You Have to Say No to Something

by Alexandra Levit, author, They Don’t Teach Corporate in College

By virtue of their low rank in the organizational hierarchy, twenty­somethings are responsible for meeting the needs of the many in­dividuals who qualify as supervisors. Work rolls downhill from all the people above you and lands in a giant heap on your plate. Many older — but not necessarily wiser — managers have no qualms about watching an eager-to-please twenty-something scramble around like a rat in a maze. Even if you’re an efficient multitasker, you’re never going to be Superman. Don’t sabotage your goals by taking on more work than you can do just because someone asks you to. Staying true to your priorities means learning to say no sometimes.

“No” is a tricky word in business, because you always want to be perceived as a can-do employee. In general, try to preempt situations in which you will have to decline an assignment. A good first step is to formalize your daily responsibilities with your boss. Find out who on your team is authorized to delegate work to you, and note the type of assignments you can expect from each person. Let’s say that Joe, who is outside this core group of delegators, gives you a bunch of cli­ent invoices to process. How should you respond? It’s appropriate to politely reply that you would be glad to help, but you would appreciate it if Joe checked with your manager first. Joe may or may not pursue the matter, but you have extricated yourself from an awkward situa­tion and placed the ball squarely in your boss’s court. In all likelihood, your boss will say no to Joe for you, especially if processing invoices is outside your area of responsibility.

Now imagine that Jane, a member of your core group of delega­tors, leaves an urgent assignment on your chair that must be done by the end of the week. Jane knew about the task for a few days, but now it’s Friday morning and the deadline is looming. As my mother used to say, “Don’t let another person’s lack of planning become your emer­gency.” If your own to-do list dictates you do something else, speak up. Tell Jane that you wish you could do the task for her, but you are currently working on a project with Tom that requires your attention. Give her the option to resolve the issue with Tom or your boss, and emphasize how much you enjoy working with her. Ideally, Jane will leave the interaction with the perception that you sincerely want to help her, but you can’t help being caught between conflicting respon­sibilities.

What if your boss is the one with an urgent request that you don’t have the time to attend to? In a way, this is the least painful scenar­io, because all you have to do is ask her to help you prioritize your various assignments. You can say something such as, “I’d be happy to take care of that, but today I’m researching statistics for Tom’s pre­sentation. Which do you think I should do first?” If your boss wants to snatch your time at Tom’s expense, that’s her decision. Again, you made someone else accountable for deciding which of the competing tasks you should direct your energy toward. Note that in all of these cases, you declined to take on a new task. However, the actual word “no” and the phrase “I don’t have time” are absent from the conversa­tion. Always strive to present yourself as a hardworking and disci­plined employee with the best interests of the department and orga­nization at heart.

One last point: subscribing to the servant mentality is not good time management, even if you’re not preoccupied with any urgent tasks. When you get into the habit of springing into action the mo­ment a higher-up appears at your desk, people will come to expect that you are always available. Your delegators won’t think twice about asking you to do all kinds of Category 3 (urgent and non-important) tasks. Meanwhile, Category 2 (non-urgent and important) priorities, such as professional development and on-the-job training, will slip further and further down your to-do list. Remember, in the big-pic­ture scheme of things, Category 2 should be ahead of Category 3, so no matter how busy your department is, always make time in your schedule for Category 2 activities. If you have trouble implementing this habit, take note of the time it takes you to complete Category 3 assignments. For example, if you think it will take you an hour to create a new database for your boss, tell him you’ll have it done by the end of the day. Also, instead of asking for new work the second you encounter a few free hours, spend some quality time researching your company’s products, participating in training courses, or meet­ing with your mentor (Category 2 activities).

It might be difficult to turn your back on a Category 3 task that’s presented to you or to set aside company time for your own Category 2 needs. But think about it this way: you have to say no to something. It’s either the non-important or the important things. You decide.

Adapted, and reprinted with permission from Career Press, an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser LLC, They Don’t Teach Corporate in College by Alexandra Levit is available wherever books and ebooks are sold or directly from the publisher at www.redwheelweiser.com or 800–423–7087.

Alexandra Levit’s goal is to prepare organizations and their employees to be competitive and marketable in the future business world. An author of eight books including Humanity Works and They Don’t Teach Corporate in College and a former nationally syndicated columnist for the Wall Street Journal and writer for the New York Times, Fast Company, and Forbes. Levit recently became a partner with organizational development firm PeopleResults. She has served as a member of Business Roundtable’s Springboard Project, which advised the Obama administration and has consulted for and spoken at hundreds of organizations around the world. Frequently appearing as a spokesperson in major media outlets, Levit was named an American Management Association Top Leader and has also been named Money Magazine’s Online Career Expert of the Year. A member of the Northwestern University Council of 100, the Young Entrepreneur Council, and was just named to the Thinkers50’s Class of 2019. She resides in Chicago, Illinois. Her website is www.alexandralevit.com.