The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 228 - The No Club

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: I am excited to talk to you today because I have been wanting to do an episode on The No Club for quite some time, and today's the day.

Pete: The No Club.

Jen: The No Club, yep.

Pete: Is this something you invented?

Jen: Nope.

Pete: I see what you did there. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Okay, here's the story. Maybe it was a year and a half ago, I met one of my personal heroes, Dr. Dolly Chugh.

Pete: Mmm. Shout out, Dolly.

Jen: I will drop her two amazing books in the Box O' Goodies for everyone to read. And in this meeting, which occurred on a street corner, she mentioned that she was part of what she called a No Club. And she said this was a small group of very trusted friends/colleagues, and the purpose of the club was when they got requests to do things, they would bring those requests to the club, and the club would help them say no to these requests.

Pete: Yeah. I like this.

Jen: So I was like, "We are doing an episode on The No Club. That is amazing." And in maybe November...is it possible that it was November...I was going to tee up an episode and call it The No Club. And for some reason, a little voice in my head was like, "You need to Google that." So, I typed "The No Club" into Google. And wouldn't you know it? There's a book called The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women's Dead-End Work. I might have mentioned it in our end of year episode. And on the back, there's a quote from Dr. Dolly Chugh. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, Dolly Chugh didn't invent The No Club. She learned about it from the people who wrote this book, and she has her own. I'm not going to talk about it on the podcast until I fully understand how this came to be." Well, now that I fully understand...Peter Shepherd, I'm obsessed with the idea of a No Club.

Pete: Oh gosh, I can see it. I can hear it. We've had about three go's at trying to tee this up and you keep tripping over yourself because you're so excited.

Jen: Well, I am. So the the subtitle of the book is very important, just so that I make sure I'm honoring the original intent of this work.

Pete: Mmm-hmm.

Jen: It's The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women's Dead-End Work.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And the premise of the book is essentially that...and it has been thoroughly researched and proven that women, in much more frequency than men, are assigned what they coined in this book as "non-promotable tasks" at work, and they pick up this load of things to do and it actually stalls women's careers out.

Pete: Non-promotable tasks...ugh.

Jen: Yes, and I want to do a whole other episode on non-promotable tasks at some point. But what's really interesting is, I don't work in an organization...or I do, but I own it. I don't work within a corporate structure. I don't, any longer, work within an academic structure. And yet, I see myself in so many of these women's stories in this book. And I'm talking to you...you don't identify as a woman, and I still think there are lessons in here for you about how to say no when you know something's not right for you, for your professional path forward.

Pete: Yeah. It's kind of wild, how timely this is. I was on a call yesterday. I knew one person, this incredible human by the name of Adriane Jones. She organized like a Zoom call with, I think there was six of us that she'd collaborated with last year and thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if we were all in the same room and like everyone could meet one another? Because like, there's a lot of synergy." And so, she organized this great call. We're on the call, and one of the questions that was posed to everyone was like, "What's something you're struggling with? And maybe, the other people in the room might be able to help with said struggle." And the thing that I shared was, "Saying no to the small opportunities in order to make space for the big opportunities." That's something I am grappling with at the moment, because I am seeking to do more large-scale projects, and at the same time, I have historically (and, you know, still) a desire to do some small-scale ones. Anyway. So, it's like a...there's this reality that I'm faced with, which is, I only have a certain amount of time. Where do I want to spend that time? And how do you say no to the things that you don't want to spend time on, in a way that is respectful, polite, empathetic, kind, generous, all of those things? So even though, like you mentioned, I'm not female, I feel like I could learn a lot from you/this book about, "How do I say no?" Maybe I need a No Club. Is that what we're doing? Are we starting a No Club right now?

Jen: Well, that's kind of what it feels like. And it also sounds like you accidentally started a No Club when you shared that you needed help saying no.

Pete: Oh, true. True, true, true. Wild.

Jen: And the other thing is that we recently did an episode on saying, "Hell no" to something.

Pete: Right.

Jen: So it just, it feels very timely. So, I'd love to just read a tiny little piece of the book. This is from a chapter called How to Start a No Club, and essentially, they outline the purpose of a No Club. So I want to read this, and then we can sort of noodle on it. "The purpose of a No Club is to help you make better decisions about how to spend your time at work. The club helps you do this by assessing the promotability of tasks you're asked to do or might volunteer for, making sure you're saying yes and no to the right things, holding you accountable for your choices, making you aware of the implicit no that comes with every yes, giving advice about how to say no to non-promotable tasks at the right time and in the best way, and helping you change your organization." And I just...there are so many things in there that when I am saying yes or no to something, I hadn't considered, at least like that starkly.

Pete: Yeah. So my brain has a tendency to oversimplify things. And one of the things I take from that list is it sounds like it's very focused, for the purpose of this book (hence the subtitle), on non-promotable tasks. So I guess a slightly more generic interpretation is, what I just heard is like, "Establish some criteria that you want to all be held to account to, and that's the criteria that you run decisions through. Like, there's like a filter, and you run your decisions through that filter." So for them, it's their non-promotable tasks. But like for you and I, it might be, I don't know, "Does this further Jen Waldman's vision for her company," or something like that, whatever it is. But the thing I really like about this, just in thinking about how many times I get tripped up on decisions or yes and no, is, it sort of removes the emotion from...well, it helps remove the emotion from the decision or a conversation. Because if I, and I only, am faced with the prospect of saying no, and I have to decide how or if or when I'm going to say no, I have so much emotion, context, baggage, worldview usually wrapped up in this thing, because it's my opportunity that occurred through my network, for example.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: If I send it to you, who has absolutely no context on who the people I'm talking about are, you don't have any emotion other than the fact that, you know, you want the best for me. And so you're, I think, probably better equipped to make a more rational, independent observation/decision, that I can then go, "Huh, okay." Like, yeah, it feels like it removes the emotional baggage that I, Pete, bring to all of my decisions. I think we all bring some version of that to any decision or opportunity. Does that make sense?

Jen: 100%, yes. Yes, yes. I mean, I think this is why you and I, just over the years, have been such good advisors to each other. Is, we know each other so well, but we don't know each other's circumstances because we live on the other sides of the globe.

Pete: So true.

Jen: So, it's not like I'm seeing you in your day-to-day and I'm like...I don't know, I have distance. I have enough distance.

Pete: Yeah. You're not like, "I don't like that person in your life."

Jen: Right. Exactly.

Pete: Yeah, yeah.

Jen: Exactly. The other way I think a No Club could be outrageously helpful is...I know I've mentioned this framework many times on this show, but just in case you hadn't caught it the last time I mentioned it...if you know Gretchen Rubin's Four Tendencies framework, the overwhelming majority of people identify as Obligers, meaning when someone else holds an expectation of them, they're more motivated to meet it. And where I see this being really helpful for Obligers is, if someone asks you to do something, suddenly it feels like an obligation. But if you take it to your No Club and your No Club says, "We expect you to say no to this," you now have moved the accountability for yourself or the obligation off of the person who asked you and on to The No Club. I like the accountability that it provides.

Pete: So something I'm picking up on, based on what you just said...is the posture of a No Club, it's always, "Why are you going to say no?" Like, "Always, we're bringing to this the reasons why you should say no," as opposed to, like, it's not the decision-making club, of which one of the decisions could be yes. Or am I hearing that incorrectly?

Jen: Well, it's not that everything you bring...and this is based on my understanding from reading the book (and loving it). It's not that everything you bring is a definite no. But you are a person who struggles with saying no, and are more likely to say yes because you're afraid to say no. So, your No Club helps you. And they offer, in here, different questions to ask and things to consider. They also talk about, you know, depending on the kind of organization you're working in, you literally might not be allowed to say no. And then, you figure out, "How can you get a future no out of this, as opposed to the present no?"

Pete: Nice. Nice.

Jen: So, it's very complex. And honestly, every page blew my mind.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Because of the inherent, and very insipid, and you can't see it until you see it but then once you see it you can never unsee it, the burden that is placed on women in the workplace to do things that don't advance their careers.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: It is wild. Like, there is a photo in this book...it is so crazy...of the former United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Secretary of Homeland Security for the United States of America, and it's a photo of her with a bunch of her colleagues exiting a government building. They are all men. And they're all walking in a clump. And some of them are holding their cups of coffee, but she's holding the coffee pourer.

Pete: Oh, wild.

Jen: You know, like the Dunkin' Donuts Box o' Coffee.

Pete: Right, right, right. Yeah.

Jen: Like, what? The expectation that the Secretary of Homeland Security is responsible for protecting the coffee? I mean, it's just crazy. It's crazy.

Pete: Wild.

Jen: So it's just, it's so baked in to our culture. And literally on every page, my mind was being blown. And I think about how, even outside of work, like just in personal life, I definitely take on lots of non-promotable tasks...some of them happily, some without even recognizing it, and some unhappily.

Pete: Hmm. Yeah. So I shared that example earlier of me bringing to this group yesterday, the struggle I was having was saying no to smaller opportunities in order to say yes to bigger ones. And one of the questions I was asked, I thought was really quite good, which was, "What are you afraid of or what are you afraid will happen when you say no?" Now, for me, I knew the answer straight away, which is, "I'm a recovering people-pleaser, and I don't want to upset anybody."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So my story that I tell myself, which is a little gross if you extend it, is that me saying no will somehow annoy, upset, ruin this person's day. And so, I should say yes. Now, the reason I say that's gross is because it's a little self-indulgent to think that this is going to ruin someone's day. Like, maybe it'll make their day. Maybe they'll be like, "Oh, great. I was just asking you out of obligation. And now you've said no, that gets me off the hook too." Right? Like, my story that I tell myself is so self-obsessed, that like, "Oh, this will ruin their day," which is absolutely not necessarily true. So, I don't know if that's helpful. But just like, for me, the fear of no is the fear of how it'll be received, how it will be perceived, how I will then be treated as a result. And I wonder if that is true for others listening to this. And I find it helpful, for me, to like comically extend that, like I just did, to the point of like, "No. People don't care about you saying yes or no that much, Pete, you're not that important. You're not that interesting."

Jen: Oh, that's funny. That is funny. You know, I feel...and I wonder if you feel this way too. As a coach, so much of my coaching is centered around helping people relieve themselves of these things they burden themselves with that are just not helpful, to make space. And I think this is also one of the purposes of The No Club, is to make space for the kinds of things that are going to bring you joy, bring you promotability, bring you some mental relaxation.

Pete: Right. Bring you some peace of mind, bring you less anxiety.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Yeah. I've always loved that idea...gosh, I wonder if we could find the original source. But like, that idea that saying no to something is making space for a yes later. It's like, a no leads to a yes.

Jen: Mmm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and I think that's part of, in their purpose statement, that making you aware of the implicit no that comes with every yes. It's also, there's the opposite of that. Right?

Pete: Exactly. Yeah. Hmm. Oh, that's good.

Jen: So when I first heard about the concept of a No Club, before I read the book, the assumption that I had (and I pretty much still enjoy this assumption) is that the person who had something to bring to the club needed to bring in all of the reasons it was a yes, and that the club's job was to come up with all of the reasons that it is a no.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And the thing that I like about my erroneous assumption that that's how a No Club worked, is that it does require you actively looking for the good in an opportunity before immediately saying no. But I want to give myself the assignment of also looking for all the reasons to say no. And I like that more than like, "Make a pro and con list." Something about like, "Why this would be a yes and why this would be a no," feels different than making an endless list of good and bad things about an opportunity.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. I sometimes hear authors talk about, when they ask their friends to edit a book or review a book before they submit it, to say like, "Make the case for why this shouldn't be in the book. This chapter I'm really struggling with, tell me why it shouldn't be in the book." And I think that's a similar sort of process or similar idea, is, "You tell me why it shouldn't be." Because if I'm the person that's written the book, I'm probably more likely to be attached to keeping it in.

Jen: And interestingly (in a very meta moment), being the friend asked to read the book, that is a non-promotable task. So, that would be something you would bring to The No Club and say, "Is this something I want to do? Do I want to read and offer edits to a friend?" And in some cases, like if you brought me your book, it would be such a yes. Like, it's not increasing my promotability in my career, but something I want to do.

Pete: Right. Yeah. Well, I feel like, once again, this articulates or highlights something that...I mean, there's a reason one of my words is "connection" this year. It's this reminder (here in this episode, and like, I feel like I'm seeing these reminders everywhere) that learning in community, that working in community, that creating communities to help us make better decisions, get clear on our goals, our priorities, help us say no, help us say yes, whatever it is, being, existing, operating, working, working out in community is just so much better than when done alone.

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.