“Yes, And” or “Yes, But”
The cast of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” performing a scene (Credit: ABC Studios)
In improvisation a surefire way to kill the energy of a performance is to disavow what has happened before. Rejecting elements of the existing scene results in a loss of flow and stilted interaction between the players. As a result, the mantra for someone entering the scene is: Yes, And. The new entrant accepts what has happened to that point (“Yes”), then expands on that line of thinking with their own ideas (“And”).
In business, the notion of “Yes, And” is useful in brainstorming sessions, as it allows the facilitator to acknowledge a participant’s contribution while creating space for others to riff on it or make additions of their own. The intention is to maintain an open environment so that new ideas can grow and emerge without participants becoming defensive in response to a dismissive comment or statement, thus preventing the fruition of richer ideas.
Importantly, this doesn’t preclude the team from challenging and refining the ideas presented, rather, it acknowledges that there’s a time to do so, and it’s not in the early ideation stage when the goal is to generate as many ideas as possible so that the team can examine the common threads among them.
In my own experience coaching teams and individuals I sometimes encounter a more defensive response: “Yes, But”. It often emerges in response to an alternative suggestion to someone’s preferred method and takes the form of acknowledging the suggestion so as not to appear defensive (“Yes”) before launching into a rationale for why the suggestion isn’t applicable in that particular circumstance and should therefore be politely dismissed (“But”).
When I hear too many “Yes, But” statements in a row, it’s often a sign that either the person I’m working with isn’t open to an alternative to their current thinking or that I should try a different tack in getting them to consider other options. In order to determine which of the two scenarios is at play I ask more questions to see if there is any curiosity on the other person’s part or if they’re merely uninterested in exploring alternate suggestions. If they are curious, then my task becomes understanding the root cause of their apprehension of new ideas: is it fear? A sense of exasperation? Worry that there will be a lack of support from others? The more I am able to understand the root cause of an otherwise curious person’s hesitation to consider new ideas, the more nimble I can be in addressing the source of that hesitation before presenting other options in context.
Each of us have areas where we’re open to suggestions (“Yes, And”) and others where we’d prefer to be left to our current methods and mindsets (“Yes, But”). The challenge and opportunity is to examine the root cause of our own hesitation to change to understand and address the forces which make us reticent to consider new ideas so we can move from intransigence to openness. Sometimes it’s as simple as changing a single word.
