Learn to say ‘no’ without having to actually say it.

What do you do if you have to say no to a request, in particular if it relates to a work assignment given to you by your immediate boss? As much as we’ve been advised to learn to say ‘no’ if necessary, the fact of the matter is that there are people out there who wouldn’t take no for an answer. How do you deal with difficult customers or superiors then under such difficult circumstances, requests that you are unable to commit to?

Throughout my working years, struggling with difficult and sometimes outright ridiculous and unreasonable demands has become part of parcel of life. I have learned an important lesson that there are many ways to say ‘no’ without actually having to say that word out loud. Sometime it is imperative for leader within any organization to try to meet customer request no matter how difficult the situation may be.

Instead of having to deal with saying an outright ‘no’, communicate to the requestor the amount of time that you think you need to get the job done. State a schedule and timeline to produce the required deliverable. Factored in other urgent tasks that needs to be completed or any other important tasks that needs to be reprioritized and impacts to other existing project deliverable timelines. Let your boss or customer decides if the request deliverable timeline is acceptable or not. Chances are that if the request is urgent and you state clearly the estimated timeline to deliver, customer would usually knows that it is a self-implied answer of a ‘no. That beats the hell out of having to say ‘no’ outright.