Asking why can open up a whole new channel of understanding and possibility between a requester and a requestee. But so can retreating to ask, “If you can’t do this, can you do something else?” In asking these questions again and again, it became obvious to me that there is often a lot more room to maneuver around a no than I’d ever realized. Every no is actually surrounded by a whole bunch of interesting but invisible yeses that it was up to me to uncover.
