How to push back on your boss when the answer is no

Most of what is written about how to push back on your boss is about tone. Be respectful, pick your moment, bring a solution. All of that is sound, and none of it covers the problem, which is that most managers say no to someone senior by not quite saying it. They leave the room having been understood to agree, and the no arrives later, by email, when it costs more.

This is one of the scenarios managers bring to the Management Lab, where it gets played a line at a time, stopped where it goes wrong and run again. Below is a made-up version of how it usually goes. Dan and Morag are invented, and so is the firm.

A manager who needs to push back on his boss

Dan leads a team of six at a mid-sized firm. Morag is a director, two levels above him, and she has asked for a short meeting. She wants Leah, the strongest person on Dan's team, moved onto her project for three months, starting Monday.

Dan thinks this is wrong. His team has a commitment due in six weeks that Leah is carrying most of. Leah has told him privately that she does not want to move. The last time somebody was borrowed for three months, they came back after seven. He is going into the meeting intending to say no, and he has not said no to Morag before.

The first line, and what it does to the conversation

Morag explains what she needs and why, and it is a reasonable case. When she stops, Dan says the thing most managers say to someone senior.

"Yeah, I can see why you'd want her. Let me have a look at what we can do."

He means no. To him every word of it is a no. To Morag it is a yes with the details to follow, so she thanks him, says Monday would be ideal, and the meeting is over in four minutes.

Dan still has the conversation he came in to have, but now he has to go back to Morag and withdraw something she believes he agreed to. That is harder than refusing would have been, and to Morag it will look like unreliability rather than judgement. I would stop the scene at "let me have a look", because that is the line that gave her the yes.

The line that replaces it

Run it again from the point where Morag stops talking. This time Dan says the no first, before any of the reasons, and then asks a question.

"I'm going to say no to moving Leah, and I want to tell you why. Then I'd like to understand what you need for the project, because there may be another way to get you it."

After that, one reason, the strongest, rather than all three. "She's carrying the commitment we've got due in six weeks, and if she moves on Monday that slips."

The no is the first thing Morag hears, so there is nothing to misread, and Dan will not be leaving with a yes he did not give. There is one reason rather than a list, because a list of reasons sounds like a case being built and a senior person hears a case as something to argue with. One reason sounds like a judgement, and it is Dan's job to have judgement about his own team. The question at the end is a real one, too. Morag needs something for her project and Leah was her answer to it. If Dan can find out what the need is he might be able to meet it with someone else, or part time, or later, and then the two of them are working on the same problem.

Morag may push. She may say "I'm not asking". Dan has never had to answer that line, and in the Lab he gets to try it more than once.

What the swap shows

Then they change sides. The manager who played Dan is now Morag, sitting across from someone who has just said "let me have a look at what we can do".

From that chair the soft line sounds like agreement. Playing Morag, the manager finds they would have walked out of that meeting believing they had Leah, and that the email three days later would have annoyed them a good deal more than a straight no in the room.

The straight no turns out to be easier to receive than they feared, as well. From Morag's side it is clear, it comes with a reason, and it comes with an offer to solve her problem some other way. She may not like it but she knows where she stands, and senior people spend a lot of their week not knowing where they stand.

The first hour of the Lab includes a short piece of work on status, and this scene is where that pays off. Most managers soften the no because of who they are talking to, and hearing the softened version from the senior chair shows them what it cost.

Where this gets practised

Reading the replacement line is easy. Saying it to somebody senior who then says "I'm not asking" is different, and for most managers the first time they try it is with their own director, about a real person, with no second go.

The Lab is a place to have that first go before it matters. Scenarios come from what you tell me on the pre-call, with the names and details changed, and nobody plays themselves or a real colleague. It is three hours for up to sixteen managers at your office, from £750, and the terms are on the rate card.