Learn to say 'No'

Employees who saddle themselves with extra work are not only stressed,
but the goodwill backfires when tasks remain unfinished. Tuweimei

Being yes-men, and women, in the workplace is not being nice. It is being foolish. Tobias Schormann reports

A lot of people see stress at work like they do foul weather - something unpleasant but about which they can do nothing. But, scientists say, stress is often also home-made as employees saddle themselves with extra work by not being able to say "no".

A healthy work style includes the ability to turn down co-workers' requests sometimes. Many chronic yes-men - or women -want to please others, but at the end of the day are seen as "fools for doing other people's work", psychologist Dirk Windemuth says.

Someone who cannot give "no" for an answer is rewarded with double trouble, says the professor at the Dresden-based German Social Accident Insurance's Institute of Work and Health.

"For one thing, the person always has a full desk and hence is under stress. What is more, the goodwill backfires when the work proves too much to handle and cannot be finished on time," he explains.

At worst, yea-sayers cause themselves trouble by trying to spare someone else trouble. This adversely affects their career. Although they work to the point of exhaustion, they often end up "falling down on the job", remarks Svenja Hofert, a career coach and author in Hamburg.

Those who always say yes get caught up quickly in a vicious circle, Windemuth says. Once they have a reputation as patsies, they get more and more work laid on them.

Prickly co-workers, meanwhile, have it easy: "They're increasingly left in peace," Windemuth says.

It is all right to say "no," but not categorically. "Work? Count me out!" is a wisecrack you can say to the boss just once. And people who turn down co-workers too bluntly get on their bad side.

The Hamburg-based Verwaltungs-Berufsgenossenschaft, an occupational accident insurance provider, advises employees to explain why they lack the time to take on a particular task so as not to antagonize their co-workers.

Point out alternatives

Simply leaving others to deal with a matter does not go down well either. "It's not my problem" is an inappropriate response.

A better tack, Hofert says, is to point out alternatives to the boss or co-worker making the request, for example by offering to deal with the matter at a later time. Or you could agree to a compromise in which the co-workers in question share the task - provided the task can be divided up sensibly.

Delegate tasks

Another possibility is to pass a task on to a co-worker. "You can say, for example, 'Why don't you ask Meier to do it? He knows his stuff and can get the job done faster and better than I can,'" Windemuth advises. This, he says, gives the help-seeker the feeling of being helped.

You can easily delegate a task when responsibilities are clearly delineated and the task does not fall within your domain. "In that case there are no long discussions - it's 'no!' with an exclamation mark," Hofert says.

Ask for more time

According to the German Psychiatric Association, chronic yea-sayers can find it helpful to request time for consideration when co-workers try to force work on them, because they are often caught off-guard.

But putting off a decision is not always advisable. If "no" is the definite answer, employees should refuse immediately, Windemuth says. Playing for time is the wrong course of action, he says.