How To Say No
At Work Without Damaging The Relationship

Hello Career Growth Guide,

Each week, we take one small moment from a normal workweek and pull it apart. We look at what happened and how you can handle it better next Monday. These issues are written for people in their first few years at work, and each one is short enough to read between tasks. Small fixes like these add up, and over a career they can take you a long, long way.

Today, we talk about the request you want to turn down but say yes to anyway. You'll end up with four openings you can copy and a way to hand the clash to your manager.

Three o'clock on a Wednesday

Same request, sent to Zoya at 3pm on a Wednesday. A colleague needs her to review a forty-page deck by Friday.

Here is what she used to send:

"Sorry, I'm really swamped this week; I don't think I can. Sorry again!"

Here is what she sends now:

"I can see this needs to be right before Friday. I can't review the whole deck, my Thursday is committed to the audit. I can read the exec summary and the numbers section tomorrow morning, if that's the useful half."

Same answer but the latter resulted in a completely different week afterwards.

What the second version does differently

The first version is a no with an apology wrapped around it. The colleague learns nothing except that Zoya is busy, which everyone is.

They will ask her again on Monday, because nothing was resolved.

The second version has three parts. They follow a structure the psychologist Isabel Alfonso lays out for saying no.

You acknowledge what the other person needs, name the reason you cannot, then offer what you can.

The reason it works at your job is not politeness. It is that the second version contains a plan, and a "no" with a plan reads as "ownership."

Compare what your colleague walks away with. From the first, a closed door. From the second, you walk away with half a deck reviewed and a clear picture of your Thursday.

A no with a plan is remembered as help. A no with an apology gets remembered as a no.

Four situations, four openings

Use these as starting points. Change the words to sound like you.

• When you genuinely cannot do it at all: "I can't take this on this week. My Thursday and Friday are on the audit. Is next Tuesday any use, or should it go to someone else?"
• When you can do part of it: "I can't do the whole review. I can do the numbers section tomorrow morning, which is probably where the risk is."
• When you are not sure yet: "Let me check what Thursday looks like and come back to you by 5pm today."
• When it should be someone else's call: "I can do this or the audit this week. Which one do you want first?"

That third one is the most underrated. A small delay before you answer stops the reflex, yes.

As Ryan Darani in his Medium article puts it, delaying the commitment is not a hard no. It just adds friction before the word leaves your mouth.

The yes you blurt out and then withdraw does far more damage than an honest wait.

What changed for Zoya

She says no about as often as she used to. That number did not change.

What changed was what happens afterwards. People come back to her with better-scoped requests, because they have learned she will tell them what is actually possible.

Her colleague got the numbers section reviewed on Thursday morning. The deck went out on Friday. Nobody remembers it as a refusal.

See you next week!