Management is not a popularity contest. There are times when you will need to tell your employee �no.� Believe it or not, there is a right way and a wrong way to say it. Keep your working relationships intact, learn how to say no.

How to Say No to Your Employees

Have you ever been upset when your manager told you "no"? How did you react? Was it the answer or was it how they said it?

Hi Dianne

I really liked this article and the advice was so sound - thank you muchly.

You can stretch this advice too into saying no to kids and friends and parents and all you may come into contact with during your day.

I really like the paragraph with the advice of allowing the full request to be made, allow the person to speak and ask and put their request into context. Often if you know a bit more about what is being asked, that no may become a yes later or even an unqualified yes.

Friends especially could learn from the advice you gave in this article I think.

Thanks again

Cheers

Thanks Lestie!

It does get worse when it's a "friend."

Managers don't like being the "bad guy" Sometimes it happens though. I think more respect is earned for a manager who can say no, rather then give false hope.

Hi Dianne,

You are are right, it is difficult with friends but friendship is quite a difficult concept really - I went to a workshop once where we had to define 'friend' and 'friendship' It was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do in a business workshop in the time alloted for the exercise.

The facilitator then asked us to define 'boss' and 'manager'.
Of course this seems easy on the surface ... someone to whom you report or for whom you work or with whom you take responsibility for a job task list etc. etc. and so on. But doing it succinctly is another thing.

Then he made us compare our definitions and the results were surprising.

He then asked us to 'make up' a request and half of the delegates in the group Around 15 got to say YES (and note any difficulties) and the other half had to say NO (and note any difficulties). There was only time to discuss 6 of these with the full group and these 6 examples were chosen by the Facilitator.

Again, the results were surprising and the whole exercise was quite testing, but a really good lesson in management skills for all who attended. I must say it was probably one of the best I had ever attended and I remember the lessons and most of the stuff 20 odd years on!

Anyway, one thing I always think of is some advice another smart boss gave me once (and hooray, I listened!) by saying something like 'Life is a figure of eight (8), do not forget that when dealing with your employees and subordinates.' This too has kept me out of mischief, of that I am certain.

Cheers now