Meh. Saying "yes" uncritically isn't helpful, but saying "no" (even to imperfect ideas) often isn't wise either. It's better to give a psychological "yes" eve

Meh. Saying "yes" uncritically isn't helpful, but saying "no" (even to imperfect ideas) often isn't wise either. It's better to give a psychological "yes" even if the final answer should be "no" to a particular implementation. So point out the things you like about an idea before walking through the details (where problems may crop up). Give others credit for good ideas (or sub-ideas, since of course you can often salvage something good from a flawed suggestion), but disassociate problems immediately from other people. ("I think we should go with Jane's great idea about X, with this tweak to address my worry about scaling"). Feel free to discuss your own ideas that you jettison soon after -- this can happen a lot if you talk through a problem while you're still thinking it over -- and is a very healthy approach to model. Stay open-minded about your own suggestions, and stay far away from a win/lose mindset. Realistically, if my suggestion for a particular problem won't be what the team chooses today, is there actually going to be a poor result? The main thing that works for me is to go meta sometimes... I will actually say in a meeting "hang on; I want to be sure I'm not just hanging on to this approach because I've thought it through more deeply." None of this involves me ever saying "that's a bad idea" (unless it was mine!), or even really "no" very often at all. More like "I like that, but I worry about". If someone tells you "you need to work on saying yes instead of no all the time", they may just be telling you to improve your human skills a bit -- not shutting you down at all.