Digging your own grave

The most common refrain people come up with, while I work with them is about being stressed, their inability to manage relationships or time appropriately. A few innocent questions invariably lead me to the major (besides other) underlying cause for this state of being. It is often their inability to say ‘yes’, or ‘no’, when needed, the latter being the bigger challenge of the two! The dialogue that often follows is usually on these lines:-

“So why do you have a challenge with saying ‘no’ when needed,” I ask?

“Because I don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings, or the other person may take offense,” I am told. In the work space, the reasons range from others thinking low of you for saying ‘no’, labeling you a shirker, insensitive or a rebel. The causes could also extend to being perceived as being inadequate/misfit for the job,……, so on and so forth.

Clarity on the aspect of saying a point blank ‘no’ on impulse versus saying ‘no, when needed’ becomes critical at this stage. If there is even a remote chance of you meeting an expectation with some bit of stretch or through creative thinking, then saying ‘no’ could be erroneous or inappropriate. The concern is when having weighed all alternatives, done a fair assessment of what you have at your disposal and are sure beyond doubt that the expectation cannot be met, you still feel compelled to say ‘yes’, while your mind is screaming ‘no’. To me that is the moment when you have picked up the shovel and taken the first lunge to dig your own grave to immerse yourself into a state of misery, impotence and extreme anxiety.

Having brought in clarity on what are the right circumstances under which to take a call on saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the conversation that flows is on the lines below.

I ask, “Even after due diligence and thorough assessment, when you are not hundred percent but more than hundred percent sure that you cannot deliver as per stated expectations, how often do you still choose to say ‘no’ instead of saying ‘yes’?”

“Rarely,” is the common response from most! It becomes relevant to mention here that I am speaking in the context of my fellow Indians that I mostly work with. The scene could possibly be different in other cultures.

“What goes on inside of you or what do you experience internally when you say ‘yes’ to something which you know cannot happen?” I ask.

“I experience anxiety, fear, low self-concept, lack of confidence, dissipation of my energies, low commitment, …….,” the list goes on! The answer is quite obvious when I ask which of all these are positive or life-giving emotions.

“So, does the job get done, just because you said ‘yes’, knowing fully well the answer was ‘no’?” I inquire further.

“Seldom, or only through some unexpected turn of events. But more often than not, no,” I am told.

What do you achieve by saying ‘yes’, then, other than inviting all the negativity over an extended period of time?” I check.

Some realization begins to dawn at this point, opening up window for deeper reflection. It soon emerges that besides you being the biggest sufferer of the self-inflicted agony, the others who depend on you are as much of victims, since they might have relied on your false commitments in taking many important life decisions of their own. It begins to become clear at this point that none of the perceived purposes for saying ‘yes’ (to avoid hurting others’ feelings/ not causing offense/others thinking low of you/ to avoid being labelled as a shirker, insensitive or a rebel/ being considered inadequate or misfit, etc) have been served by saying ‘yes’ instead of saying ‘no’ in the first place.

Having got this far, the obvious question that surfaces is, “Then what prompts us to do this and what can we do about it? Is there a way to say ‘no’ and get away with it?”

The answer to the former question comes from introspecting back into our childhood circumstances where it emerges that we have often been culturally conditioned not to say ‘no’ due to an element of negativity being attached to it. We recall that saying ‘yes’ is often treated as a mark of respect towards elders or ‘superiors’. It therefore does not surprise me, when we realise that we end up carrying forward the same behaviour hardwired into our minds in our adult professional lives too.

How do we then deal with this? Is there a way to say ‘no’ without attracting or generating negativity?

Of course there is. I have learnt that the skill is in making a ‘no’ acceptable. All that one would need to do is to deal with one’s ill-placed anxieties and visualise the benefits of rendering a timely ‘no’ against an insincere ‘yes’.

The biggest fear in rendering a timely ‘no’ due to the perception that it will not be taken well cannot be denied. However, how the other person will respond is something beyond one’s internal locus of control (an interesting subject for later exploration, which I would love to address sometime).

So I ask, “What can you do to make a ‘no’ acceptable from what is within your power? Your assumptions can be subjected to audit or debate. How can you render a ‘no’ which is beyond scrutiny or reproach?”

The realization is relieving when it emerges that a ‘no’ duly substantiated with facts, figures and data is more liable to be accepted than one based on one’s fears, assumptions or limiting beliefs. Generating such a ‘no’ would naturally entail considerable effort in putting facts and figures together, some serious introspection, realistic assessment of resources at one’s disposal and dealing with one’s own fear of failure. Small wonder then, that we often find ourselves committing to an unsubstantiated ‘yes’ versus a thought-through ‘no’.

What if even after doing your best as above you find your ‘no’ not being taken kindly?

My take on this is simple. Commit and just put in all that you have to make things work. It is not an opportunity to withdraw or disengage and set yourself up for failure, just because you happen to think differently from the person who gave you the job to deliver. Succeeding under such circumstances could teach you a lesson or two on what you might have missed leveraging upon. In case you fail, you have an accomplice who is now as much responsible for your failure, since you raised the flag at an appropriate moment! Let the outcomes decide whether your ‘no’ was legit.

There are other constructive possibilities that begin to surface the moment you share your well substantiated concerns (which could range from being overloaded, being deficient of resources or of right skills, etc), when assigned a job beyond your current capabilities. The other party, now being aware of your challenges has options which could range from enabling you with requisite means to succeed, or to give the job to someone else who is better placed to handle it, thereby relieving you of your anxieties and still ensuring that the job gets done on time.

My discussion often closes with a bit of a shift in the paradigm when some wry smiles begin to play on the faces, when I ask people the following question: –

“So, thus far I have asked you what goes on in your mind when you are confronted with a situation where you need to take a call on saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to someone who is expecting something from you. You have shared your concerns about how others may receive a ‘no’ from you. Now tell me, what do you do or think of people who walk up to you and say ‘no’ to something that you expect of them?”

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