totally get what she was saying, I explained why that might not be exactly what she actually wants.
While it’s obvious that no business owner would want to hire a ‘no’ person who resists every idea they have, what’s even better than a ‘yes’ person is a ‘yes, but…’ person.
As a visionary CEO, you probably have no shortage of ideas. But let’s face it, not every idea that you have is a good one. Or it may be a good idea, but not for your business. Or it’s not the right time or aligned with your current focus.
However, you might not always be able to see that from your chair. Often business owners only recognize in hindsight that a project wasn’t actually the right thing to pursue, or that it was a distraction from their other goals, or that it didn’t make sense with all the time and financial resources they’d need to put into it.
And while learning through experience is valuable and necessary at times, you can save yourself a lot of time and frustration if you have a way to filter out at least some of those bad ideas from the start—or to turn them from a bad idea into a good one.
One of the best ways that you can do this is for your right hand person to feel empowered to say no to you.
Many VAs and OBMs are natural helpers—often Enneagram 2s who thrive on being supportive and accommodating. Without clear empowerment, they’ll default to saying yes to everything you pass their way, even when they have hesitations or know it’s not the best move.
But trust me when I say that you don’t want your team to just say yes to everything. You want your team to feel safe and comfortable saying that an idea doesn’t make sense for your business model or current initiatives. You want them to speak up if pursuing a new project would cause other potentially more important things to get pushed to the back burner.
Yes, that’s an interesting idea, but…
that strategy might not be the best fit for your business model.
that doesn’t align with what you’ve identified as our current focus in the business.
we don’t have capacity for that right now with our other projects so we’d need to drop some things in order to prioritize this.
Having a team that’s empowered to share their hesitations helps to avoid other (often much bigger) issues down the line.
Cultivating a healthy and empowered relationship allows for your team member to say no when it’s appropriate and provide insights you can’t have from your perspective. Your team is in the day-to-day work, seeing the details you might miss. They have insights you don’t—insights that can help determine whether an idea is truly worth implementing.
To be clear, here’s what this doesn’t mean:
- It doesn’t mean that you delegate your authority to your team. Your team has valuable insights, but you are the CEO. You will always see the bigger vision better than anyone else—trust that.
- It doesn’t mean that your team makes all the decisions or that you need to ask your team for guidance on every idea. You aren’t asking for their permission to pursue a new idea, you’re asking for their insights. Welcome their advice and opinion, but you always get the final say.
- It doesn’t mean that if your team expresses hesitations or concerns that you can’t move forward with a new idea. Instead, their insights give you a clearer picture of what it would truly take to implement successfully.
As the CEO, you’re the visionary, the big-picture thinker, constantly generating ideas. Your team members are the doers, the implementers, the ones who bring those ideas to life. The real magic happens when you recognize and leverage this dynamic, allowing their perspective to refine and strengthen your vision—helping you to reach your goals faster.
