Five Strategies to Say No - Firmly and Respectfully

In this episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast, host and professional mediator, Simon Goode, delves into the art of saying 'no' with confidence and kindness. Reflecting on personal experiences, including morning challenges with his son and client demands at work, Simon explores five practical strategies to effectively communicate a refusal without escalating tension. Whether it's using tactical phrasing like "this isn't the time" or suggesting constructive alternatives, the episode provides listeners with actionable techniques to maintain harmony and assertiveness in both personal and professional settings. Additionally, Simon offers a bonus tip on managing persistent requests, ensuring you'll be equipped to handle even the most determined individuals with composure. This episode is an essential listen for anyone looking to master the delicate balance of saying no, a critical skill in managing everyday conflicts. Tune in to enhance your communication toolkit and navigate conflicts with greater ease.

Tomestamp overview

00:00 Role Modeling Calm Communication

06:10 Choosing Between Soft or Assertive 'No'

08:18 Streamlining Communication Processes Now

10:25 Conditional Approval for Request

15:57 List Management and Authority Dynamics

18:31 "Strategies for Resolving Persistence"

21:21 Breaking the Cycle of Repetitive Discussions

Transcript

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Well, hello, and welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Good. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict, whether that was connected to workplace situations or conflict outside of work. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful for you, please consider pressing subscribe. In the episode today, I'm going to be talking about five options that we can use to say no when someone's asked something of us, they've made a request, and we need to effectively give them the hard news that no, we're not gonna do what you're asking us to. Now, as usual, the reason that I've chosen this particular topic is for a personal cue. It was some conflict with my son that's been happening. He's really into music, and I've set up at the moment kind of a musical keyboard. It's a midi keyboard, and it's connected to a laptop that then can create all of these different sounds. There's a music program I've got got called Logic Pro that he's really into. So he loves just clicking through and using the different synthesizers and basses and pianos and drums and all this kind of thing, but he likes it too much. It's too tempting. He really finds that music resonates with him, I think, and, unfortunately, it tends to resonate at quite inopportune times, like when he's meant to be brushing his teeth or getting his socks on or packing his bag to get ready for school. And I've really struggled with this. Like, how do I let him know that you have to stop that? And he's asking me, can I just have a go? Can I just have a quick play? Dad, don't you want to encourage my music? I know you're paying for me to do these lessons. Of course, it's something that's important to you, dad. Right? And I've sometimes find it found it challenging to figure out the best way to say no. Either I've been too soft and just let him have a quick play, and then when I end up needing to say no, it creates a bit of a meltdown. And unfortunately, I wish that I just said no from the word go. But in other situations, what happens is that the frustration and annoyance builds up in me, and so I do a little bit of a mini eruption. Like, even in a subtle ways, but I use an overly harsh tone of voice, like, for goodness sakes, we've talked about this before or something like that. And I don't think that's necessarily the kind of person that I want to be. I don't think that sets me up for a very good day. It introduces a little injection of cortisol, the stress hormone that our brain creates, and sets me up for feeling a little bit more on edge as I go to work and start my day and what I need to focus on. So I would prefer for our mornings to be a lot more calm for my own sake, but for him, I also don't want this to be the way that I demonstrate and role model communication. Like, how do we deal with difficult conversations and situations where someone's doing the right thing? I wish, in hindsight, that I could be a better role model for him in these kind of situations. So it might be those kind of challenges, like how do we say no to a family member or friends in a relatively informal kind of setting, like your child wanting to play a musical keyboard or something. But it might also be a a work related issue struggling to say no. I know for so many people, this is something that they find very uncomfortable. They're worried about the other person's reaction. And to be frank, I think a lot of the people that become quite conflict avoidant, part of it is because they have trouble saying no. They have trouble holding the line and holding on to boundaries and this kind of thing. So I'm going to use that example of my son, but I thought it could be helpful to focus on a client example as well. So I've got, at the moment, a few different clients that I'm preparing training workshops for over the next few months. And one of them has been a little bit demanding. It's a a community service, so a not for profit, and they just keep changing things. They keep wanting me to add a little bit more. And each request on itself is relatively minor. Like, can we add a couple of extra people, or could we do it a bit earlier, or could you bring this along instead of us providing it, or something like that. But when I look at it in, you know, all of their requests together, it's annoying. And I wish that I could find a respectful but firm way of just saying no to that particular client. I don't wanna lose the work. I don't wanna upset them or give them the sense that I'm being disrespectful or something. But I also don't want to continue to keep saying yes. You know, it's it's annoying in the short term, but it also, of course, creates a bit of a precedent and an unrealistic expectation in some of those expectations as well. So you need to decide how you're going to position yourself in this process of saying no. I'm going to talk about five different tools or five different ways that we could phrase it, but you effectively need to decide how soft or caring or empathetic or supportive you want to be versus how firm and assertive and hold the line and this is not flexible, like I'm not budging kind of thing you need to be. Now I think this is something that we often need to pause and consider quite carefully because it depends on our goal, our goal for the relationship, and our goal for that situation that we're in even in the moment. Like right now, if I've got fifteen minutes left, I might not mind spending time discussing the issue with my son and explaining the reasons why he can't play the keyboard and he needs to go and brush his teeth. The challenges when we're late or the cumulative effect on stress of our family or something like that. But that's only if I've got time. If I'm quite short on time, like, I've only got two minutes before we need to go, then I'm not wanting to go into that discussion conversation. So I might recognize that there's that option to be empathetic and collaborative and have it a two two way street and, you know, give him some input and all this kind of thing. But in other situations, it's just this is the way it needs to be. You know, we need to go either because of the situation, like there's not not much time, it's urgent, or because there's something else at stake, like, it's a safety concern or something else. Now with the client request that keeps wanting to make these small changes, it can be challenging to know how to position yourself, how to pitch yourself. But effectively, what we're doing is choosing between those two different polar options that we've got of being a little bit more soft, a little bit more accommodating, or being a little bit more assertive. So I suppose for each of these five different ways of saying no, we could do it in a way that's a bit more firm or do it in a way that's a bit more soft depending on the person that we're dealing with and the situation that we're that we're in. So the first way that I often really like to say no, it it's not a longer term option, but it can be incredibly useful in the short term, is saying something like, this isn't the time. People have a much easier time accepting a response like not now as opposed to no. Now this is also something that's very useful for you to know about yourself, by the way. I really like the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, and he talks about one of the ways that we can overcome our addictions is also to say, not now, I'll have it later. Like, don't crack a beer as soon as you come in the door after work. Of course, you're gonna feel like it then. You're hot and sweaty and you're thirsty. Have a glass of water, have a shower, get out of your work clothes, and then make a decision about whether or not you still want the beer, And you might end up drinking less or not drinking as frequently and that kind of thing. But that's really true for other people too. So for my son, if I say to him, look, you need to get ready. You need to brush your teeth. Stop playing that keyboard. A more effective way to say it a lot of the time is to say, this isn't the time to do it. Right now, you need to be going brushing your teeth. This isn't the time to be playing. I'm sorry. Or I'm sorry. That keyboard right now needs to go off, but you can turn it on again after you've had a chance to brush your teeth and put your socks on. So this isn't the time. Now we could use that for the request itself, like you want to play the keyboard and I'm saying no, but we could also use it for the process that the request is made. For example, the client who keeps making these small changes, I sometimes use an approach like this isn't the right time to make this because what I'm wanting to do is to change the structure. We talk a lot about the five types of conflict when I'm running conflict resolution training workshops, data, interest, values, relationship, and structure. And what I'm what I'm wanting to do here is to change the structure. Instead of drip feeding me this death by a thousand cuts way of making these requests and asking for revisions or whatever the thing is that we're discussing, let's organize the time to sit through it and go through it all in one point, or let's put a process in place for how you'll submit these requests, or let's discuss some parameters around what is in scope and what's out of scope, or what warrants a defect and what doesn't. But this isn't the time to do that. So I'm effectively saying, I'm not prepared to have this conversation with you at the moment. I'm not saying that I'm not prepared to do it at some stage in the future, but not now. So you might find that if you start to give that response to people, like, this isn't the time a customer comes in outside of opening hours, instead of just saying we're closed, saying, I'm sorry. We'll be open again at

09: 9:11

00. You're welcome to come back then if you'd like. This isn't the time that I can help you with what you need. The second possible way that we could say no is to say that there's an issue with the request. Like, this isn't the place to make this decision, or I need some more information, or I need to check with someone, or this is probably a bigger decision that we need to make together. Now again, this isn't going to get you to a longer term resolution, but it can be helpful for managing people who are quite pushy and insistent in the short term. Sure. I can understand why you've made that request. That makes complete sense. I can understand where you're coming from. And if I was in your position, I might very well feel the same way and be asking the same thing. That's something that I'll need to clarify, and I need to go back and look through the policy in a little bit more detail. Can I give

you a call this afternoon at around three or or 03: 9:58

30 or something like that? Or we could say, if that's something that you'd like us to do, this is the form that you'll need to complete, and this is the additional information that I'll need. Or the request has come through, you could say, look, I'm happy to go and talk to my manager or my supervisor about that. In order for me to do that, I need you to do this. So there's this additional information. There's this other step. There's this different mode of communicating with us. And if you do that, then I'm happy to consider this request. But if you're not doing that, as things stand at the moment, this isn't something that I can say yes to. So how does that sit with you? I mean, it can be a little bit of a strategy that we use in some circumstances, and to be honest, I probably wouldn't make that with my son. But this would be an example where, like, he often brings a friend home with him. He's out playing on the local soccer field or something, and he'll come home with one of his friends and he'll say, you know, can can Freddy stay for dinner or can Rocky stay for dinner? And I'll often say to him, look, mate, I'm happy to let your friends stay for dinner, but I need you to ask me first. I don't like it when you bring them back and put me on the spot, especially when, you know, it puts a lot of pressure on them for this reason. So I'm kind of saying to him, look, it's not that the request wasn't correct. It's the way that it was made or the time that it was done or something like that. And if you can do it differently, you're gonna get to a better outcome. Now again, it depends on the situation and the person that you're dealing with, what you promise them. I usually just promise to consider it. I'll see what I can do. I'll give it some thought. I'll see where it sits in terms of our approval process. You could say, if you give me this additional information, then I will do what you want. I'll give you the refund. I'll organize the replacement or whatever it is that they're asking you for. But you wanna be a little bit careful about kind of like making promises that you can't keep. The third possible way that we could say no is to say something like, that's not a request or that's not something that I can agree to. So I get where you're coming from. I understand why you're asking. At the moment, it's not something that I can approve. I don't know why, but sometimes externalizing the request, I can see the logic in that request. I can understand why you've made it. At the moment, that request is not something that I'm able to give the green light to. I can see where you're coming from, etcetera. And one of the things that we can add to that to make it more effective is to say, look, it's not negotiable. I'm sorry, but in this circumstance, there really isn't any flexibility here. So I'm trying to be quite firm. That request isn't something that I can agree to. It's not negotiable. There's no flexibility. And then what we often need to do when we use this option for saying no is to shut up. It's to prepare, to be quiet, you're going to be feeling incredibly anxious, your heart will be beating in your chest, you know, and you'll wanna keep talking, the words will just spill out, and what you don't want is to give the other person more ammunition to argue against you. So give them the no, succinct, short and sweet, that's not something I can agree to. I'm sorry. It's not negotiable. And then be quiet. Let them have a dummy spit. That's ridiculous. Do you know how much I've spayed or whatever? But you might find that actually they're reasonably reasonable. I was listening to a YouTube video recently by a guy called Christo who I really like, and I'm hoping to have a bit of a conversation with him at some stage down the track, actually. But he was talking about pricing as a way that we position ourselves. In other words, how do our clients interpret our business based on our price? Because if we price really low, they think that we're budget and they begin to suspect that maybe there's something wrong with us or with the product. And the same is true, I think, with the way that we communicate in the phrasing that we use and the tone of voice and body language, etcetera. We're effectively positioning ourselves. We're trying to influence the way that the other person perceives us. And sometimes, if we can hold our ground and we're seeming confident, you know, it doesn't matter whether or not you feel confident. If we can give the impression of confidence, it often means that we're perceived as being more confident, and we might find that people listen to us more or that we're more influential than we used to be. And one of the tools, I think, that really helps us to appear more confident, to give that impression of being assertive, is to allow silence. So to give the phrase short and sweet and then be quiet. The fourth possible way that we could say no is to refer to some external reason. Now the reason that we use should be relatively simple. We should just repeat the same reason again and again and again, and we shouldn't add too much detail around it. Look. I'm sorry. I've just looked at your request for a refund. That's outside of our policy. Something along those lines. Or there are some criteria that we need to follow in terms of, the the way that we respond to these issues. Just looking at the flowchart or the steps that we would normally take, that request that you've made isn't something that I'm going to be able to organize. So I'm effectively saying there's some external rule that's causing the problem here. So with my son, I might say something like,

look, mate. The challenge is that we need to leave at 08: 15:17

25. Whether or not we're ready and on time, that's the time when we need to be out the door. And every minute that goes by after that, we're gonna be an extra minute late. So it could be as simple as that. Like, the problem is the external time that we need to leave because it takes fifteen minutes to get to the school or something like that. Or maybe you could discuss as a family how you're gonna manage morning routines. They're gonna brush their teeth and then do their socks and then pack their bag and then they can play music. And we might say to them something like, I'm really sorry, mate. Do you remember we came up with that list of things that happen in the morning? So you've started playing music, but I can see there's a couple of other things that need to happen first. Could you get that those organized, and then I'd be happy to turn the computer on for you. So I'm kind of saying, isn't that a challenge that we've got this list that we need to manage? Let's look at the list. We do have to follow the list. And you might be surprised that even with adults, there's this subconscious, I think, way that people I don't know. It's almost like an inclination that we have to follow authority or something like that. But if there's an external reason that's your justification for saying no, of course, it minimizes the likelihood that they're going to get you to change their mind by arguing with you. And as a result, you might find yourself not getting into as many of those gross and unnecessary back and forth exchanges that you might have when someone continues to push the point. So we've talked about those options if this isn't the right time or maybe letting them know that there's a problem with the request. We've talked about that particular phrase of that's not something that I can agree to and including it's not negotiable, maybe an external reason like the policy or something like that. The final way that we could say no and something that often works quite well is to suggest an alternative. And one of the the, what would you say, like, the protocols or the formulas that can be helpful for that is to say, if you, then I. If you do this, then I can do this. If you brush your teeth and put your socks on, I'll I'll turn the computer on and you can play for ten minutes or so. Now this isn't a compromise. A compromise would be to say, look, at least brush your teeth and I'll let you play for a minute, then you can do your socks after that. This is looking for an actual collaboration. In other words, a real win win kind of arrangement. Look. If you'd like to play music tomorrow morning, I'm happy to say yes to that, but what I need you to do is to pack your bag tonight the night before. Or, yep. No worries. I'm happy to download that extra sound that you'd like me to. In order for me to do that, I need you to do this. So we're suggesting an alternative, like, maybe you could do this, or maybe you could organize this yourself, or instead of doing it all in the morning, maybe you could do some of the tasks the night before. And I'm kind of saying to them, there's this contingency here. I'm opening up a pathway for you to get what you want. You wanna play music in the morning. I fully get it. Let's think about options that's gonna let you play for, like, an hour instead of ten minutes. And if you'd like that, this is what you need to do. I find this particularly helpful in parenting because it encourages our children to develop this sense of responsibility. Not that I'm putting, you know, a gold star in my own chest saying that my son's so amazing at being super responsible. I'd say that he's reasonably average. But when I follow this kind of approach, I noticed that he often does manage to stand on his own two feet or he's much more willing to be compromising in something like packing his bag the night before because it's so explicitly connected to something that he wants and something that's important to him. So those are the five different options that we have for saying no and those five different choices for phrasing, etcetera. But before I finish the episode today, I thought what might be helpful is to give a little bit of a bonus tip. This is how do we deal with someone when they just won't let it go. Like, we followed one of those options above, and now we're still dealing with someone that insists they're not listening to us or they just keep asking the same thing again and again. For me, I tend to use a circuit breaker kind of summary to manage these situations. So I might say something like, look. You asked for this for this reason, or you're doing this for this reason. And I actually, I can hear what you're playing there, and it does sound really cool. I'd love to let you keep playing if we had more time. So this is summarizing his perspective in a very genuine and valid way. It's like, I can fully understand that point of view. And I have asked you now to go and get your socks on and brush your teeth four times. If I keep asking, I'm gonna start raising my voice and getting upset, and that ends up in a situation where none of none of us are very happy. So I'm summarizing the dynamic and, you know, the history of the conversation so far, so to speak. You've asked for this. I've said no for this reason. You've said that you thought that this should be an exception, and I've explained that actually that's still not something that I can approve within the policy. So I'm summarizing all of those different steps. You keep asking for this, and I've explained that no, that's not something that we can do. And I often like to finish by saying something like, look, I'm not sure what I can offer beyond that, or I'm not sure how to proceed further, or I apologize. I appreciate the fact that this isn't something that you agree with, and from your perspective, we've got it completely wrong. At the same time, there's really nothing further that we can do. And these are often situations again where you need to just zip your lip, bite your tongue, be quiet, and let the other person process what you've said, even if it's simply the fact that they're not going to get what they want. I have had a number of different experiences myself as a customer where I've dealt with professionals, and, you know, I'm reasonably good at having arguments, to be honest. I'm a professional mediator, and I'm, you know, reasonably verbose, etcetera. But when someone does this to me, you know, they say, look, I know that you think that you should get this for this reason. I've said no because of this. There's really nothing that we can come back with them with. They haven't give us any additional information. There's no facts that we can debate against, so to speak. It's not like it's not true, like we've gone through it. They're talking about the conversation that we're in with them. And them saying to us, I can understand your request. It's not something that I can approve, but that layer deeper of, and you've kept asking this and I continue to say this, what we're wanting to do is to interrupt that Groundhog Day repetitive, you know, round and round and round about kind of conversation that, unfortunately, that does sometimes happen. When we say no to some people, they don't let it go. They just continue to push. So that summary, you've asked for this, I've said no for this reason, you've asked for this and now I've said this, you've asked to speak to a manager, I've explained that there's not one available, you've said that this isn't good enough, and I've let you know that you can put the complaint in writing if it's something that you would like to pursue further. I'm sorry. I'm not sure what else I'm going to be able to offer you beyond that at this stage. So how does that sit with you, those different options for saying no or even that bonus tip for dealing with people who won't let the request go? If it's been useful, I would be incredibly grateful if you would consider giving it a positive review. And if you would like some additional tools for dealing with conflict, again, whether it's workplace conflict or conflict outside of work, families, relationships, conflict with your partner, then please consider pressing subscribe. Thank you very much for listening, and all the best managing the conflicts that you're dealing with over the next week or so, and I'll hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills podcast. Bye for now.