[2022-05-31] Saying no
Last night's post, Burnout: helping yourself and others, included this recommendation among its tips for avoiding stress-induced exhaustion: "Set boundaries; if saying no doesn't come naturally, think of saying no as a way of saying yes to the commitments you want to make." This is just one way to politely decline a request. Tonight's post, pulled from my Café Jen archives, offers eight suggestions on how to say no gracefully.
Why is it so hard to say no?
Honing our ability to say no starts with developing an understanding of why we say yes.
In "Setting Boundaries & Saying No… Nicely," coach and author Elizabeth Grace Saunders sums up why many of us default to yes:
It feels good to be the go-to guy or girl: the one that everyone comes to for solutions to their problems. When people smile at you and tell you, "Thank you so much. I just don’t know what I would do without you," feelings of importance, value, and worth well up inside of you. The immediate verbal affirmation you receive from saying, "Yes," to every request can even fulfill subconscious aspirations of being popular: I could never be class president, but I can fix every technical challenge people bring to me. At last, I’m a VIP!
This resonated with me back in 2015 when I wrote my Café Jen post, and still resonates with me today. The reasons I say yes when I should say no include:
- I want to be helpful. In fact, on a personality test I did years ago, I mapped to the Helper category.
- I believe in the value of the request. I'm an ideas person, so if I hear a good idea, I usually want to implement it.
- I don’t have a mental list of alternatives—things I’ve already committed to or things I should be doing—against which to compare the request.
- I'm often good at the thing being requested. I believe that I can complete the task more efficiently than the person seeking my help.
It’s also possible that I struggle with saying no because I’m a woman. The article "Women Find It More Difficult to Say 'No' to Excessive Workplace Requests" presents the work of post-doctoral research associate Katharine O’Brien, who conducted three studies on the differences between women and men in saying no at work. The first study supported the hypothesis that female employees find it more difficult to say no to a request at work than their male counterparts. The second study, which sought to determine why this was the case, found that social norms are largely to blame. O’Brien says,
"Women typically are regarded as nurturers and helpers, so saying ‘no’ runs against the grain of what might be expected of them."
O’Brien found that when women say yes, they are viewed as team players, but when they say no, they are viewed as less likeable and receive poorer evaluations and fewer recommendations for promotion. The third study set out to help women improve their ability to say no.
Participants were asked to keep a 2 week diary listing all requests and their nature, and consider two strategies in handling those requests. The first strategy was simply to say "I’ll think about it and get back to you." The second was to regard the request in terms of what advice would they give their best friend about saying "yes" to the request.
O’Brien found that both strategies helped the study participants be more thoughtful in responding to requests.
A similar, though admittedly unconventional, strategy is offered by Katherine Wintsch in "The Working Mom Complex: How To Say No—and Smile While You Do":
This is a little nontraditional, but I find it easy and entertaining to say no by imagining the person asking me to do something as a teenage boy trying to make out with me. This keeps me smiling on the inside and outside. My former business partner taught me this trick years ago and it works every time. "Your job," he explained, "is going to take everything you’ll give it and still want more. And it’s up to you to draw boundaries regarding what you are and are not willing to do."
Now that we have a better understanding of why we say yes even when we should say no, let’s consider who is making the request.
To whom should you say no
Only a few of the articles I read qualified their advice about saying no by looking at who is asking you to do something.
In "The Best-Kept Secrets to Saying No at Work," recruiter Lindsay Olson notes that your boss should be your top priority (not the colleague who is an expert at avoiding work).
And in "Five ways to say 'no' without jeopardizing your work reputation," career coach Eileen Chadnick provides this counsel to a reader whose boss is overloading him:
I suggest you first conduct a solid reality check. Is your plate truly maxed out or are you just feeling overwhelmed? Is there anything you can and should do differently with respect to managing your work? Are you working as efficiently as you can? Prioritizing appropriately? Delegating where possible? Is your work load reflective of others’ or above and beyond?
I encourage you to check this rigorously because your boss might wonder the same if you push back on more work. If you believe you are doing the best you can and that your work load is truly…at its max—then I would think that this would be the right time to responsibly say ‘no.’
This advice resonated with me. As a manager, I sometimes had staff who were very good at saying no. When this happened, I would ask these employees to tell me what they were working on so that I could confirm or change their priorities.
When to say no
So now that we’ve analyzed why we say yes or no and prioritized requests from our boss, let’s turn to a discussion of when it makes sense to politely decline a request.
The best reasons I found were these:
- The task belongs to someone else. Not only can it be bad for your time management to take on such a task, but it can also damage your relationship with the colleague who is the rightful owner of the work. (We used to call this "mowing someone else's lawn.")
- There's not enough time. If saying yes would result in over-promising and under-delivering, you need to speak up.
- The request is truly above and beyond what you would be expected to do and saying yes would jeopardize your other projects or a personal commitment outside work.
How to say no gracefully
Now that we’ve wrestled with the why, the who and the when, let’s turn to the all-important how. Here are my favourite tips on how to say no gracefully.
1. Prepare before you get the question
In "Ask Away: Is It Ever Okay to Say ‘No’ at Work?" author Christine Carter writes that the first step is to prepare yourself to say no.
It is much easier to say no to an invitation when we have a concrete reason for doing so—a way to justify our refusal beyond the vague notion that we should avoid the commitment in question.
Carter recommends establishing rules to guide your decision-making. For example, one of her rules is to go out no more than two evenings per week. If she’s invited out on a third evening, she says: "I’m not available, but thanks for asking."
She also suggests blocking out time on your calendar for both professional and personal priorities.
I implemented this technique successfully when I was receiving many invitations to be a speaker. I would generally accept only one invitation per month to speak at an event. In many cases, requesters were happy to wait until the next month, which meant that I was not overloaded with speaking engagements.
2. Say no before you’re asked
Katherine Wintsch makes a similar suggestion in "The Working Mom Complex: How To Say No—and Smile While You Do." She recommends that you set your boundaries and let others know what they are.
Say no in advance (before you’re ever asked) in order to avoid caving and saying yes. If you want to spend 6:30 to 8 p.m. with your family every night and not on email, make that known. Block out sacred time on the office calendar as far in advance as possible. Designate parent/teacher conferences, class plays and spring break as "out of office" times as soon as you receive the school calendar.
I recall hearing executive colleagues say things like "I’ll happily work evenings during the week but I don't work on weekends" or "The office can have me early in the day or later in the afternoon, but it can’t have me at both ends" (this from a young father who shared child pick-up and drop-off duties with his wife).
3. Rehearse appropriate responses to various requests
Returning to "Setting Boundaries & Saying No… Nicely," Elizabeth Grace Saunders provides sample responses to common tricky situations.
- To the last-minute request: "I would love to help you out, but I’ve already made commitments to others to complete their projects today. I’ll fit this in as soon as possible."
- To the request that belongs to another person or organization: "That’s not my area of expertise, but I would be happy to connect you with someone who could best help you solve this problem."
- To the drive-by request: "Could you email me the details of that request? Once I receive them, I’ll be able to give you a more definite response on when I can get that done for you."
- To the request with a short deadline: "I know this project is a high priority for you, and if you absolutely need me to turn something in by that date, I can make it happen. But if I could have a few more days, I could deliver something of higher quality. Would it be possible for me to have a bit more time?"
- To the person fishing for help: "Wow. I can really understand how that would be hard." (Then say nothing more—just nod, smile, and release the problem when you walk away.)
- To the request that could be handled by a less-busy colleague: "I would love to help you out, but given my schedule, I wouldn’t be able to get this back to you for a couple of weeks. If you would like to have this turned around sooner, I recommend that you reach out to ____."
I especially like the response to the drive-by request. It puts the responsibility to define the ask back on the person seeking help.
4. Remember that you’re paid to think
In "Is It Ever Okay to Say ‘No’ at Work?" CEO Sandip Sekhon reminds employees who may say yes without reflecting:
"Your company is not paying you to say ‘yes.’ [It is] paying you to think. I’m known for telling my teams, ‘At least 25 percent of what I’m going to suggest is completely wrong. It’s our job to work together to figure out what that 25 percent is. If something feels stupid, it probably is. Let’s talk about it. Either way, we both learn.’"
Seeing your no as a helpful response rather than a disappointing rejection may make it easier to deliver.
5. Take time to respond
Forbes’ "How To Say No At Work" says:
Take time to consider the request. Determine how much time you'll need to deliver quality work, and how the assignment fits in to your existing workload.
Similarly, in "5 Ways to Say No to Extra Work," time coach Elizabeth Grace Saunders recommends avoiding the immediate response. She writes:
Most people’s knee-jerk reaction to requests for help requiring a significant chunk of their time is "Sure, I can do that." Instead, say you need to review your other commitments and ask if it’s OK to get back to the requester by, say, the next day.
This is one of my favourite tips—so simple and genuine.
6. Suggest an alternative or negotiate a qualified yes
The Forbes’s article continues:
While saying no, try to help the person who approached you about the task. Ask if you can contribute in a different way, or tackle the project at a later date.
Eileen Chadnick makes a similar suggestion in "Five ways to say 'no' without jeopardizing your work reputation":
Saying ‘no’ doesn’t necessarily have to be a flat-out ‘no.’ If there’s a part that you can contribute then make that part of your dialogue. "While I can’t take on the whole assignment given the other work you asked me to do by end of week, I’d be happy to offer some ideas or do part of it or help you find someone else who can help."
In "4 ways to say ‘no’ at work and still be seen as a team player," management author Suzy Welch acknowledges that there are times when you can't decline a work request. Nevertheless, you may be able to negotiate a contribution that allows you to honour a prior commitment.
For example, if a colleague asks you to stay late on a day that you have dinner plans, you could say, "I’d like to say ‘no,’ but I know this project is important. I can stay until 7 p.m., but after that, I really do have to head out."
Though not an outright no, negotiating your yes gives you more control over the situation.
7. Ask for help to reprioritize your work
In "The art of rejection: How to win respect at work by saying ‘no’ more often," author Jeremy Goldman recommends the positive no. He writes:
Greg McKeown illustrates this point perfectly in his terrific bestseller, "Essentialism." When your boss asks you to tackle a new project, McKeown recommends asking which of your other assignments can be put to the side so that you will have enough time to devote to the new task.
This is one of the most common strategies recommended for saying no at work. Take care, however, to not make it sound like a challenge. Instead, ask with a genuine desire to know what your priorities should be.
8. Pay attention to how people you admire say no.
The final how-to tip comes from manager Alison Greene, who writes in "how to say no to a work request":
You might be wary of pushing back on a request because you can’t imagine how to do it in a way that doesn’t alienate people. Look at colleagues who seem to do it successfully, and see if you can find language, tone, and other cues that you can adopt for yourself.
I was never a model of saying no while in the workplace—quite the opposite, in fact. I regularly took on more than I should have.
I've gotten better at it since going through cancer. The life-threatening nature of the disease makes it easier to set priorities and stick with them. I still occasionally accept to take on tasks I shouldn't, but I'm now much more aware of what I'm giving up by saying yes to a given request. Saying no to something I don't want to do means I'm saying yes to the kind of peaceful life I wish to enjoy.
