Technical Influence

Technical Influence Module: Saying “No” Effectively

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Welcome to this training and development module on Saying “No” Effectively. It's part of the growing library of skills modules available at www.technicalinfluence.com. We help you to develop the abilities that will make the difference to your success at work. You develop new skills that will give you the edge over other technically oriented colleagues and organisations.

Our objective here is to help you to manage your workload. You need the ability to say “No” when you offered new tasks or projects, just as you need the ability to say “Yes”.

1.  Why would I want to learn about Saying “No” Effectively?

This is a vital skill for anyone who wants to influence their own workload. It’s all about being able and confident to decline an offer to take on more work. Here are some ways in which this skill could make a difference for you:

• You retain some control over the tasks that you take on.
• You acknowledge the limitations of your time and resources.
• You are able to focus on the tasks that will contribute most and use your skills best.
• Colleagues will think more clearly about a task before offering it to you.
• You are prompted to understand your role – to decide when to say Yes and when to say No.
• You demonstrate to yourself (and others) your decisiveness, self esteem, concern for standards, and ability to manage. 

2. How are we going to do this?

We’ll introduce you to a series of “No” tactics that have proven to be useful for other technical folks. For each one, we’ll explain how it works and give some examples of how it could be used in practice. This should give you some ideas on how you could use any of these techniques in your own workload management situations.

3.  What is Saying “No” Effectively” all about?

There are many different ways of saying “No”, which will be suitable for a variety of situations – saying “No” to requests to do different sorts of work for different people.

Having a variety of “No” tactics in your toolkit will give you the best chance of getting the right result from your work discussion. The “right result” might be that you don’t take on the work. But it could be that you take on the work with important concessions or conditions in place. Your initial “No” could be a first step toward the sort of “Yes” that you want.

Note that we’re not suggesting you always say “No”, just as it’s senseless to passively say “Yes” to every request. The right balance of “Yes” and “No” will be very beneficial – and we’ll talk more about striking that balance elsewhere under the topic of managing your workload. A later module will cover influential ways of saying “Yes”. We cover “No” first, because we have found this to be the greater challenge for many of the people we’ve worked with.

4.  How it works – Concepts and Examples

Here are some alternative ways of saying “No” when offered an additional task or project. Some will be more appropriate than others for you and your work situations. Do experiment with them and make adaptations – it is helpful to have a choice of tactics available.

4.1  No – pure and simple.

A short, simple statement is often the most effective way of saying “No”. It conveys your message clearly and effectively. No whining excuses.  No long explanations.  No wriggling.  No apology.  Just No.

• “No, I’m not able to do that right now.”
• “No, Julie, I can’t take that project on.”
• “No, that will not be possible for me.”  

This sort of honesty and directness may be refreshingly new to you and your colleagues. Do show empathy for the requester. Only if they ask for it, give as much of an explanation as seems appropriate.

Many people feel uncomfortable with such a short, direct “No”. It seems very unhelpful on its own. You can express regret, or add a further sentence if necessary, but don’t get drawn into a long discussion.

• “Sorry, I’m not able to do that right now.”
• “No, Julie, I can’t take that project on. I’m over-committed as it is.”
• “No, that will not be possible for me. Have you tried asking Courtney?”
  

4.2  Conditional No

A slightly softer No is the conditional one. You are declining the task, unless some new condition can be met.

This tactic can assist you in securing the support you need were you to take on the task:

• “No, Alex, I can’t take on that programming work, unless you can find someone to do the specifications for me.
• “No, that won’t be possible, unless you can get me 3 weeks of virtual network time.”
• “Sorry, Jim, I just can’t work that much database activity onto my weekly schedule, unless you can persuade Mike to do the regular backups for me.”

The conditional No might be equivalent to “Definitely No” – if it’s not feasible or worthwhile meeting your conditions:

• “No, Jasmine, I can’t do those upgrades today, unless you can take over these PC rebuilds right now and get them all done by 3pm.”
• “Sorry, Arnold, I won’t be able to be technical lead on the Blakey project, unless you can find someone to do my specialist work on the Timmons application.”

The conditional “No” can lead to a thorough exploration of how important the new task really is. If it’s very important, then your colleague may find ways to meet your conditions, or suggest another way to get it done.  This is helpful because it means you’re taking on a genuinely valued piece of work.

4.3  Conditional Yes-     “Yes, if…”

This is a bit like the conditional “No”.

You are agreeing to the theoretical possibility of taking on the task, and highlighting the conditions that are needed for this to become reality. 

Again, if the conditions are implausible or impossible to meet, you are in effect saying “No”.

• “Yes, I can lead the security review team, if you can take on all my responsibilities on Project Sidewinder.” 
• “Yes, I pass it on to you tomorrow morning if you don’t mind an incomplete job.”
• “Yes, I can do it by tomorrow, if you can let me have five of your operators this morning to collect the data.”
• “Yes, I will do it by next week, if you will personally guarantee to complete for me these other tasks to which I’m already committed.”
• “Sure I can do that repair for you, just as soon as you’ve logged the issue with the Service Desk.”

Beware – some very pushy managers have very selective hearing. Some might switch off as soon as they hear your “Yes”, and talk all over your “if…”.  So you are just left with “Yes”, in effect. For managers like this, you would be better off starting your reply with a statement of the conditions, followed b the “Yes” that they would enable.  So you might rephrase a couple of the examples, above as:

• If, and only if, you can let me have five of your operators this morning, then I can do it for you by tomorrow."
• If you don't mind an incomplete job, then I can certainly pass it on to you tomorrow morning.

4.4  Statement of belief…

This tactic is like verbal Judo. It neatly sidesteps the request with an unspoken assumption that somebody else will do the task. You never acknowledge any possibility of you doing the proposed work. You follow up with a nudge in the direction of the right person.

• “Max, I have every faith in your ability to do that yourself.”
• “Yes, that does look like an interesting task, and I can see why you wanted my advice on it. I can give you five minutes right now, which will allow you to get on with your first steps right away.”
• “Have you spoken with Mr Roach? I believe that he will be able to advise you even better than I can.”
• “Philly, I believe that the Accounts Dept. have the remit for that kind of work.”

4.5  Invoke a third party or a policy

This “No” comes not from you, but from somebody or something else. It’s potentially a bit soft  - you’re expressing something like “I’d love to help you, but I can’t because of this authority.”

This can be very effective, but there are risks. The requester may go to the authority and persuade them to make an exception. Or they might argue that the work is more important that the policy. So try it out, but use a much clearer, firmer “No” if you possibly can. Here are some examples:

• “No- Mr Timmons has asked me not to take on any more data entry work until I’ve catalogued these mid-cretaceous Hansard samples.”
• “No, I can’t do it right now. All work needs to go through the system. Make a request to the Service Desk, and we’ll get it done very soon.”
• “No- my team’s priority this quarter is implementing the Adderley project. We will not be taking on anything else until July.”
• “I have a personal policy of only accepting tasks that I can take on whole-heartedly and complete to a high standard. For that reason, I have to decline your offer.”

• You will be influential to the extent that you can apply different tactics in a variety of situations.
• Experiment with as many of these techniques as you are comfortable with.
• You will need to match the style of “No” to the sort of person you are dealing with, and the culture of the organisation you’re working in. 

We hope that you find these tactics helpful. The full version of this module is available to technicalinfluence.com members. It gives even more ideas, plus an action-plan that you can use convert ideas into performance even more quickly.