CHAPTER 9
How to say ‘NO’
Being able to say ‘NO’ whenever you choose to, comfortably, requires two characteristics. The first is a thick skin. Saying ‘NO’ can elicit an adverse reaction, no matter how well you do it. If you do it well, a common reaction is envy: people can be jealous of your ability to say ‘NO’ effectively.
However, the most important thing to bear in mind is that, while saying ‘yes’ will make you popular, it will not always win you respect. If you go back to the meaning of NO, a Noble Objection, it will help you to remember this important distinction and make saying ‘NO’ as comfortable as possible.
The second characteristic you need is a relentless focus on what is important to you. You only have one life, so you need the wisdom to know what you want from it, and the determination to remain goal-directed in your choices.
To support your willingness and determination, this chapter offers you techniques to help you say ‘NO’ well.
How to say ‘NO’ with grace
The perfect outcome to saying ‘NO’ would be that both you and the person you say it to feel more than comfortable with your choice; you both feel good about it. There is no shadow of bitterness from the other person and you feel no grain of remorse. How can you achieve that? In a moment, we’ll look at a four-step process you can follow, but before we do, I’d like you to understand the essential underlying principle. I’ve discussed it before, particularly when we examined the types of Gopher and the psychology of NO. That principle is ‘respect’.
Nature of assertiveness
Saying ‘NO’ is the ultimate in assertiveness: you are asserting your right to choose how you use your time. And assertiveness is founded upon respect. Let’s remind ourselves of three behaviour types.
- Aggressive behaviour: Aggressive behaviour is characterised by putting yourself first and demanding that your needs be met – rather than asking and then listening to the response. It focuses on beating the other person, to whom it shows little or no respect.
You may feel that people have no right to ask you to help. It’s as if they don’t care about what is important to you, so you react aggressively.
- Passive behaviour: When you are passive, you are prepared to subordinate your own legitimate needs and desires to those of others. You are afraid to disagree, find it hard to put your own point of view, and feel guilty about saying ‘no’. In doing so, you are showing little or no respect for yourself. Passive behaviour is focused on not getting hurt.
You may feel like you have no right to say ‘NO’ because other people’s needs are more important than yours. You respond with a timid ‘yes’.
- Assertive behaviour: Assertive behaviour is confident, collaborative and wholly respectful of yourself and of others. It allows you to say what you think and feel, to be sincere, and to focus on getting the best results by overcoming barriers.
You recognise people’s right to make requests of you and you have a clear understanding of what is important to you, so you give a confident ‘YES’ or ‘NO’, depending on the circumstances.
Truly assertive behaviour is motivated by honest intention and is mediated by courtesy and openness. Let’s look at a four-step process that can achieve this.
Four-step process
The four steps we will discover are:
- make a robust choice so that your intent is honest
- confidently and courteously say ‘NO’
- offer a reason for your NO
- suggest some alternatives, if you are able.
Step 1: Robust choice
Your first response to any request must be to acknowledge it. To not do so is rude, it can cause friction and invites the other person to mind-read that you do not respect them enough to respond. Indeed, in respecting them, you must also acknowledge to yourself that, no matter how inconvenient the request may seem, they do have the right to make it. But so do you have the right to respond as you choose… if it is a genuine request, rather than an instruction or a command.
So you need to decide how to respond. For that, use the SCOPE process that is fully described in Chapter 6:
Stop for a moment
Clarify the request
Organise your thoughts
Proceed with your response
Evaluate the outcomes later
Step 2: Confident NO
A confident NO is polite yet firm. You don’t need to be defensive, but if you are genuinely sorry that you cannot say ‘YES’, then say so. What you must do is take responsibility for your choice by using the word ‘I’ – ‘I am unable to do this…’ or ‘I would rather not…’. If, instead, you seek to blame your NO on someone else, or on circumstances, you will sound weak and will not win the other person’s respect. Rather than say, ‘My boss has given me work that is more important…’, say, ‘I need to prioritise the work my boss has given me.’ Instead of, ‘There’s so much on my plate at the moment…’, say, ‘I have a lot on my plate, so I need to give all my attention to that.’
Nothing betrays a lack of confidence as clearly as your body language, so ensure that all of the signals you give out are fully aligned. Your voice should be firm and steady, neither too loud (defensive) nor too quiet (passive). Speak slowly and stop at the end of your sentence. Look the person in the eye and give a small shake of your head to reinforce the NO. Stand or sit straight, and position your body square on to the person you are speaking with.
You don’t have to be brutal or brusque to be assertive and confident. There are gentler ways, too, which you can use to tone down your NO. For example, you could spell out the circumstances and let the other person come to the conclusion for you: ‘I have a lot on my plate, and I need to make sure that it all gets done to a high standard by the end of the week…’
Gentler still is to make the other person feel what it is like to be you: ‘Do you remember that time last month when you were up to your eyes and people kept asking you for help… and how eventually you had to just say no and hunker down?’
And if those fail, an appeal to either their vanity – ‘As you know…’ – or their better natures – ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t want to …’ – may well help you out.
Step 3: Powerful ‘because’
Of all the things that can soften a NO, nothing does it as powerfully as one word: ‘because’. When we hear the word ‘because’ it seems to trigger a response in our brain that says, ‘Oh, there’s a good reason. That’s OK then.’ Experiments by Ellen Langer, Arthur Blank and Benzion Chanowitz in the late 1970s showed that we are more prepared to grant concessions when the request is accompanied by ‘because…’ – as long as the concession is not too great. So try saying, ‘No, I am not able to help you with that, because…’
Of course, it is important that your ‘because’ gives a real reason, not an excuse. Clearly, you are a person of the highest integrity and would never use a fake reason. Even if you were prepared to, however, your body language would almost certainly hint at your duplicity. Even if the other person could not pick it up consciously, they could easily be left with an uncomfortable feeling that you are being evasive. That’s not respectful and it will not win you the trust or respect you want.
Why does ‘because’ matter? It matters because you care about the other person. So you can add emphasis to your ‘because’ by showing your empathy for them and their situation: ‘I am sorry I cannot help out this time because of… – even though I know how important it is to you.’
Be careful: a word as powerful as because is ‘but’. The word ‘but’ tells the listener that what they have just heard isn’t quite right and the truth is coming. So, when you hear, ‘I’d love to help out, but….’, you forget the empathy and focus on the ‘but’. Instead, try, ‘I can’t help out this time, but I would love to be able to next time.’
Step 4: Empowering alternatives
The ultimate approach to softening a NO is to genuinely soften the impact, not just the perception. You can do this by making a helpful suggestion for how the other person could get the help they need: when you could help, what else they could do, who else they could ask. When you give a real alternative alongside your NO, you are demonstrating that you really do care and that you want to help, by investing the time and effort to put some thought into the other person’s needs.
Creating an environment for NO
You can make a NO easier to give if you prepare the ground. You can do this in the near, medium and far distance.
Long range: a culture where NO is acceptable
Nothing says NO is OK as much as a track record of YES. But too much YES leads to an expectation that it is your only answer. A culture where NO is acceptable is one where people regularly help each other out and say ‘YES’ whenever they can – but also say ‘NO’ whenever they cannot say ‘YES’. Let’s take a very physical example: an ‘open door policy’.
In the old days of offices for managers and executives, an open door policy was seen as very forward-looking and staff-friendly. It said, ‘My door is open; come and ask me questions whenever you need to.’ It was the exact opposite of ‘My door is always shut. If you want to come and ask me something, you have to screw up your courage, knock, and wait until I summon you in.’
Doors have hinges: they open and close. If managers used their doors to indicate their openness to interruption, they could have it open most of the time to indicate that YES is their default position, but close it when they are overloaded with work, to indicate a temporary NO state.
In the world of open-plan offices, this doesn’t work. So, I once made a sign for myself, which I put on my desk saying ‘It’s okay to disturb me.’
Every now and then, I’d put it face down. The first time I did this, one of my team said:
‘Mike, your sign’s fallen over.’
‘No it hasn’t,’ I replied, ‘I turned it over on purpose.’
Most work environments are busy places and everybody has their job to do. These days, there is no scope for slack, so we must both help each other out and be allowed to get on with our own work sometimes. How you handle this challenge creates an important aspect of your workplace culture.
Middle distance: setting up the conditions for tomorrow’s NO
There have been times when I have had meeting after meeting, back-to-back, all day and every day. It’s easy to say ‘NO’ in those circumstances. So when you carve out some time for creative, thinking, personal, relaxing activities, it comes as a relief. ‘My diary is clear this morning’, you think. ‘Good, I can get on with something valuable’.
Then someone comes along and, quite reasonably, asks you if you have an hour to help them out. Reluctantly, thinking of your pristine, blank diary page, you acknowledge that you don’t have any commitments. You say ‘Yes’.
Wrong
Of course you had a commitment. It was to yourself, but a commitment none the less. So when you determine how you are going to use your time, to pursue goal-directed activities, you must recognise these as commitments and the easiest way to do that is to schedule your time by putting those goal-directed tasks into your diary as formal commitments.
‘Have you got an hour to help me out with this?’
‘No, I am sorry. I am committed.’
Immediate proximity: making NO seem inevitable
What if you could say ‘NO’ before someone even asked the question? If you do that, how can they take offence? They didn’t ask you, so you couldn’t know what they were going to ask, so it is not as if you don’t want to help, so they ask someone else.
To do this, you need great antennae. Pick up the hints from body language, listen for conversations in the other room, be aware of what is going on, check the caller ID before you answer the phone.
‘Hey Jules, good to see you. I was hoping for a chance to chat, but I haven’t had a chance to pop over to see you because I have been so busy today… and now I am racing to get all of this done by 5.30, because I simply have to get away on time tonight. Anyway, is there something I can do for you?’
Now, if you were Jules, how would you rate your chances? ‘Oh, nothing much,’ Jules would reply, ‘I just thought I’d drop by, but, as you’re busy, it can wait.’ Yet, Jules couldn’t help but be impressed by my offer to help despite my busy-ness.
Handling manipulative and persistent behaviour
Saying ‘NO’ gets difficult when the other person decides that, because it is not the answer they want, they will not accept it from you. It is aggressive behaviour, which ranges in severity from persistence through manipulative to outright aggression. We will look at each one in turn.
Persistence
Persistence may not be aggressive in itself, but merely respectful perseverance. However, there will come a point where you have made your response clear, you have re-evaluated it respectfully, and you have reiterated your NO. At this point, persistence becomes disrespectful – effectively asserting that you are wrong, you should feel guilty, or you do not have the right to say NO. This is not, however, a reason for you to stop showing respect.
You need to match their persistence with yours, and gradually escalate your assertiveness.
- ‘NO’: Repeat your original reasons. Don’t feel the need to add extra reasons as these would indicate you are unsure of your ground and feel the need to strengthen your defence.
- ‘NO’: Acknowledge their arguments and stress that your previous answer and reasons hold – without restating your reasons.
- ‘I have said NO, and that stands’: Flag up your growing impatience calmly and confidently. Say no more. If you can emphasise the NO by slowing it down and allowing a falling intonation, that will give it more weight.
- ‘My answer is NO, and that’s final’: Now add in some body language. A downward movement of your hands, palms down, as you say ‘N.O.’, and a locking of your gaze onto theirs signals you mean business. If you sense they are about to ask again…
- ‘Now, I must be getting on with something else’: When you have finished your sentence, break eye contact and turn away. No more rapport. They would have to be socially inept to think they still have a chance.
Manipulation
Manipulation takes the form of tricks to try and get you to say yes. It is foolish really, because if I can get you to say yes against your will, you are going to feel regret – maybe even resentment and there is a good chance it will backfire on me.
Unfortunately, though, most manipulative behaviour is not calculated with any precision, but takes the form of ritualised games in which the requester and you get locked into familiar patterns. Many of us have been playing these games since childhood. Let’s examine one.
If it weren’t for you…
When you assertively make your Noble Objection, the requester blames you for preventing them from succeeding: ‘If it weren’t for you…’ You know this is wrong, and you challenge them on this – ‘You need to take responsibility for this yourself’ – and suddenly they become sullen or aggressive and accuse you of being aggressive.
There is no way to win this game. In fact, there is no way to win any of these games. The only thing you can do is recognise the manipulation as early as possible, and refuse to play. Below are lots more examples of manipulative games people play.
Manipulative games
How dare you…
Now, the requester takes an aggressive role. You say ‘NO’ and their response is, ‘How dare you… ?’, making you feel pretty small. If you get sucked into this game, you will find yourself either defending your decision or reversing it. A spirited defence will allow the other person to play victim and make you feel even worse. Getting out of this by reversing your decision may make you feel good for a short time, but will put you in their power.
Poor me
A bit like ‘If it weren’t for you…’, the ‘Poor me’ game allows the requester to play the role of a victim, casting you as a villain for doing nothing but asserting your legitimate choice. Again, you could give in to them, making this a successful manipulation, or you could challenge the behaviour giving them a cue to feel even more put-upon, or you could refuse to play and at least stop it escalating.
Blemish
In ‘Blemish’, the requester finds fault with you for saying NO: ‘You are always like this, you’re not supportive. You’re just not a team player.’ This makes you feel bad, of course. So again, you feel tempted to either challenge them (this allows them to cast you as aggressor) or try to prove them wrong by capitulating.
Are you starting to see how destructive these games are? One more…
Now I’ve got you…
The full title of this game betrays the vindictiveness of some of its players: ‘Now I’ve got you, you S.O.B.’ You say ‘no’, perfectly reasonably and the requester springs their trap: ‘Now I’ve got you. This proves you are…’. It proves nothing, of course, but once again, if you get dragged into either defence of acquiescence, you’ll only make it worse.
Stopping the game
The only way to get out of the game is to stop playing. Declare that you are both stuck in the game, and tell the other person you refuse to play: ‘It really does feel to me like we’ve been here before. We aren’t getting anywhere, except frustrating one another. I’d like to take some time out and rethink this and I suggest you do too. We need a fresh start.’
If they treat this as another move in the game, rather than the well intentioned opt-out it is, then politely decline to play, and leave.
Are you the manipulator?
It isn’t only the person asking for a favour or for some help who can initiate these kinds of games. You may find yourself shying away from an open and assertive ‘NO’ into a manipulative game to support an aggressive ‘no’. Here are four examples.
Let me show you
You want to make a firm, assertive NO, but you can’t bring yourself to do it, so you try to show them why their request is wrong in the first place: ‘Let me show you.’ This can make them feel small, while you lord it over them as the expert.
Instead of playing the game, say ‘NO’ and then offer them some advice: ‘I said NO because I think there is a better solution. Would you like to hear it?’ Remember, if you are being truly respectful, you will allow them to say ‘NO’ if they choose.
Why don’t you…
Rather like ‘Let me show you’, ‘Why don’t you…’ attempts to take control of the requester, but this time proposes an alternative, without being invited. It deflects the request and saves you from having to make a choice between yes and no.
Yes but…
Whilst it is absolutely reasonable to say ‘YES’ on your own terms, ‘Yes but…’ is really an attempt to manipulate the situation to avoid either a yes or a no. The interesting dynamic that ‘Yes but…’ can create is a whole series of inappropriate options that the requester can’t accept (because you don’t want to create the conditions for a true YES). When you run out of alternatives, they can then turn on you – ‘If it weren’t for you…’, for example – and you will be cast as the bad person.
Blemish (again)
We can all play at any of these games and most of us have turned our hand to most of them at some time in our lives. As an illustration of this point, let’s replay ‘Blemish’ from the other direction. Now it is you who find fault with the requester for asking for help in the first place. ‘You are always like this, you never do anything yourself. You’re always relying on me. It feels like you’re sucking me dry.’ This makes them feel bad, of course. But if they felt tempted to either challenge you or try to prove you wrong by withdrawing their request, then they would be perpetuating the game.
Manipulative games are nasty and insidious. But, it gets worse. After persistence and manipulation, comes…
Aggression
You need a book on conflict management to really get to grips with how to handle outright aggression. It tends to start with irritation arising from your NO, and escalate upwards to annoyance, anger and abuse. De-escalating it – without giving in and changing your mind – requires rebuilding respect. You must start the process.
- While you might deprecate the behaviours that aggression brings out, continue to respect the other person and start to build rapport by empathising with their anger: ‘I do understand that you are angry/upset/annoyed…’ Try to use the same word that they use to describe how they are feeling.
- Next, state your commitment to working together to find a solution – without conceding that you must necessarily change your mind.
- Then you may be able to explore options and reach agreement.
One tip is to acknowledge their emotion – as you did in the example above – and then to ask them about those emotions, without asking them ‘Why?’:
‘Is there a particular reason for you feeling so angry/upset/annoyed?’
This forces them to analyse their emotions, shifting attention from the emotional part of their brain to the logical part. That in itself will reduce the strength of their emotions. The question ‘Why?’ tends to evoke defensive answers and you are best advised to avoid it.
Ultimately, you have five strategies you could apply to finding a solution.
- Make a concession: Either a YES or a partial yes. Do this if you suspect this is a one-off reaction and the request matters a lot to them – particularly if the relationship is important to you.
- Step away: If the aggression is too great, it isn’t worth the risk of further escalation, so step away until they calm down.
- Play to win: Staunchly defend your NO. Use this strategy if you don’t have time for anything else and particularly if the relationship is not important enough to work any harder for.
- Give and take: Make a concession, but only in exchange for one in return. This is nothing more than compromise. It gives you both reason to feel like partial winners and protects your relationship.
- Going for ‘win-win’: Take the time to find a solution that really works for both of you. Use this strategy when the outcome is important to you and so is the relationship. It is the hardest work, but it can yield spectacular results in the form of innovative solutions and greatly enhanced relationships.
When should you change your mind?
Quite simply, as soon as you realise you are wrong, you change your mind straight away, admit your error, say sorry if necessary, and move on. Politicians have an aversion to U-turns, but why? If you are going in the wrong direction, isn’t it the best thing to do? The only way to be right all of the time is to admit when you are wrong and change your mind.
Tricks of the trade: top tips from the masters of NO
To end this chapter – and the main part of this book – I’d like to offer you my favourite seven tips from the masters of NO.
Top tips from the masters of NO
- If you can’t bring yourself to say ‘NO’, keep your mouth shut. With your mouth shut, you can’t say ‘yes’ and they will probably get the message, saying ‘Yeah, I know, you’d like to say yes, but I figured you’d be busy, I’ll go and ask someone else…’
- Ask for more information before giving an answer. Or ask for more time: ‘Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you if I can.’
- ‘What’s in it for you?’ is the most powerful question. Can they benefit from you saying ‘NO’? If there is a benefit, spell it out.
- Distraction – ‘Oh my goodness, is that the time…’ Stalling or evading the question is neither pretty nor assertive, but it can work.
- Hide from someone you fear will ask for a favour. If you see the number on caller display and you suspect it will be another request for your time, let the phone go to voicemail, or let it ring out. Is this cowardice or discretion? Shakespeare said that ‘the better part of valour is discretion.’ Why risk a fight when you don’t need to?
- White lies and lame excuses not only weaken your NO, but they will make you feel bad too. Be honest, even if it means saying, ‘No, I don’t want to.’
- ‘No I can’t’ feels a little deceitful – you probably could. In fact, if you made it your priority… How about, ‘That won’t work for me’? It is honest and also allows you to follow up with, ‘… but what would work for me is…’
Yes/No in an instant
An assertive, confident NO requires respect for both you and the other person. You can make your respectful NO more graceful by giving good reasons and empathising with the consequences of your NO for the requester. Think ahead and create a long-, medium- and short-range environment that supports Noble Objections and deal firmly with manipulative and persistent requests.
| Yes/No: | Are you ready to go out and say ‘NO’? |
| Yes/No: | Are you ready for more? Are you ready for Super-NO? |