Why Saying No Feels So Hard
From Education Leaders | Strategic School Leadership by Shane Leaning | School Leadership & Organisational Development Coach
May 11, 2026 · 25 min · Episode 160
About this episode
In this episode, Shane Leaning discusses the challenges school leaders face in saying no and offers a four-step approach to manage commitments more effectively.
Saying yes is one of the most common habits among school leaders, and most of the time it happens automatically, without conscious thought. In this solo episode, Shane reflects on a conversation with a fellow educator that revealed they shared the exact same challenge: both had said yes far too much, and both were feeling the weight of it. Drawing on Adam Grant's Give and Take and the recent work of Cornell researcher Sunita Sah, Shane looks at why school leaders are wired to say yes, four specific psychological reasons that drive that habit, and the real costs it creates for your team, your relationships, and your own visibility as a leader. You'll learn how to replace the automatic yes with what Shane calls the trade-off response, a four-step approach that gives your boss more information rather than a flat refusal. Shane walks through the steps, acknowledge the priority, make your current load visible, name the trade-off, and hand the decision back, with real examples from his own career, including one during COVID when even the trade-off response didn't get him off the hook. If you've ever walked away from a conversation thinking "why did I just say yes to that?", this…
People in this episode
Host: Shane Leaning
Topics covered
- school leadership
- psychology of decision making
- saying no
- trade-off response
- workload management
Keywords
- school leaders
- decision making
- psychological reasons
- trade-off response
- workload
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: International Curriculum Association
Books & works: Give and Take
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