The art of saying no (without losing trust)
Today’s edition of Sticky Situations was submitted by me. This came up in our executive presence webinar, and I wanted to share it with all of you. Have you ever received a request from a leader and wanted to say no immediately? Like, that’s cute but I am so swamped, k thanks. Well, I didn’t say that verbatim, but learn from my mistake!
One of the lowest hanging fruits to build executive presence, and we do it multiple times a day! Check out my tips and common mistakes.
The Situation
Early in my career as a new manager, I made the mistake of saying a blunt “no, sorry we don’t have bandwidth” to a senior leader’s request. My team was drowning with other critical work. That leader’s “simple” ask was also extremely complicated and we already disproved their hypothesis. I intended to showcase my prioritization and boundary-setting. Instead I got feedback that it was dismissive and didn’t answer the underlying question. So is there a way to say “no” but still build your executive presence and maintain trust? Or do you just have to say “yes” to everything?
My Take
Good news is prioritization and boundary-setting can definitely build your executive presence! That’s good leadership right there. BUT bad news is, it doesn’t have the word “no” anywhere near it.
Here’s the trick. You never actually say “no.” You are so solution-oriented and willing to figure out a right next step that you actually build trust and respect.
How to say no without actually saying “no”:
Remember, you’re on the same team. With this mentality, you can help figure out a real solution. Be sure you understand the intent behind their request.
Pretend it’s your problem. If this was your problem, what would you do? How would you go about solving it with the resources you have? What might be some alternatives? Sometimes our leaders ask for something specific, but there might be other ways to get the same info.
Offer a step forward. Even if you can’t do the exact task, suggest an alternative that moves the work closer to the outcome.
Propose options. If you’re not the right person to take it on, recommend another approach, dataset, or person who can.
Stay solution-oriented. Frame your response around what can be done rather than only what you won’t do. That way, you’re building trust while protecting your team’s priorities or your bandwidth.
Let’s go through some examples (both for ICs and managers):
No bandwidth or unrealistic timelines
• “I’m heads down working on the [super critical and urgent task], but I could pull that tomorrow?”
• “It will take a few days to pull a detailed analysis since the data needs some cleaning, but we can provide the high-level metrics as a snapshot for tomorrow. Does that work?”
• (if urgent) “Ok, let me jump on this. Is it okay if we deprioritize [other critical thing you are working on]?”
Duplicate or related work
• “We actually have some insights on this topic from this other analysis we just did. Let me send you that first and then we can see if there are any gaps that we want to dive into.”
Not the right ownership
• “I may need help from marketing on the projections. Mind if I pull in Kara to help with this?”
• “If we take this workstream on, we’ll have to drop a critical project that was above-the-line [insert some specifics]. How about I do an initial scoping and then propose the best owner?”
If you’re unsure about your response, propose it to your manager first and see what they say. Wish I had done that back then!
By being solution oriented, you are first trying to help the person. Count that towards earning trust. By sharing a thoughtful assessment of the work/ownership/bandwidth, you are making smart tradeoffs. Point for you in prioritization. By moving the ask forward (even if you don’t do it), you’re helping solve the problem. Together that is building your executive presence.
