The short answer
You are a highly disciplined Operations Coordinator managing complex, daily corporate execution. You absolutely do not function as a free, uncompensated administrative dumping ground for senior executives who refuse to hire dedicated project staff. When an Executive Sponsor casually demands that you take on the complete project management of a highly demanding new steering committee completely alongside your already maxed-out operational workload, they are aggressively extracting unpaid labor. You must reject this highly dangerous assumption entirely and immediately. Do not pretend to evaluate the feasibility of working sixty hours a week. State clearly and decisively that managing a high-level committee requires intensive administrative focus. Inform them rigidly that your current baseline responsibilities consume one hundred percent of your available hours. Refuse to silently absorb the brutal scope creep. Force the Executive Sponsor to make a ruthless commercial choice. Present a highly detailed itemization of your core duties and demand they specifically select which critical operational deliverable you should completely drop to make room for this new initiative. Protect your performance baseline with absolute, unyielding administrative force. You operate on math, not favors.
Why this question is a trap
The Executive Sponsor is actively prioritizing their own new vanity project over your fundamental mental health, your career trajectory, and the operational stability of the entire department. They are facing internal pressure to launch this steering committee, but they do not want to spend their departmental budget to hire a dedicated project manager. They strategically target you because they falsely assume that junior operational staff will automatically say yes to any senior leadership request out of blind deference and fear. This is a highly calculated, immensely aggressive political trap designed to extract free, superhuman labor from the operations team without any formal executive oversight, title promotion, or financial compensation.
If you say yes and quietly accept the new committee management duties, you actively choose to completely sabotage your own career. Working sixty hours a week inevitably leads to catastrophic burnout. You will permanently dilute your primary performance metrics. You will start dropping critical balls on your core responsibilities because you are too busy taking meeting minutes for the new committee. When your core operational deliverables eventually collapse under the crushing weight of this unfunded scope creep, the Executive Sponsor will absolutely not protect you. They will point directly at your broken execution and claim you failed to manage your time effectively. Your annual performance review will reflect total failure on your primary job description, not unrewarded success on the secondary one. You will permanently lose control of your schedule. You must fiercely defend your operational bandwidth against vague internal exploitation.
What most people say
Most junior operations coordinators operate under a thick, suffocating cloud of fear and a desperate, pathological desire to please internal executives. They deeply fear being aggressively labeled as difficult, uncooperative, or lacking career ambition by the high-status leadership organization. They falsely believe their job is to blindly execute every single directive that crosses their desk, regardless of the physical reality of time, physics, or their own biological limits. When confronted with this exact demand, they crumble instantly.
They reply with weak, highly accommodating, and deeply destructive hedging language. They say things like, "Well, I know this steering committee is a huge strategic initiative for the company, so let me see if I can try to squeeze these tasks into my evenings or maybe work a few hours on the weekends just to get it off the ground for you." They try to be helpful. They hesitate. They falsely assume that working exponentially harder and sacrificing their personal life eventually cures all executive planning failures. This approach is completely fatal. It clearly signals to the organization that your working hours are entirely subjective and completely malleable. The Executive Sponsor takes the massive victory, secures their free project manager, and fully expects you to rubber-stamp every future uncompensated deviation. The coordinator takes on the entirety of the execution risk while receiving absolutely none of the strategic reward or additional pay.
What to say instead
Take complete, unquestionable control of your own operational capacity. You must respond with cold, unshakeable operational authority. You are the sole guardian of your execution quality.
Inform the Executive Sponsor plainly and flatly that your operational scope is currently rigidly locked and at maximum capacity. Tell them that the operations department does not bypass mandatory resourcing constraints simply to absorb unfunded executive initiatives. If they fiercely demand that you manage the committee to save the launch timeline, you must force a severe operational trade-off. Tell them that integrating untested committee management guarantees execution failures across your core metrics. Present the strict binary path forward. Option one is hiring a dedicated contractor to manage the committee. Option two is formally pausing one of your existing, high-priority operational workflows. Hand them a physical or digital list of your five core daily deliverables. Force them to actively point to the exact deliverable they authorize you to stop performing. Force them to actively pay for the timeline extension with their own operational sacrifice. If they refuse to deprioritize existing work, tell them your calendar remains frozen and they must rely on their own staff. Offer zero free concessions.
The phrase to anchor on
The exact, non-negotiable phrase to deploy is dedicated capacity allocation.
This highly specific operational terminology forcefully removes the conflict from the personal realm. You are not saying no because you are a difficult, anti-strategy bureaucrat who hates hard work. You are strictly protecting the company's requirement for dedicated capacity allocation. This phrase rigidly grounds the refusal in a measurable, critical corporate project management standard. It reminds the executive professional that their ideas do not magically execute themselves in a vacuum. Every new initiative requires systematic execution, and you are measured by your ability to deliver flawless project completion on your primary duties, not just absorb infinite tasks.
How to deliver it
Deliver your response with absolute, chilling professional calm. Do not raise your voice, do not look away, and do not apologize for their total inability to budget for adequate headcount before launching a massive steering committee.
Use extremely short, highly declarative sentences. Do not smile nervously or attempt to soften the blow with corporate pleasantries. When the Executive Sponsor aggressively argues that the committee will definitely fail without your specific organizational skills, stare blankly and state that the company does not purchase last-minute project management by sacrificing core departmental stability. Maintain unyielding eye contact. Do not let their frantic, pre-launch executive energy infect your physiological state. Be the slow, immovable wall of operational logic. Your total emotional detachment in the face of their resourcing panic is your ultimate protective shield.
Mistakes that cost you the room
The absolute most damaging mistake is eagerly offering to "just handle the meeting invites and the initial agenda for the first month to get things started." Promising a fast-follow or a temporary accommodation completely implies that the alignment is indeed highly critical and that your boundary is totally fake. Once you send the first calendar invite, you permanently own the steering committee. Reject the premise instantly on the spot. Make them formally evaluate the necessity of the meetings against the true cost of their own staffing failure.
Another fatal error is over-explaining the specific technical steps of your daily job to justify your refusal. Do not tell the Sponsor that compiling the daily operations report takes four hours or that the logistics tracking is broken and consumes your morning. Providing deep internal context simply gives them ammunition to argue that you should just use a different tool, automate your reports, or work faster to free up the time. Keep the boundary completely opaque and strictly capacity-oriented. The hours are full; the details of why they are full are none of their business.
Practice plan
This drill requires intense psychological preparation for standing up to dominant, aggressive strategic leaders who attempt to dump work downhill. Record yourself stating the firm refusal on camera. Review your posture meticulously to ensure you are holding a level, deep vocal tone.
Practice the delivery of the exact phrase dedicated capacity allocation until it sounds entirely automatic, cold, and emotionless. Rehearse your direct response to their frantic strategic arguments and flattering claims that you are the only one who can do the job. Drill this exact scenario repeatedly until the deep fear of upsetting a business stakeholder is completely replaced by the fierce, protective pride of guarding your own execution quality and mental health. Please note that this comprehensive guide serves strictly as a rehearsal tool for communication scenarios. Talk Rightly does not offer formal HR, legal, or employment directives.