Yes, But...

Speaker A:  I'd like to be able to increase the budget this year for our project.

Speaker B:  Yes, but with money so tight it would be hard to justify an increase to central office.

Speaker A:  Well, I understand that.  But this is the third year of success with this project and I think we can really expand and do good things.

Speaker B:  Your right, the project has been successful.  But you have to remember that there's other departments that have really been hit with budget cuts, and it would look funny if your department had an increase.

Speaker A:  Right, I get that.  But if our project could expand we could actually bring revenue to the company!

Sound familiar?!  This could go on forever (and typically does).

'Yes-but’ statements introduce a competitive element to the communication system, and this tends to avoid the maintenance of relationship, topic or process. A way to communicate in a manner that helps assure that your message will be better received and understood by others would be to use communication that 1) does not build on any avoidance elements brought into the conversation, and 2) introduces a direction to the communication that helps maintain the relationship, topic or process.

A good place to start when presented with a 'yes, but...' is to check your own impulse to defend with a retaliatory version of the same ‘yes-but’ pattern.  In other words, go against instinct and try something different! One way to accomplish this is to first join and then build on ideas introduced by others, which establishes an integrating element to the conversation. Generating three builds to another person’s idea helps that person feel heard and understood (easy to say, harder to do in practice).

Once a true join has been established, other perspectives can be introduced more successfully.  The challenge is to present new information in a way that invites others to explore that information with you (as opposed to tying them down in order to move on without them). That can be accomplished by introducing a new idea in connection with the idea introduced by the other person.

A broad question helps with the challenge of integrating ideas, such as “What are some ways that we could [my/your idea] while [my/your idea]?" Broad questions invite the other person to respond- and 'responding' helps maintain relationships, topics and process, thus increasing the liklihood that an authentic exchange of information can take place.

Speaker A:  I'd like to be able to increase the budget this year for our project.

Speaker B:  Yes, but with money so tight it would be hard to justify an increase to central office.

Speaker A:  It's true that we have less money to work with.  And I know central office is really picky about asking for more funding right now. And approaching central office has never been the easiest thing in the world to do.  What are some ways that we could expand this project while keeping close to our present budget constraints and not rely so much on central office increases?