ALISON BEARD: Welcome to HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review.

I’m
Alison Beard.

Whether you’re a CEO, a midlevel manager or even an intern, I’ll bet that a lot of
your workday is about fielding requests. People asking you to weigh in on a decision,
join a team, help out on a project, give them a promotion or raise. In today’s show,
we’re focusing in on the answers to those questions, knowing when to say yes and
how to say no.

For many of us, it can feel hard to say no, particularly coworkers and bosses,
particularly to coworkers and bosses, even when we’re extremely busy and really
can’t fit another thing on our plates. Or maybe you’re one of those people who says
no too often, as a kneejerk reaction because you’re swamped or a little afraid of taking
on a challenge.

Our guest today has studied how the most successful executives evaluate all the
requests being thrown at them and figure out how to respond. He says that people
who learn how to decide on, and give the strategic yes or a well-reasoned no are the
ones that build the best careers.

Bruce Tulgan is the founder and CEO of RainmakerThinking. He wrote the book The
Art of Being Indispensable at Work and the HBR article, “Learn To Say No.” Bruce,
thanks so much for being on the show.

BRUCE TULGAN: Thank you so much for having me.

ALISON BEARD: So let’s start with a problem. Why do so many of us say yes too
often, and hesitate to say no?

BRUCE TULGAN: Well, everybody in the workplace wants to be that indispensable

go-to person. Everybody wants to prove their value. And especially right now, when
we’re in crisis, when businesses are in jeopardy, when people are losing their jobs. I
think more than ordinary times, people really want to make sure that they’re proving
their value, and that they, so they’re afraid to say no. People want to say yes because
they don’t want to disappoint. They feel like they can’t say no, even though they
know they can’t say yes to everyone and everything. I think people feel like they’re
so desperate to demonstrate their value, they’re afraid to say no.

ALISON BEARD: And what about the people who do say no maybe too often? Why
is that a mistake?

BRUCE TULGAN: Well, what happens is that if you keep saying yes, yes, yes to
everyone and everything, eventually you find yourself overcommitted. Ysou’re
juggling. You’re working constantly. You’re probably disappointing people. You
start to get frustrated. There are delays and mistakes. Relationships suffer. And
pretty soon what happens is, you start to feel like you’re under siege. You get what I
call “siege mentality”. And then you start saying no, not because of the quality of the
request or the opportunity or the person involved, but because you feel overwhelmed,
and because you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not making the best decisions from
the standpoint of the business and your career. I mean, look, some people say no just
because they’re lazy and they’re trying to avoid work. I don’t think those people are
listening to this podcast.

ALISON BEARD: So, it’s mostly the people who are overextended, and they’re
saying no because they’ve said yes too many times before and haven’t been thinking
strategically about this whole process.

BRUCE TULGAN: Yeah. Every bad yes crowds out a much better yes. And just as
every well-reasoned, well-timed no makes room for a better yes, because you know,
yes is where all the action is.

ALISON BEARD: Right. Tell me what you mean by a bad yes.

BRUCE TULGAN: A bad yes is, if somebody asks you to do something, and you
really cannot do it. Maybe it’s because you don’t have the skill or the knowledge or
the natural ability, or you simply don’t have the productive capacity. But you say yes
because in the moment you want to please. That’s a bad yes because if you can’t do
it, you’ll be known for your failure to deliver. Yes takes time and energy. Yes raises
people’s expectations. Yes is a commitment. If you don’t deliver, or you deliver the
wrong thing, that’s what you will be known for.

ALISON BEARD: You mentioned the need to please. How do people who fall into
that trap get over it?

BRUCE TULGAN: Well, you’ve got to play the longer game. Think about your
reputation. That’s the long game. Think about outcomes. That’s the intermediate
game. In the moment of the transaction, where somebody’s asking you something,
you want to respect their need. You want to respect their request. You want to show
that you’re service minded. But that doesn’t mean saying yes automatically.

ALISON BEARD: So we’re trying to move from bad yesses and bad nos to good
yesses and good nos. How have you seen people do that? What does the process look
like?

BRUCE TULGAN: Well, there are a lot of ways to look at it. In the day to day
experience of most people, so much of the conversations that go on at work are about
making requests of each other. So much of what we have to say to each other is
asking. There’s so much asking. What we see as the best practice is, tune into the
ask. Ask questions of the ask. Pay attention to the ask. When somebody makes a
request of you, start taking notes. Start asking good questions. Help them fine
tune. Let me make sure I understand exactly what you need here. When do you need
it? How do you need it? Why do you need it?
So when you start to do that, you make it clear to somebody that you’re really tuning
in and giving due diligence to their request. That’s how to honor somebody else’s
needs. And frankly, you want to evaluate the quality of that opportunity for you and
the appropriateness of that opportunity in terms of what you know how to do, what
you do best. It’s a process of aligning your ability to add value with the needs of your
colleagues.

ALISON BEARD: So that does seem like a pretty onerous process for every single
request that comes at you, especially because we’re talking about how busy everyone
is and how much collaborative overload there is in organizations. So do you really
need to do it for every single thing that’s put on your plate?

BRUCE TULGAN: Yeah, you need to develop the habit. Right? So that doesn’t
mean that if somebody asks you for a paper clip, you turn that into a complicated
proposal process. But it might mean, you say, wait a minute, a paper clip, now do you
mean a big one or a small one? Do you mean one of those black ones with the heavy
hinge? Or do you mean just a little paper clip? Right? Because otherwise that
happens is, you give them a paper clip, and they say, no, no, that’s not what I need.

ALISON BEARD: So writ large you need to do that intake memo and figure out
exactly what the person is asking you for, and whether you can satisfy their need. But
then how do you decide when you have a lot of competing requests, all of which seem
legit, all of which you could handle? How do you make a decision about which ones
you say yes to and which ones you don’t?

BRUCE TULGAN: Well, you have to start with the assumption that you can’t do
everything for everyone. So what you’re trying to do every step of the way is add
maximum value. So in the conversation add maximum value by helping the person
understand exactly, make sure they understand exactly what they need from you and
where you fit in with that need. Make sure you understand that.

What you’re really trying to do is allocate your time and energy. Or help them find
another person or another resource or do some of the work of helping you help them
while you set aside that productive capacity. So it’s really a due diligence
process. What I tell people is, get in the habit of the intake memo. Get in the habit of
taming the ask. Get in the habit of stopping, even no matter how small an ask is, and
figure out, is it as small as it seems? And is it everything it seems? Or is it much,
much bigger? Try to understand.

Step two is, put it through a very simple due diligence process. You know, in project
review or in complex cross-functional project management, there’s a gate review
process. And so you have proof of concept, and then you start to move the project
along through various stage gates. And as making a decision, I call them the no gates.

And it’s very simple. Can you do this? Are you allowed to do this? And then should
you do this? Once you process a need through this evaluative set of questions, you get
a lot more clarity, and you get yourself in the habit of making much better decisions.
ALISON BEARD: And then we move on to communicating the decision. So, how
do you carefully tell people either yes or no, in a way that positions you for success,?

BRUCE TULGAN: You know, look, nobody wants to hear no. Sometimes people
say, oh, you’ve got to learn how to say no. Do you? Because how do you sugarcoat
no? It’s still no. So there’s a few ways that you put yourself in a position to say
no. One is the longer term. Your reputation. That when Alison says no, I take it for
granted that no is the right answer, because Alison has a reputation for making good
decisions. Right? Alison doesn’t have a reputation for avoiding work. Alison
doesn’t have a reputation for making promises she can’t deliver. And Alison doesn’t
have a reputation for saying no when yes was the right answer.

See, you want to be that person who, when you say no, I say, well, probably no is the
right answer. I’d better go back and fine tune my ask. The second part of it is, in the
moment, one of the reasons to really pay attention to the ask, and ask questions of the
ask, is because that shows somebody that you are paying attention.

And then if you explain why you’re saying no, why this is a good time to say no,
because you cannot do it, you’re not allowed to do it, or because on balance it really
should not take priority, then I think it’s much easier for people to hear that, because
you’re making a good business decision. Often the right answer is, not yet. Or well,
no, the way you’re framing it, but you could come back and reframe it, and the answer
might be yes. Or sometimes the answer is, yes, in two weeks. And what you’re really
trying to do is set yourself up for really good yesses.

ALISON BEARD: And a good yes has to be communicated well, also.

BRUCE TULGAN: Yeah, I mean, yes is the start of a collaboration. When you say
yes, you want people to take that to the bank. And that means yes with a plan, yes
with focused execution. Now, look, if you’re strategic, you want to concentrate your
yesses around your areas of specialty, the things you’re best at, the things that you do
very well, very fast, with great confidence.

When somebody comes to you, and you say, that’s my specialty, that’s in my
wheelhouse, what you really want to do is move more and more and more of your
requests into your areas of specialty. So you want to know what you want to be
known for. The very best yes is either something you already know how to do very
well, very fast, with great confidence, and you know exactly how to deliver and
exactly how long it’s going to take.

Or maybe the next best yes is something where you could say, that’s not my specialty,
but I would love to develop a new specialty. I need to be totally transparent with
you. I’ve never done that before. Or I’ve only done that once or twice. In any case,
that’s not my specialty. But if you have the time, I’d love to get better at that. I’d
love to dig into that, and make that one of my new specialties.
ALISON BEARD: So many times when I say no, I feel like because I don’t think the
project is worthwhile, or I can’t contribute, but it’s just that I personally don’t have the
time for, or I’m not particularly interested in it. So how do I get that message across
without seeming like I’m slacking or not a team player?

BRUCE TULGAN: Well, I think to say, you know, everybody says, you’re not my
boss. That’s not my job. I don’t have to do that. Right? Nobody says that out loud.
But I think the right thing to say is, that’s not my specialty. You know, to say, I’ve
got too much on my plate, at this point, I don’t think that that’s, I don’t think that
carries a lot of weight anymore.

Everyone has too much to do and not enough time. I think what you have to do is try
to add value in the conversation. By adding, what I mean by that is, try to navigate
the conversation in such a way that you demonstrate what you can do, what is your
specialty, and the best thing you can do usually is steer them to another
resource. Now, look, it depends a lot on how much authority you have in relation to
the person asking.

ALISON BEARD: Well, that’s my next question. Power dynamics are at play
here. Right? It’s very hard to say no to your boss asking you to do something.

BRUCE TULGAN: Yeah, and good news. Not everything’s up to you. You know,
do I say yes or no? No need to consider the matter. I’m your boss. The answer is
yes. What I always tell people is, you have to have a vertical anchor. Your vertical
anchor, no matter how much we flatten power in the workplace, no matter how much
we try to remove hierarchical dynamics, no matter how much we try to get people
collaborating, somebody is in charge. And that can be very liberating.

So, I think what you have to do is have an ongoing dialog with your leader, manager,
supervisor, so that whoever you report to knows exactly what your priorities are, what
your areas of strength are, but that doesn’t mean you only work in your area of
passion and strength, because quite frankly, who’s going to do all the work then? So
you know, I only want to work in my area of passion and strength. Is that
right? Well, you know, sorry, this needs to get done, too.

ALISON BEARD: Right.

BRUCE TULGAN: So sometimes it’s just not up to you. But once you have that
vertical anchor, once you know what’s not up to you, then that leads, you know what
is up to you? Everything else.

ALISON BEARD: When I do say yes, particularly if it’s a yes I didn’t jump at, how
do I make sure that I get credit for it? You know, because it seems like the success of
your strategy lies not in how many times you’re saying yes or no, but a general
perception that you’re someone who helps out when asked, when they can
contribute. So how do you make sure that that yes has the maximum impact that you
want it to?
BRUCE TULGAN: Yeah, Alison, that is the platinum question, because in my view,
it is not about perception. It’s about execution. And if you say yes at the wrong time
and say at the wrong time, the reason you’re undermining your career in the
intermediate term, and ultimately your reputation in the longer term, is because you’re
putting yourself at a disadvantage in terms of executing tangible results with your
name on them.

Every good yes is a chance to deliver value, execute tangible results with your name
on them. And when you say yes to something you can’t do, or you’re not allowed to
do, or you really shouldn’t do, then you put yourself in a position where either you’re
not going to deliver, or you’re going to deliver something that isn’t that valuable. So
when you say no in the short term, that’s the perception problem. Right? But in terms
of the actual outcomes, you are so much better off having the short-term perception
that, OK, you’re being difficult. No, you’re not being difficult. What you’re doing is,
you’re making a good business decision.

ALISON BEARD: And you’ve found that people understand that? You know, you’ve
seen executives that you’ve worked with adopt this strategy and be respected for it?

BRUCE TULGAN: The people I see over and over and over again who say yes, yes,
yes, yes, are overpromising. Sometimes they’re generous fools. They really want to
do it. They just don’t. And sometimes they’re overpromising. They want to impress
somebody in the moment, but then they’ve taken on more than they can deliver. That
is the kiss of death.

The people who are most successful are the ones who are looking around the corner at
how this is going to turn out. They’re the ones who are looking around the corner at,
you know, the reason I’m going to say no is because this is a wild goose chase. The
reason I’m going to say no is because I’m going to try to start doing this, and it’s not
going to go well. The reason I’m going to say no is, even if I do this, down the line,
people up the chain of command are going to say, what the heck did you do this
for? And you didn’t do A, B, C and D. You did Q. Why?

The people who are most successful are the ones who do the right things for the right
reasons. What you choose to do is a huge business decision every step of the
way. It’s how you use your time. Yeah, you can take this to the bank. Bite the bullet
in the moment. Save your time and energy. It’s all about the work you
execute. Don’t get caught up in the perception. Get caught up in, what you’re trying
to do is set yourself up for success. You want to be someone whom your colleagues
know they can rely on.

And so, look, if somebody comes to me and says, hey, I have a cracked tooth, can you
fix my tooth, right, now, that’s an extreme example, but I’d say, well, that’s
ridiculous. I’m not a dentist. Good news. I know a dentist. Right? And you know,
and in fact, I know how to drive, and I know where the dentist is. I have a phone. I’d
be happy to set that up for you. But if I sit you down and try to fix your tooth, in the
moment he’s like, oh, wow, Bruce is going to fix my tooth. Well, that’s not going to
go well.

ALISON BEARD: Yes, I will not ask you to be my dentist. So I do want to ask
specifically about the current situation that we’re in, in mid-2020, pandemic
quarantines, a lot of virtual work. A lot of us are feeling really burnt out, particularly
in the US, and we want to say no to more things. But you just said, you know, saying
I have too much on my plate isn’t really cutting it. What advice do you have?

BRUCE TULGAN: Well, look. Every step of the way, you want to say to yourself,
I’ve got 168 hours in a week. I need to sleep 56 of them, or I’m going to be bad
shape. That leaves me 112 hours. Right now I’m not commuting. OK, that’s
great. I’ve got family. You know, OK, I’ve got 100 hours. I’m still grooming. OK,
I’ve got 95 hours. I’ve got to eat. I’ve 90 hours. Whatever it is, however much time
you’re willing to allocate, you need to know that, and then you want to make the very
best use of that time. Every time somebody comes to you, my advice is, you say, oh,
OK, I have four hours next Thursday that are still unaccounted for. Oh, I have three
hours tomorrow that I could allocate. Oh, I have 2 ½ hours on Saturday. I’m going to
work, and you know, I can do it then.

What you want to do is not talk about all the things you’re not going to do for
people. You want to talk about all the things you are going to do for people, and you
want to be very, very specific about, OK, you’re asking me to do something. You’re
signaling how busy you are. You’re signaling how rigorously you’re managing your
schedule. And you’re signaling how you think about your time and your productive
capacity.

ALISON BEARD: So this is one part of being indispensable at work. Good yesses,
good nos. What are some of the other key strategies that you’ve found in your
research that really boost people in their careers?

BRUCE TULGAN: Yeah, well, what led me to the reimagining of yes and no was,
this sense that everybody’s overcommitted, that people are feeling out of control, that
people are feeling subject to so many factors outside their control, and they’re feeling
so overcommitted, and they’re feeling at risk.

And so what I was looking at is, OK, and people feel like they don’t have the
authority in the workplace, as you say, the power dynamics. Well, I don’t have the
authority. So it has become conventional wisdom that if you don’t have authority you
have to use influence.

And I started investigating that assumption. And what I realized was that that
assumption is leading a lot of people to a fundamental misunderstanding of influence
– that they’re thinking of influence as something short of authority you use to get what
you need out of other people. And it’s influence peddling. Right? It’s a perversion of
the concept of influence.
It’s, if you don’t have authority, you have to use influence. OK, so I’m going to use
some stand in for authority to try to get what I need from other people. The thing is,
when you do that, so you badger them, you bribe them, you offer quid pro quos, you
threaten to withhold, implicitly or explicitly your support for them. You go over their
head. You bake brownies, whatever you do.

Every time you try to use influence, you lose influence. Right? Because if real
influence is when other people want to work with you, when other people trust you,
when other people have confidence in you, other people want you to be successful,
when other people want to make good use of your time.

So what I began to realize as I was investigating this question, and looking at all these
people who over and over and over again show up on the lists of, who were your go to
people? Who were the people you have the most confidence in? Who are the people
you least want to disappoint? And what in found over and over again was, those
people are not focused on getting what they need from other people. Those people are
focused on serving others. On what do I bring to the table? What can I do for you?

And what I realized was, the people who are truly committed to service are willing to
have that perception in the moment that they’re saying no. They’re willing to have
that perception in the moment that they’re being difficult. They’re wiling to have that
perception in the moment that they’re making a decision about how to allocate their
time in relation to your needs. They’re so committed to service that they know they
absolutely cannot say yes to everyone and everything. They’re so committed to
service that they see their time and energy as a critical resource to give others, and
they want to allocate it carefully.

ALISON BEARD: Good. Well, that’s all great advice for our listeners. Thank you
so much for joining me today.

BRUCE TULGAN: Thank you so much for having me.

ALISON BEARD: That’s Bruce Tulgan, CEO of RainmakerThinking. He’s the

author of The Art of Being Indispensable at Work, as well as the HBR article, “Learn
To Say No”. You can find it in the September/October 2020 issue of Harvard
Business Review, or at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Mary Dooe. We get technical help from Rob
Eckhardt. Adam Buchholz is our audio product manager. Thanks for listening to
the HBR IdeaCast. I’m Alison Beard.