How to Say No to Requests (Without Damaging Your Relationships) - Deepstash
How to Say No to Requests (Without Damaging Your Relationships)

How to Say No to Requests (Without Damaging Your Relationships)

Curated from: medium.com

Ideas, facts & insights covering these topics:

7 ideas

·

3.99K reads

16

Explore the World's Best Ideas

Join today and uncover 100+ curated journeys from 50+ topics. Unlock access to our mobile app with extensive features.

Saying No At The Workplace

Saying No At The Workplace

Office workers, working in real offices or doing Work From Home, face requests from fellow workers all the time which can range from unnecessary to downright avoidable. In our quest to appease others, we are struggling to reach our fullest potential.

Time, as many of us have now realized, is the most valuable and prized asset we have, and saying no to certain activities at work can enable us to do something worthy.

115

971 reads

Saying Yes Is Easy

Agreeing on every activity is easy and can also become our default reaction. It fills our calendars with so many tasks and we are playing a losing game thereafter, making more commitments than we can keep, and leading to unfulfilled obligations. When we are overcommitting, it is leading to us getting burned out and hurting our network in the process.

When we are asked for something, we end up reacting, rashly and impulsive, as it subtly awakens our fight-or-flight mode.

106

540 reads

Ignoring Is Common

Social media has made unwanted requests and their ignoring easier, training us to quietly ignore anything we don’t like, or cannot commit to, but with the security of the other person not getting any kind of rejection.

The best way to say no apparently is to say nothing at all, at least on the virtual front.

102

554 reads

Say No And Offer An Option

A straightforward NO can seem rude, and that’s probably why we avoid it. A better way is to provide a polite no, with an option or an alternative, to help them reach their goals.

Example: While emailed by a colleague to meet up for a project over a cup of coffee, one can say “Hey Thanks for reaching out! I like the idea but am not able to take out the time right now. I can email you the project notes I made, and you can ping me back with any questions you may have?”

123

547 reads

Postponing A Request

Many of the workplace commitment requests require immediate action, and one may not have the bandwidth to give to others. A polite way is to say yes, but do not commit to the time, saying that you are definitely interested, but would like to do that some other time.

Most situations solve themselves when given enough time.

111

450 reads

Deflecting A Request To Someone Else

If you want to help out, but for some reason are unable to, you can become a mediator and help the person in need reach out to a different person, whom you think can be a good fit for providing the solution.

Introducing someone else clears you and can be a value-adding action.

106

414 reads

Just Say No

Sometimes a clear No is actually a stronger option than a weak Yes. A well-focused rejection makes you a powerful person.

One can look for engagements and clean out one’s calendar, making sure that the time is only spent on valuable, productive activities that help towards your own business interests.

114

519 reads

IDEAS CURATED BY

addison_ii

Thinker. Hipster-friendly coffee advocate. Infuriatingly humble organizer.

Addison I.'s ideas are part of this journey:

Daring To Be Vulnerable

Learn more about communication with this collection

How to overcome fear of rejection

How to embrace vulnerability

Why vulnerability is important for personal growth

Related collections

Read & Learn

20x Faster

without
deepstash

with
deepstash

with

deepstash

Personalized microlearning

100+ Learning Journeys

Access to 200,000+ ideas

Access to the mobile app

Unlimited idea saving

Unlimited history

Unlimited listening to ideas

Downloading & offline access

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

Email

I agree to receive email updates