Oh hey there,
I hope you're having a brilliant week!
Personally, I've been spending much of the week delivering 1-2-1 employee coaching with the awesome team of a new agency that I am working with.
I was talking with the Ops Director who explained to me how, in their small ops team, she really needed to work on everyone’s roles and responsibilities and the overall strategy of the team. This was so they could get much more efficient at their tasks, collaborate better, and ultimately improve their workplace performance. However, the whole team was so constantly swamped with the ‘urgent’ demands of everyone else that she couldn’t get around to doing these fundamentally important tasks.
And, in not doing them, it meant that the team had no chance to not be working in this way.
It was a vicious cycle.
So, I asked her, 'how do you think you can change this?'. And she just looked baffled! ‘Well, I can’t! It’s completely down to all the demands coming in from everyone else.’ My answer was simple: ‘Of course you can. You’ve got to understand the power of saying no.’ And, like her, your response will probably be, ‘That’s easy for you to say Cate, but definitely not so easy for me to deliver at my company.’
So, let’s talk it through.
The environments we work in are so dictated by deadlines. Deadlines that get passed on from one person to another, simply becoming more urgent as they progress down the line. They rarely get questioned or pushed back on and, more often than not, we agree to the deadline. This is without understanding or questioning the context or need and ultimately risking our own priorities, plans, feelings and, at worst, even our health in agreeing to them.
We often have an issue telling someone no because we have the tendency to put others needs before our own. That’s not only unfair to ourselves, but it can be unfair to the other people we’re accepting a situation on behalf of too.
Just because it’s easier to say “yes” doesn’t mean we should. Sometimes giving yourself a moment to pause, assess the situation, and decide if it’s really beneficial to you and others is a much stronger option.
What if “no” would result in a better outcome for all parties?
Say, for instance, a coworker asks you to deliver a last-minute project but that’s going to mean working over a weekend to meet a client’s deadline. In agreeing, you’re setting a precedent with the client that this is okay, and you can rest assured that this won’t be the last time you’ll be placed in this situation.
Now, I’m not silly. I get it - we work for businesses that need to survive in order for us to all be paid. However, I do think sometimes we behave like everything is an emergency, lurching from crisis to crisis rather than ever stopping, questioning, and making our long-term strategy and individual welfare at least an equal priority.
Of course, if a hard “no” is too difficult to say, there are other ways to state it. I personally like:
- ‘I can’t do it right now, but I can do it by xyz’ naming your alternative date.
- ‘I need your help here - the team has too much on already. Can you help me work out other solutions?’
This beautifully places the challenge back to the requester - getting them thinking about possibilities - rather than leaving it all on your shoulders.
Practice turning others down and get more comfortable with your right to say no. It doesn’t mean you’re exercising some sort of immutable ego trip. It means you’re saying “no” because the proposed task doesn’t suit your schedule or beliefs - and it’s really important to remember what a priority those things are, too.
I really hope this helps! And if you think this kind of workplace coaching would be useful for your team, check out our programmes.
Cate x
Oh hey there,
I hope you're having a brilliant week!
Personally, I've been spending much of the week delivering 1-2-1 employee coaching with the awesome team of a new agency that I am working with.
I was talking with the Ops Director who explained to me how, in their small ops team, she really needed to work on everyone’s roles and responsibilities and the overall strategy of the team. This was so they could get much more efficient at their tasks, collaborate better, and ultimately improve their workplace performance. However, the whole team was so constantly swamped with the ‘urgent’ demands of everyone else that she couldn’t get around to doing these fundamentally important tasks.
And, in not doing them, it meant that the team had no chance to not be working in this way.
It was a vicious cycle.
So, I asked her, 'how do you think you can change this?'. And she just looked baffled! ‘Well, I can’t! It’s completely down to all the demands coming in from everyone else.’ My answer was simple: ‘Of course you can. You’ve got to understand the power of saying no.’ And, like her, your response will probably be, ‘That’s easy for you to say Cate, but definitely not so easy for me to deliver at my company.’
So, let’s talk it through.
The environments we work in are so dictated by deadlines. Deadlines that get passed on from one person to another, simply becoming more urgent as they progress down the line. They rarely get questioned or pushed back on and, more often than not, we agree to the deadline. This is without understanding or questioning the context or need and ultimately risking our own priorities, plans, feelings and, at worst, even our health in agreeing to them.
We often have an issue telling someone no because we have the tendency to put others needs before our own. That’s not only unfair to ourselves, but it can be unfair to the other people we’re accepting a situation on behalf of too.
Just because it’s easier to say “yes” doesn’t mean we should. Sometimes giving yourself a moment to pause, assess the situation, and decide if it’s really beneficial to you and others is a much stronger option.
What if “no” would result in a better outcome for all parties?
Say, for instance, a coworker asks you to deliver a last-minute project but that’s going to mean working over a weekend to meet a client’s deadline. In agreeing, you’re setting a precedent with the client that this is okay, and you can rest assured that this won’t be the last time you’ll be placed in this situation.
Now, I’m not silly. I get it - we work for businesses that need to survive in order for us to all be paid. However, I do think sometimes we behave like everything is an emergency, lurching from crisis to crisis rather than ever stopping, questioning, and making our long-term strategy and individual welfare at least an equal priority.
Of course, if a hard “no” is too difficult to say, there are other ways to state it. I personally like:
- ‘I can’t do it right now, but I can do it by xyz’ naming your alternative date.
- ‘I need your help here - the team has too much on already. Can you help me work out other solutions?’
This beautifully places the challenge back to the requester - getting them thinking about possibilities - rather than leaving it all on your shoulders.
Practice turning others down and get more comfortable with your right to say no. It doesn’t mean you’re exercising some sort of immutable ego trip. It means you’re saying “no” because the proposed task doesn’t suit your schedule or beliefs - and it’s really important to remember what a priority those things are, too.
I really hope this helps! And if you think this kind of workplace coaching would be useful for your team, check out our programmes.
Cate x
