How to say no to your boss without it feeling like a confrontation

Last week I introduced my coaching client, Clara. She was leading a strategically significant change programme when her boss, new to the organisation and eager to impress, began saying yes to every request from the senior leadership team and passing the consequences down to her. Every commitment he made became additional work on her plate.

By the time we started working together, she had tried prioritising her way around it and hoping it would settle as he found his feet. Neither had worked.

She needed to say no to her own manager and she needed to know how.

Let’s get this important point straight from the start. Saying no is not a selfish act. The research suggests it is closer to the opposite.

Research by Decuypere and Schaufeli, published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2022 and drawing on data from 1,036 leader-employee pairs, found that a leader's psychological wellbeing directly predicts the wellbeing of their team. So, if you’ve been reading the series on burnout, you’ll know that when a leader's sense of competence is eroded through overcommitment and the constant absorption of demands they cannot reasonably meet, that is detrimental for the leader and for the people they lead.

Specifically, role conflict (the experience of competing demands arriving from multiple directions) is a chronic drain on a leader's psychological resources, with measurable costs on health, functioning, and performance (Olafsen and colleagues, 2021).

The point is that a leader who cannot say no is not being generous. They are gradually depleting the capacity their team depends on.

Research by Gary Yukl, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and cited more than 800 times, established that the approach that works when setting limits with your team is not the same as what works with peers, or with your own manager. So, let’s look at how these differ.

The instinct to help is not wrong. The way you help is what matters.

When a team member brings you a problem they could reasonably work through themselves, saying no to solving it for them is not unhelpful. Self-determination theory tells us that one of the core psychological needs of motivated employees is autonomy: the experience of directing their own work. When you take the problem back from them, you remove that.

So, practice a coaching approach to deal with this: "I want you to work through this one. Let's think about how you might approach it. What options have you considered?" That is not a no to the person. It is a helpful way of building strengths and independence in your team member.

Peer dynamics are often where the problem is most visible and least discussed. Colleagues might test your limits informally: such as through scope drift or asking your team directly rather than you. The research from Hu and colleagues, published in 2019, found that in peer contexts too little assertiveness reduces your standing, not just your workload. Peers do not respect the manager who always says yes. They work around them.

The language here is different. It is not about development and more about clarity: "That falls outside what my team is resourced for right now. Here's who I'd suggest you go to." Explain what you are protecting and offer alternatives. Do not simply decline.

This is the hardest direction for most people. It is also where saying yes does the most damage.

Yukl's research found that what actually works in the upward direction is rational persuasion: clear, evidence-based positions that show you understand the trade-offs and have made a rational choice. Accommodation (saying yes to avoid the discomfort of the conversation) is the least effective approach when managing upward. Senior leaders do not see it as helpfulness. They see it as a lack of judgement.

The frame to use is one of trade-offs, not refusal. "I can take that on. But, this is what would need to come off the list in order to do it well." That is not a ‘no’. It is a demonstration that you understand your team's capacity and are protecting it. That is a leadership competency.

This is what Clara and I worked through together (you can catch up on the backstory here). She was not going to tell her new boss he was wrong to say yes to the senior leadership team. That was not the right conversation and she knew it.

Instead, she asked for a dedicated meeting. She calmly set out what was currently on her team's plate, what had been added in the past few weeks, and which deliverables were, in her assessment, at risk if new work was absorbed on top of everything else. She named the specific things that would slip. She asked her boss directly which of them he would prefer to deprioritise.

She did not say no. She made the trade-off visible, and she asked him to decide.

Of course, he had not realised how much had accumulated. So they had the sensible prioritisation conversation that was needed.

She told me afterwards that she had expected it to feel like a confrontation. But in the end if felt like an important step forward in building the right relationship with her new boss.

Daniel Ames of Columbia Business School, whose research I referenced last week, found that the goal for leaders is not an unchecked higher level of assertiveness. It is situational fit: knowing which situations call for a firm position and which call for flexibility.

Not every request deserves the same answer. The skill is working out which ones to decline, and choosing the right approach for the direction you are managing in.

Here are some useful tactics you can employ for this right now:

References

Decuypere, A., & Schaufeli, W.B. (2022). Leader psychological need satisfaction trickles down: The role of leader-member exchange. Frontiers in Psychology.

Olafsen, A.H., Deci, E.L., & Halvari, H. (2021). Mindfulness buffers the adverse impact of need frustration on employee outcomes: A self-determination theory perspective.

Yukl, G., & Falbe, C.M. (1992). Consequences of influence tactics used with subordinates, peers, and the boss. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77(4), 525–535.

Hu, J., Erdogan, B., Jiang, K., Bauer, T.N., & Liu, S. (2019). Getting ahead, getting along, and getting prosocial: Examining extraversion facets, peer reactions, and leadership emergence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(11), 1369–1386.

Ames, D.R. (2009). Pushing up to a point: Assertiveness and effectiveness in leadership and interpersonal dynamics. Research in Organizational Behavior, 29, 111–133.

Blake, A.B., Luu, V.H., Petrenko, O.V., Gardner, W.L., Moergen, K.J., & Ezerins, M.E. (2022). Let's agree about nice leaders: A literature review and meta-analysis of agreeableness and its relationship with leadership outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 33(1), 101593.

All of my posts for new leaders are here.

Coaching - I have a few spots available for 1 to 1 coaching. I can help you with any of the people leadership challenges you might be facing. There are more details here.

Best wishes and enjoy your weekend.

Martin