Chapter 9: The Twelve Yeah-Buts --How to Deal with the Truly Tough

Overview

There are no exceptions to the rule that everybody likes to be an exception to the rule.

”Charles Osgood

As we ve taught this material over the last two decades, we ve grown accustomed to people saying, Yeah, but my situation is really tough. These skills will never work for me. At first we thought those people were being belligerent (particularly when they threw in words like bonehead and hayseed ), but in most cases the concerned participants were only trying to imagine how the skills applied to their world ”their toughest world. If the confrontation skills could help with their worst-case scenarios, they stood to gain a lot. All they really wanted to do was dive deeper into areas that deserved careful attention. They raised the yeah-buts because they were being thoughtful and reflective, in some cases highly reflective.

And so with apologies to our friend Stephen R. Covey, we bring you the seven yeah-buts of highly reflective people. And then we add five more, just for good measure.