Turning rejection into opportunity starts with what you do in the minute after you hear no. Most people treat no as the end of an ask. I used to be one of them. Now I think of it as the beginning of better information. Was the timing wrong? Was the request unexpected? Was the person unable to help? Was the value unclear? Was there another option I never presented? A no can tell you something a polite yes never will. The mistake is hearing no and immediately deciding it means they don’t want me. They don’t like my idea. That’s an interpretation. Curiosity asks a different question. What did this no teach me about the next ask?
A few years ago I applied for a grant from an art foundation for $3,500, well within their giving range. It was well written. My students and I were thrilled to submit it. The answer was a hard no. No explanation. We wondered if maybe the idea wasn’t good. I wondered if my writing wasn’t as strong as I thought it was. For a while I kept turning over what might have been wrong with the proposal.
Luckily we weren’t derailed for long. Another opportunity came up, this time from a second foundation. What’s interesting is Grant Foundation One gives out several of these grants every year, while Grant Foundation Two awards only one grant, to one person, for the entire twelve months. We wrote the same proposal, same title, same plan, and this time applied to Grant Foundation Two for $35,000 instead of $3,500. I submitted it half expecting that trying again was somehow wrong. We won.
When the project was finished, the leaders from the small grant reached out with their regrets that they hadn’t funded us. They told us they’d thought the project was too ambitious, and now they realized how capable we were. When we don’t have a reason for a rejection, we tend to fill in the worst one ourselves. That conversation told us the project was never weak. It was simply too big for what that grant was giving. Instead of wondering what was wrong with us, the better question was what was wrong with the path we’d chosen to make the ask.
That project was the one the first foundation called too ambitious, and it’s a story worth telling in full.
I was teaching Japanese, French and Spanish to eighth graders in Indiana, and as part of running the foreign language club, my students and I took on a special project each year. I started teaching them the history of Americans of Japanese Ancestry to encourage them to stop mocking Asians, reading books like The Bracelet and Hero. Some of them were stunned. Is this true? They’d never heard any of it before.
They identified with the unfairness right away. This happened to our people. They were fighting for us, and we treated them this badly. Their first response was to turn the school courtyard into a Japanese Zen garden honoring the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The next class added a pond. Then they learned about the other units, the 1800th, the MIS, the 522nd, and they wanted those honored too. Their dream grew into something that could travel across the country, built around a quilt.
They wanted to call it the 120,000 Tassel Tapestry, to represent every Japanese American who endured the injustice of incarceration during World War II. They wanted it built in twelve panels, styled after the noren, the curtains Japanese shopkeepers hang at their entrances, whose kanji character means welcome and goodwill. That was the spirit they wanted the quilt to carry. Twelve panels also meant it could be stored and carried more easily. Finished, it would measure 19 by 41 feet, dimensions chosen to mark 1941, the year Pearl Harbor was bombed. It would weigh 350 pounds, and the backing would carry the pattern of the American flag, with each panel representing a year or period of the war.
We were told constantly that it couldn’t be done. We decided not to think about that. The students pulled a list of Japanese American veterans from military archives and mailed more than 3,000 letters asking for pieces of old uniforms or clothing worn by their veterans. We had Google, and we used it. If a name only sounded Japanese, we reached out anyway and asked, if this isn’t you, can you connect us to someone who it is?
The gifts came from all over the world. People sent us things they cherished, real pieces of documentation and history. Even the Smithsonian reached out, and their attitude at first was close to we don’t think you know how to handle this properly. We told them we’d be glad to work with a curator. That was the project.
In the end, 503 students from two rival schools, one well off, one inner city, worked side by side through weekends and summer nights well past midnight. Old rivalries gave way to real friendships. When it was finished, the tapestry was hung for the first time in the school gymnasium, and it later traveled to be displayed in Palo Alto. None of it would have come together the way it did without that first rejection.
Read the full story of the 120,000 Tassel Tapestry: https://jamsj.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/the-story-of-the-120000-tassel-tapestry/
Turning rejection into opportunity, one ask at a time.
This is the heart of what I teach in the Art of the Ask. Now, whenever I’m writing a grant application and I have Grant A and Grant B, where B is the one I want more than anything, I start with A. Applying for A first gives me the chance to get the rejection and the practice, so that by the time I reach B, I bring everything I’ve learned to it. Most of the time I end up getting both. The rejection is almost guaranteed, and I’ve learned to treat it as the gift. What else did I need to do? How else could I improve? What path did I miss?
Your Turn: Think of a no you received recently. What might it be trying to tell you about the ask itself, rather than about you?
About the Author
Leila Kubesch is a professional speaker and photographer who aims to give her clients both voice and visibility, whether she is on the stage or behind the lens. Through her speaking and photography, she helps people tell their stories, make meaningful connections and be seen.
Learn more at https://LeilaKubesch.com
Connect with Leila at https://www.linkedin.com/in/leila-kubesch/
