The Subtle Art of Saying No

ALISON BEARD:  Welcome to HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review.  I’m Alison Beard.

Whether you’re a CEO, a midlevel manager or even an intern, I’ll bet that a lot of your workday is about fielding requests.  People asking you to weigh in on a decision, join a team, help out on a project, give them a promotion or raise.  In today’s show, we’re focusing in on the answers to those questions, knowing when to say yes and how to say no.

For many of us, it can feel hard to say no, particularly coworkers and bosses, particularly to coworkers and bosses, even when we’re extremely busy and really can’t fit another thing on our plates.  Or maybe you’re one of those people who says no too often, as a kneejerk reaction because you’re swamped or a little afraid of taking on a challenge.

Our guest today has studied how the most successful executives evaluate all the requests being thrown at them and figure out how to respond.  He says that people who learn how to decide on, and give the strategic yes or a well-reasoned no are the ones that build the best careers.

Bruce Tulgan is the founder and CEO of RainmakerThinking.  He wrote the book The Art of Being Indispensable at Work and the HBR article, “Learn To Say No.”  Bruce, thanks so much for being on the show.

BRUCE TULGAN:  Thank you so much for having me.

ALISON BEARD: So let’s start with a problem.  Why do so many of us say yes too often, and hesitate to say no?

BRUCE TULGAN:  Well, everybody in the workplace wants to be that indispensable go-to person.  Everybody wants to prove their value.  And especially right now, when we’re in crisis, when businesses are in jeopardy, when people are losing their jobs.  I think more than ordinary times, people really want to make sure that they’re proving their value, and that they, so they’re afraid to say no.  People want to say yes because they don’t want to disappoint.  They feel like they can’t say no, even though they know they can’t say yes to everyone and everything.  I think people feel like they’re so desperate to demonstrate their value, they’re afraid to say no.

ALISON BEARD:  And what about the people who do say no maybe too often?  Why is that a mistake?

BRUCE TULGAN:  Well, what happens is that if you keep saying yes, yes, yes to everyone and everything, eventually you find yourself overcommitted. Ysou’re juggling.  You’re working constantly.  You’re probably disappointing people.  You start to get frustrated.  There are delays and mistakes.  Relationships suffer.  And pretty soon what happens is, you start to feel like you’re under siege.  You get what I call “siege mentality”.  And then you start saying no, not because of the quality of the request or the opportunity or the person involved, but because you feel overwhelmed, and because you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not making the best decisions from the standpoint of the business and your career.  I mean, look, some people say no just because they’re lazy and they’re trying to avoid work.  I don’t think those people are listening to this podcast.

ALISON BEARD:  So, it’s mostly the people who are overextended, and they’re saying no because they’ve said yes too many times before and haven’t been thinking strategically about this whole process.

BRUCE TULGAN:  Yeah.  Every bad yes crowds out a much better yes.  And just as every well-reasoned, well-timed no makes room for a better yes, because you know, yes is where all the action is.

ALISON BEARD:  Right.  Tell me what you mean by a bad yes.

BRUCE TULGAN:  A bad yes is, if somebody asks you to do something, and you really cannot do it. Maybe it’s because you don’t have the skill or the knowledge or the natural ability, or you simply don’t have the productive capacity.  But you say yes because in the moment you want to please.  That’s a bad yes because if you can’t do it, you’ll be known for your failure to deliver.  Yes takes time and energy.  Yes raises people’s expectations.  Yes is a commitment.  If you don’t deliver, or you deliver the wrong thing, that’s what you will be known for.

ALISON BEARD:  You mentioned the need to please.  How do people who fall into that trap get over it?

BRUCE TULGAN:  Well, you’ve got to play the longer game.  Think about your reputation.  That’s the long game.  Think about outcomes.  That’s the intermediate game.  In the moment of the transaction, where somebody’s asking you something, you want to respect their need.  You want to respect their request.  You want to show that you’re service minded.  But that doesn’t mean saying yes automatically.

ALISON BEARD:  So we’re trying to move from bad yesses and bad nos to good yesses and good nos.  How have you seen people do that?  What does the process look like?

BRUCE TULGAN:  Well, there are a lot of ways to look at it.  In the day to day experience of most people, so much of the conversations that go on at work are about making requests of each other.  So much of what we have to say to each other is asking.  There’s so much asking. What we see as the best practice is, tune into the ask.  Ask questions of the ask.  Pay attention to the ask.  When somebody makes a request of you, start taking notes.  Start asking good questions.  Help them fine tune.  Let me make sure I understand exactly what you need here.  When do you need it?  How do you need it?  Why do you need it?

So when you start to do that, you make it clear to somebody that you’re really tuning in and giving due diligence to their request.  That’s how to honor somebody else’s needs.  And frankly, you want to evaluate the quality of that opportunity for you and the appropriateness of that opportunity in terms of what you know how to do, what you do best. It’s a process of aligning your ability to add value with the needs of your colleagues.

ALISON BEARD:  So that does seem like a pretty onerous process for every single request that comes at you, especially because we’re talking about how busy everyone is and how much collaborative overload there is in organizations.  So do you really need to do it for every single thing that’s put on your plate?

BRUCE TULGAN:  Yeah, you need to develop the habit.  Right?  So that doesn’t mean that if somebody asks you for a paper clip, you turn that into a complicated proposal process.  But it might mean, you say, wait a minute, a paper clip, now do you mean a big one or a small one?  Do you mean one of those black ones with the heavy hinge?  Or do you mean just a little paper clip?  Right?  Because otherwise that happens is, you give them a paper clip, and they say, no, no, that’s not what I need.

ALISON BEARD:  So writ large you need to do that intake memo and figure out exactly what the person is asking you for, and whether you can satisfy their need.  But then how do you decide when you have a lot of competing requests, all of which seem legit, all of which you could handle?  How do you make a decision about which ones you say yes to and which ones you don’t?

BRUCE TULGAN:  Well, you have to start with the assumption that you can’t do everything for everyone.  So what you’re trying to do every step of the way is add maximum value.  So in the conversation add maximum value by helping the person understand exactly, make sure they understand exactly what they need from you and where you fit in with that need.  Make sure you understand that.

What you’re really trying to do is allocate your time and energy.  Or help them find another person or another resource or do some of the work of helping you help them while you set aside that productive capacity.  So it’s really a due diligence process.  What I tell people is, get in the habit of the intake memo.  Get in the habit of taming the ask.  Get in the habit of stopping, even no matter how small an ask is, and figure out, is it as small as it seems?  And is it everything it seems?  Or is it much, much bigger?  Try to understand.

Step two is, put it through a very simple due diligence process.  You know, in project review or in complex cross-functional project management, there’s a gate review process.  And so you have proof of concept, and then you start to move the project along through various stage gates.  And as making a decision, I call them the no gates.

And it’s very simple.  Can you do this?  Are you allowed to do this?  And then should you do this?  Once you process a need through this evaluative set of questions, you get a lot more clarity, and you get yourself in the habit of making much better decisions.

ALISON BEARD:  And then we move on to communicating the decision.  So, how do you carefully tell people either yes or no, in a way that positions you for success,?

BRUCE TULGAN:  You know, look, nobody wants to hear no.  Sometimes people say, oh, you’ve got to learn how to say no.  Do you?  Because how do you sugarcoat no?  It’s still no.  So there’s a few ways that you put yourself in a position to say no.  One is the longer term.  Your reputation.  That when Alison says no, I take it for granted that no is the right answer, because Alison has a reputation for making good decisions.  Right?  Alison doesn’t have a reputation for avoiding work.  Alison doesn’t have a reputation for making promises she can’t deliver.  And Alison doesn’t have a reputation for saying no when yes was the right answer.

See, you want to be that person who, when you say no, I say, well, probably no is the right answer.  I’d better go back and fine tune my ask.  The second part of it is, in the moment, one of the reasons to really pay attention to the ask, and ask questions of the ask, is because that shows somebody that you are paying attention.

And then if you explain why you’re saying no, why this is a good time to say no, because you cannot do it, you’re not allowed to do it, or because on balance it really should not take priority, then I think it’s much easier for people to hear that, because you’re making a good business decision.  Often the right answer is, not yet.  Or well, no, the way you’re framing it, but you could come back and reframe it, and the answer might be yes.  Or sometimes the answer is, yes, in two weeks.  And what you’re really trying to do is set yourself up for really good yesses.

ALISON BEARD:  And a good yes has to be communicated well, also.

BRUCE TULGAN:  Yeah, I mean, yes is the start of a collaboration. When you say yes, you want people to take that to the bank.  And that means yes with a plan, yes with focused execution.  Now, look, if you’re strategic, you want to concentrate your yesses around your areas of specialty, the things you’re best at, the things that you do very well, very fast, with great confidence.

When somebody comes to you, and you say, that’s my specialty, that’s in my wheelhouse, what you really want to do is move more and more and more of your requests into your areas of specialty.  So you want to know what you want to be known for.  The very best yes is either something you already know how to do very well, very fast, with great confidence, and you know exactly how to deliver and exactly how long it’s going to take.

Or maybe the next best yes is something where you could say, that’s not my specialty, but I would love to develop a new specialty.  I need to be totally transparent with you.  I’ve never done that before.  Or I’ve only done that once or twice.  In any case, that’s not my specialty.  But if you have the time, I’d love to get better at that.  I’d love to dig into that, and make that one of my new specialties.

ALISON BEARD:  So many times when I say no, I feel like because I don’t think the project is worthwhile, or I can’t contribute, but it’s just that I personally don’t have the time for, or I’m not particularly interested in it.  So how do I get that message across without seeming like I’m slacking or not a team player?

BRUCE TULGAN:  Well, I think to say, you know, everybody says, you’re not my boss.  That’s not my job.  I don’t have to do that.  Right?  Nobody says that out loud. But I think the right thing to say is, that’s not my specialty.  You know, to say, I’ve got too much on my plate, at this point, I don’t think that that’s, I don’t think that carries a lot of weight anymore.

Everyone has too much to do and not enough time.  I think what you have to do is try to add value in the conversation.  By adding, what I mean by that is, try to navigate the conversation in such a way that you demonstrate what you can do, what is your specialty, and the best thing you can do usually is steer them to another resource.  Now, look, it depends a lot on how much authority you have in relation to the person asking.

ALISON BEARD:  Well, that’s my next question.  Power dynamics are at play here.  Right?  It’s very hard to say no to your boss asking you to do something.

BRUCE TULGAN:  Yeah, and good news.  Not everything’s up to you. You know, do I say yes or no?  No need to consider the matter.  I’m your boss.  The answer is yes.  What I always tell people is, you have to have a vertical anchor.  Your vertical anchor, no matter how much we flatten power in the workplace, no matter how much we try to remove hierarchical dynamics, no matter how much we try to get people collaborating, somebody is in charge.  And that can be very liberating.

So, I think what you have to do is have an ongoing dialog with your leader, manager, supervisor, so that whoever you report to knows exactly what your priorities are, what your areas of strength are, but that doesn’t mean you only work in your area of passion and strength, because quite frankly, who’s going to do all the work then?  So you know, I only want to work in my area of passion and strength.  Is that right?  Well, you know, sorry, this needs to get done, too.

ALISON BEARD:  Right.

BRUCE TULGAN:  So sometimes it’s just not up to you.  But once you have that vertical anchor, once you know what’s not up to you, then that leads, you know what is up to you?  Everything else.

ALISON BEARD:  When I do say yes, particularly if it’s a yes I didn’t jump at, how do I make sure that I get credit for it?  You know, because it seems like the success of your strategy lies not in how many times you’re saying yes or no, but a general perception that you’re someone who helps out when asked, when they can contribute.  So how do you make sure that that yes has the maximum impact that you want it to?

BRUCE TULGAN:  Yeah, Alison, that is the platinum question, because in my view, it is not about perception.  It’s about execution.  And if you say yes at the wrong time and say at the wrong time, the reason you’re undermining your career in the intermediate term, and ultimately your reputation in the longer term, is because you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage in terms of executing tangible results with your name on them.

Every good yes is a chance to deliver value, execute tangible results with your name on them.  And when you say yes to something you can’t do, or you’re not allowed to do, or you really shouldn’t do, then you put yourself in a position where either you’re not going to deliver, or you’re going to deliver something that isn’t that valuable.  So when you say no in the short term, that’s the perception problem.  Right?  But in terms of the actual outcomes, you are so much better off having the short-term perception that, OK, you’re being difficult.  No, you’re not being difficult.  What you’re doing is, you’re making a good business decision.

ALISON BEARD:  And you’ve found that people understand that? You know, you’ve seen executives that you’ve worked with adopt this strategy and be respected for it?

BRUCE TULGAN:  The people I see over and over and over again who say yes, yes, yes, yes, are overpromising.  Sometimes they’re generous fools.  They really want to do it.  They just don’t.  And sometimes they’re overpromising.  They want to impress somebody in the moment, but then they’ve taken on more than they can deliver.  That is the kiss of death.

The people who are most successful are the ones who are looking around the corner at how this is going to turn out.  They’re the ones who are looking around the corner at, you know, the reason I’m going to say no is because this is a wild goose chase.  The reason I’m going to say no is because I’m going to try to start doing this, and it’s not going to go well.  The reason I’m going to say no is, even if I do this, down the line, people up the chain of command are going to say, what the heck did you do this for?  And you didn’t do A, B, C and D.  You did Q.  Why?

The people who are most successful are the ones who do the right things for the right reasons.  What you choose to do is a huge business decision every step of the way.  It’s how you use your time.  Yeah, you can take this to the bank.  Bite the bullet in the moment.  Save your time and energy.  It’s all about the work you execute.  Don’t get caught up in the perception.  Get caught up in, what you’re trying to do is set yourself up for success.  You want to be someone whom your colleagues know they can rely on.

And so, look, if somebody comes to me and says, hey, I have a cracked tooth, can you fix my tooth, right, now, that’s an extreme example, but I’d say, well, that’s ridiculous.  I’m not a dentist.  Good news.  I know a dentist.  Right?  And you know, and in fact, I know how to drive, and I know where the dentist is.  I have a phone.  I’d be happy to set that up for you.  But if I sit you down and try to fix your tooth, in the moment he’s like, oh, wow, Bruce is going to fix my tooth.  Well, that’s not going to go well.

ALISON BEARD:  Yes, I will not ask you to be my dentist.  So I do want to ask specifically about the current situation that we’re in, in mid-2020, pandemic quarantines, a lot of virtual work.  A lot of us are feeling really burnt out, particularly in the US, and we want to say no to more things.  But you just said, you know, saying I have too much on my plate isn’t really cutting it.  What advice do you have?

BRUCE TULGAN:  Well, look.  Every step of the way, you want to say to yourself, I’ve got 168 hours in a week.  I need to sleep 56 of them, or I’m going to be bad shape.  That leaves me 112 hours.  Right now I’m not commuting.  OK, that’s great.  I’ve got family.  You know, OK, I’ve got 100 hours.  I’m still grooming.  OK, I’ve got 95 hours.  I’ve got to eat.  I’ve 90 hours.  Whatever it is, however much time you’re willing to allocate, you need to know that, and then you want to make the very best use of that time.  Every time somebody comes to you, my advice is, you say, oh, OK, I have four hours next Thursday that are still unaccounted for.  Oh, I have three hours tomorrow that I could allocate.  Oh, I have 2 ½ hours on Saturday.  I’m going to work, and you know, I can do it then.

What you want to do is not talk about all the things you’re not going to do for people.  You want to talk about all the things you are going to do for people, and you want to be very, very specific about, OK, you’re asking me to do something.  You’re signaling how busy you are.  You’re signaling how rigorously you’re managing your schedule.  And you’re signaling how you think about your time and your productive capacity.

ALISON BEARD:  So this is one part of being indispensable at work.  Good yesses, good nos.  What are some of the other key strategies that you’ve found in your research that really boost people in their careers?

BRUCE TULGAN:  Yeah, well, what led me to the reimagining of yes and no was, this sense that everybody’s overcommitted, that people are feeling out of control, that people are feeling subject to so many factors outside their control, and they’re feeling so overcommitted, and they’re feeling at risk.

And so what I was looking at is, OK, and people feel like they don’t have the authority in the workplace, as you say, the power dynamics.  Well, I don’t have the authority.  So it has become conventional wisdom that if you don’t have authority you have to use influence.

And I started investigating that assumption.  And what I realized was that that assumption is leading a lot of people to a fundamental misunderstanding of influence – that they’re thinking of influence as something short of authority you use to get what you need out of other people.  And it’s influence peddling.  Right?  It’s a perversion of the concept of influence.

It’s, if you don’t have authority, you have to use influence.  OK, so I’m going to use some stand in for authority to try to get what I need from other people.  The thing is, when you do that, so you badger them, you bribe them, you offer quid pro quos, you threaten to withhold, implicitly or explicitly your support for them.  You go over their head.  You bake brownies, whatever you do.

Every time you try to use influence, you lose influence.  Right?  Because if real influence is when other people want to work with you, when other people trust you, when other people have confidence in you, other people want you to be successful, when other people want to make good use of your time.

So what I began to realize as I was investigating this question, and looking at all these people who over and over and over again show up on the lists of, who were your go to people?  Who were the people you have the most confidence in?  Who are the people you least want to disappoint?  And what in found over and over again was, those people are not focused on getting what they need from other people.  Those people are focused on serving others.  On what do I bring to the table?  What can I do for you?

And what I realized was, the people who are truly committed to service are willing to have that perception in the moment that they’re saying no.  They’re willing to have that perception in the moment that they’re being difficult.  They’re wiling to have that perception in the moment that they’re making a decision about how to allocate their time in relation to your needs.  They’re so committed to service that they know they absolutely cannot say yes to everyone and everything.  They’re so committed to service that they see their time and energy as a critical resource to give others, and they want to allocate it carefully.

ALISON BEARD:  Good.  Well, that’s all great advice for our listeners.  Thank you so much for joining me today.

BRUCE TULGAN:  Thank you so much for having me.

ALISON BEARD:  That’s Bruce Tulgan, CEO of RainmakerThinking.  He’s the author of The Art of Being Indispensable at Work, as well as the HBR article, “Learn To Say No”.  You can find it in the September/October 2020 issue of Harvard Business Review, or at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Mary Dooe.  We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt.  Adam Buchholz is our audio product manager.  Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast.  I’m Alison Beard.