5 WAYS TO SAY ‘NO’
Children and teenagers rarely have trouble saying ‘no’. In fact they frequently do it. They do it loudly and proudly, and they do it with an abundance of conviction. So why do we, well educated and mature adults, have so much trouble saying this one syllable, two character word? Because we attach big complex feelings to this tiny simple word. Because we want to preserve our relationships.
85 years old and going strong, the Harvard Study of Adult Development is our longest running study on happiness. It tells us that “good relationships keep us happier and healthier” with the three biggest lessons about relationships from the study being that:
social connections are really good for us and loneliness kills,
it’s the quality of our close relationships that matter and living amidst conflict is bad for our health, and
good relationships don’t just protect our bodies, they protect our brains.
It’s no wonder given our desire to preserve our relationships that we often say ‘yes’ to requests when we really want to say ‘no’. But does saying ‘yes’ actually help or hinder our goal of preserving our relationships? Consistency, trust and respect sit at the core of healthy lasting relationships - the kind where we feel like we can count on the other person in our times of need. When we say ‘yes’ to everybody and everything, overloading ourselves in an attempt to preserve our relationships, it has the opposite effect to what we desire.
When we try and do too many things at once, we lose our focus as we divide our attention across multiple things. This impacts the consistency with which we deliver to others. We become slower and the quality of the outcomes that we do deliver may be compromised. The more complex the tasks at hand, the higher the risk of this happening. This also impacts the consistency with which we show up for others at a human level. You may normally be known as a generous, calm and grounding person, but when you’ve said ‘yes’ to too many things and become overloaded, you become impatient, frenetic and sharper with your tone and choice of words. When consistency in your outcomes and behaviours change, it erodes the predictive and vulnerability based trust that others have in you. The longer this goes on, the more trust gets eroded and gradually the respect others had for you also disappears along with those relationships that you wanted to protect and preserve when you said ‘yes’ in the first place.
So how do you loudly and proudly say ‘no’ with an abundance of conviction?
1. Start Small
Practice makes perfect. Build your confidence one small incremental step at a time. Start by saying ‘no’ to small things (like last minute requests that come in at the end of the day when you’re about to log off work or leave the building to go home), then work your way up to saying ‘no’ to big things (like building an expensive feature into your product with low commercial viability or taking on what feels like the 200th additional shift since covid began to help clear the backlog of surgeries caught in the system).
2. Get clear on what’s important to you
We often lose sight of what’s truly important when we get busy or life throws us some curve balls. Define and anchor, or remind and re-anchor, yourself to your core values. For example, is spending quality time with your family the most important thing for you, yet you find yourself working 12-14 hour days with some weekends? Every time you have a decision to make - to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ - anchor yourself back to your core values and ask yourself these questions:
Will saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ bring me closer to what’s most important to me?
If I say ‘yes’, then what will I need to say ‘no’ to?
This time next year, will I regret saying ‘yes’ today?
Use your values to build your confidence and inner strength and say ‘no’ with conviction.
If you are in a situation where you can’t say no for whatever reason, make it worth your while. Ask yourself these questions:
How can I turn this into an opportunity that benefits me too?
How can I reframe this request so that it aligns to and serve my values well?
What can I ask the requestor in return that will bring me closer to what’s most important to me?
If you need a place to start when it comes to identifying your values, download our Anchored By My Values worksheet.
3. Ask the requestor to help you prioritise their ask
This strategy is particularly helpful when you are getting overloaded with requests from one person, or a number of people from different departments who are aware of each other and all require your help to work towards the same (or conflicting) goals.
Use a whiteboard, post-it notes on a wall, a piece of paper, a Google Doc, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, whatever works for you. Create three columns and label them as ‘To Do’, ‘Doing’ and ‘Done’. Put all of your to-do list items up in priority order under each of the three labels and keep your to-do list in this format updated when the status of a task changes, more tasks come in or tasks drop off your to-do list.
When a new request comes in that you want to say ‘no’ to, show your to-do list to the requestor and ask for their help to prioritise the things on your list; acknowledging you have fixed capacity. Ask the requestor questions like:
What order or priority does the new request sit in, relative to all of the other items?
What can I stop doing in order to prioritise and start the new request?
If the requestor is adamant the new request should be your highest priority and you need to deprioritise work you are doing for other people, kindly ask that they support you by speak to the other people you are currently doing work for to get their agreement you can deprioritise your delivery to them in favour of the new request.
4. Offer an Alternative
High performers are often rewarded with more work because people trust and respect the consistency of their delivery timeframes and the quality outcomes that are achieved. They become the ‘go to’ person and no one else is even considered for the job.
A kind way to express gratitude and say ‘no’ is to find an alternate option for the requestor that will give them the desired outcome without you taking on the work. You may have a very competent colleague who is willing to take on the request because they are seeking career progression, financial stability, or it aligns to another value they have. Connect your colleague and the requestor by saying something like “Thank you for thinking of me for this piece of work. Unfortunately I need to decline this time, however let me introduce you to Max. Max is well qualified to do the work and I think you will enjoy collaborating with them on this.”
5. Be Direct
The clearer you are in saying ‘no’, the better the other person will respond because they are clear on what their next action needs to be - to find an alternative. Phrases like “No, I’m afraid I can’t”, “No, I have another commitment to attend to”, or “No, I don’t have the capacity to do that” are good because they close the conversation immediately and set clear expectations.
Saying “Maybe, let me think about it”, “I’m busy right now, perhaps when I’m done with this thing I’m doing”, or “I can’t do it right now, I’ll put it on the list” and hoping the request will go away almost always causes damage to the very relationship you want to preserve. Phrases like this inadvertently set expectations. What the requestor hears is “Yes, I’ll do this for you, you just need to wait a short time before I can get to your request.” They think you have committed to doing the job or that you will come back to them if you discover you can’t.
Not every attempt at saying ‘no’ will work. Sometimes you might still end up fulfilling the request that you don’t want to do. Sometimes you might be able to negotiate an alternate arrangement so that it’s easier to say ‘yes’ for mutual benefit. Sometimes the best answer is actually to say ‘yes’. However if you don’t assess the situation and speak up for yourself then you will never be able to improve your situation and preserve the relationships you desire to keep.
REFERENCES
American Psychological Association. (2006). Multitasking: Switching costs. Retrieved 18 February 2023 from https://www.apa.org/topics/research/multitasking
Harvard Study of Adult Development. (2015). Welcome to the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Retrieved 18 February 2023 from https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/
Lencioni, P. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team a leadership fable (1st ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Mineo, L. (2017). Good genes are nice, but joy is better. Harvard University. Retrieved 18 February 2023 from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/
Waldinger, R. (2016). What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness, TED. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KkKuTCFvzI