When Your Boss’s Favorite Word Is ‘No’
Nope. No way. Nah.
Nice try. Doing our jobs means securing permission—to launch that new strategy, collaborate with another department, take a vacation. That’s a problem when the boss’s default response is: Eh, no.
“It was stalling my career," says Kerry Flynn Barrett, a human resources consultant who once had a boss who batted down her efforts to take on bigger projects and more responsibility. It wasn’t until a more open manager took over the group that Flynn Barrett was able to rise. In retrospect, she wonders if she could have swayed the original boss by using more data to back up her proposals, or making her ask over lunch and warm conversation.
From childhood to our work lives, we hate hearing “no." We take rejections too personally or seriously, interpreting them as slights or the end of our career. Frustrated, we retreat to our desks to fume in silence or, worse, tell off the boss in an impassioned speech that feels great in the moment and wretched shortly thereafter. Much of the time, we’re focused on the wrong culprit, says William Ury, co-founder of Harvard University’s negotiation program.
“The single biggest obstacle to us getting what we want, it’s not the difficult person," says Ury, whose coming book, “Possible," examines bringing people together amid conflict. “It’s ourselves." After hearing a no, show empathy and curiosity rather than irritation, he says. Zoom out, imagining you and your boss are actors in a play.
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