Yes…and No

I was in a hotel elevator in Chicago recently when I saw something that stopped me mid-button-press! You know the usual setup - floors 1 through however-many, conference rooms, restaurants, spa, all the predictable vertical destinations of hotel life. But... this time... at the very top… there were two buttons I wasn’t expecting.

One, YES.
The other, NO.

Naturally, I didn’t press either (I’m still slightly unsure what building reality I would have been committing to...), but I stood there thinking about it far longer than I should admit. I mean I still am now over a week later!

Where does YES take you?
Where does NO go?
And honestly… I still wish I knew.

The elevator made me laugh. But it also made me pause.

Because maybe it’s not about destination at all. Maybe it’s about direction.

We spend so much of life treating everything like a floor selection process, don't we? Always trying to go higher, faster, further. More opportunity. More access. More... everything. But what if leadership isn’t just about what we say yes to… but how clearly we learn to say no?

YES is the opening. It’s possibility. Expansion. Invitation. A willingness to step into something you can’t fully see yet.

NO is not absence. It’s not rejection. It’s clarity. And sometimes, NO is one of the most generous leadership tools we have. Because every NO creates space.

Space for alignment.
Space for integrity.
Space for focus.
Space for someone else’s YES to emerge where yours does not belong. We often treat YES like progress and NO like loss.

But in leadership - and in life - I’m learning it’s far more nuanced than that. A well-placed NO can de-escalate chaos.

It can protect energy.
It can preserve what matters most.
It can quietly redirect momentum toward something more aligned.

Without NO, YES becomes noise. Overcommitment. Overextension. Overwhelm dressed up as opportunity. But when NO is present, YES becomes intentional, doesn't it?

That elevator stayed with me because it reduced something complex into something almost childlike in its simplicity. Two buttons. Two choices. Two ways to orient yourself in a moment of decision. And maybe that’s the real leadership work. Not just how high we go…but what we choose along the way.

Still… I can’t stop wondering where those buttons went!!!!