Whether it’s the boss or a colleague asking, saying no has always been hard for me, no matter the personal costs. At one point in my career, it was impossible. Around the turn of the century, I had tickets to see Cheap Trick at the 9:30 Club. Then, someone asked if I could stay late to help with Project X. “Sure, you bet.” Never saw Cheap Trick. Still haven’t. Those tickets are in my top dresser drawer, faded and bent. Thankfully, we made it through 2016 without losing any of them . . . but we’re all getting older, and Bun E. Carlos is no longer with ‘em. Oh well. One skill I’ve never developed is the ability to say no effectively, with poise and grace and finality.
LOGIC OF NO
When it comes to asking a colleague or employee to come in early, stay late, work on a weekend, there’s some implicit valuation going on. Being asked to spend your “off” time, your personal time—especially without offering up-front overtime pay or compensatory time . . . in other words, expecting work for free—establishes that the work in question is more valuable that whatever it was you had planned, from exercise to spending time with the family to . . . seeing Cheap Trick (and nobody really wants to hear why seeing Cheap Trick is so personally important to you).
Under certain circumstances, which appropriately increase proportionally to how high you are up the pay scale working in the rarified air, working early or late or on the weekends is expected. Especially if you’re a salaried employee. Still, sometimes, no is the right answer. We all deserve predictability in our lives, unless we’re in a combat zone.
The question, then, is how can I say no comfortably, in a way that’s more . . . acceptable to the office balance of power?
A POWERFUL MAGIC WORD
CNN contributor and life coach Mel Robbins has some words of wisdom worth considering. Robbins understand how saying no can incite personal guilt, even if there are a host of good and respectable personal and professional reasons to do it. “I intrinsically understand why saying no is important,” Robbins explains, “but I still struggle with my ability to do it.” Robbins then refers to some Boston College research the explains “that it’s not only important . . . to learn how to say no, it’s actually essential that we learn how to say it so that we set ourselves up for success.”
Ah, success. Yes. Good for everyone.
The magic word is don’t. Rather than answering a petition by saying “I can’t do something,” Robbins explains—which leaves us open for further debate, for discussions on how we can “make it happen,”—answering by saying “I don’t” is both final (pretty final . . . someone could argue why you should) and more acceptable and understandable. It’s almost a matter of principle.
“When you’re saying ‘I can’t,’ you’re basically saying ‘I’d like to, but . . .” Robbins says. No matter to what you’re saying no, “there’s room for negotiation.” Whether it’s someone asking you to miss your kid’s ballgame to help on a project or a guy asking you to buy an umbrella on the corner—the person making the request is open “to try to change your mind.”
NO PRACTICE
Saying no, no thanks, whatever the right answer is effectively, convincingly, and confidently—indeed, we should be convincing and confident because, presumably, there’s a good reason for saying no—takes practice. And I think I’m going to have to work through the logic and implications of it myself. But according to Robbins, “There’s huge power,” she says, “in not only saying no, but in learning how to say, ‘I don’t,’ when you say no.”
I think that magic word can’t may very well have been the missing nuance in Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No campaign. Of course, Just Say “I Don’t” doesn’t have that same, oh, I don’t know, je ne sais quoi.
Have a great weekend.
