Episode 14: How to say no at work

👋 Yo! Welcome to the next episode of How to Negotiate where you learn how to grow your career and income with better negotiation strategy in less than 5 minutes. 

High performers at every company build expertise over time. The way to do that is be very good at a few things (instead of mediocre at many things).

It may seem counterintuitive that saying ‘no’ to things actually increases your chance of promotion because you want to come off as collaborative and ‘in the boat’ with everyone else rather than focused on your own career. The reality is as your work quality increases, you will be asked to do and deliver even more so saying no becomes even more critical.

The short answer on how to say no is with confidence. The longer answer is where that confidence comes from.

We always hear the advice about setting boundaries with your team, boss, and coworkers. For example - don’t respond after hours because that sets the precedent that you will always answer at any hour.

This is great advice and I agree. The problem is gaining confidence that setting those boundaries won’t affect your relationships with your team/boss or even worse - put your entire job at risk.

Benchmark regularly with thought partners (external)

In a previous episode, we covered the types of mentors everyone should have. If you don’t already have thought partners at other companies, this is another reason to search for one now. I’ll cover how to do cold outreach in a future episode.

With your thought partners, you should regularly discuss the challenges they are currently solving and the ones they have previously solved. If you’re having even one of these conversations a month, within a quarter or two, you will have a clear idea of how you compare to your peers.

If you’re behind, focus your future conversations on understanding how your thought partners solved the challenges and work to solve them for yourself.

If you’re ahead, you now have anecdotal evidence that you are delivering above average and should feel confident in setting those boundaries.

Regularly seek out high performers (internal)

Regardless of what department they are in, you should talk to folks who were promoted in your company. Talk to them about what is working for managing expectations and setting boundaries effectively.

If you’re unsure of who high performers are start by asking your boss. The best way is to ask is when feedback is given to you ask ‘who does this exceptionally well at the company today?’ Start with them and repeat anytime you get critical feedback from anyone at the company.

How to (respectfully) say no

Frame the priorities. People rationally understand that you have limited time/money/resources so you can’t do everything. With the context they have, they are making the ask for you to do something that will help them. Change their context and often their ask changes as well.

Share the tradeoffs for completing their ask. What else doesn’t get done? What’s the importance and urgency of those additional asks? Are there additional resources that can help?

You will discuss these questions together so it becomes you and your coworker vs. the problem instead of you vs. them.

What if you can’t say no?

Sometimes it’s not possible to say no. Maybe the ask came from the executive or a cross-functional leader you don’t have rapport with yet.

In those situations, the best thing to do is use their ask as an excuse to do something you wanted to do. Take their ask and make the deliverable your own so that it turns into a win-win.

Got asked to make a new talk track for an executive? Use that ask as an excuse to update your talk track for the entire sales team and share it as new enablement for the entire team.

If you can’t reframe the urgency of their ask and you can’t tie the ask back to something else you wanted to do, you should still complete the ask.

As with any of your work product, you need to hold yourself to a high standard - i.e. don’t half-ass it because it isn’t something you think is meaningful.

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode — good or bad. See ya next week 👋 

If this was helpful for you please forward to a friend. 🙏 They can subscribe below 👇️ 

✅ Find all resources here.

📆 Looking to connect? Find me on LinkedIn or grab some time on my cal here.

✨ Special thank you to Gigi Marquez who suggested I start this newsletter 🙏