Saying no.....

[user189804830]

After having watched my most successfully colleagues say no to pretty much everything that wasn't required of their jobs and didn't further their own research interests or profile (for instance tasks like doing vivas either at the Phd level or the smaller vivas during the PhD or serving on review committees etc) I've tried doing the same.

I realised that I say yes to pretty much every committee membership I'm asked to do (and this happens a lot as I work in a male-dominated field and am usually the only woman on the committee) and while it's nice to have that experience, it means I'm on so many things and regret having said yes and not having that time to focus on my research program.

So, how good are you at saying no and what do you say no to ?

The drive for female representation on committees is a huge issue for women in male-dominated fields. Things I'm trying to do to make my admin/service load more managable are:

i) only saying yes to committees that I think I'll either enjoy or benefit from personally,

ii) asking exactly what something will involve (and sometimes who the other people involved are) before saying yes,

iii) for things like vivas, only saying yes to people I'm confident would 'return the favour'.

I only say yes to things like committees if I know they are time limited. So "would you like to be on ethics committee?" gets a NO but "would you be able to serve a 3 year term on ethics committee?" might get a Yes because it would give some CV points / a chance to have influence but also I'd be able to bow out after my term is up, to "give someone else the chance ..."

I am bloody terrible at saying no and have got myself in a right pickle ATM. So watching and learning.

I noticed this many years back, colleagues saying no or yes only where it suited their aspirations. I'd always thought badly of the trait... until a few years ago when I finally started doing the same. I'm much happier. I'm in a role supervising a lot of the team and I encourage this now in those I sort as well.

I started saying 'no' to everything extraneous to my own benefit about two years ago when I was knocked back from a promotion that I should've walked.

Any "opportunity" that comes along, I ask myself 'how will this benefit me?' or 'will I enjoy this?' and I make my decision based on that. I absolutely only do work now when will directly benefit me/my profile or that I'll find fun.

What I've come to realise is that nothing happens, no-one forces you to do stuff, no-one tells you off. In fact, the opposite - you get pegged as a difficult person, someone who's a bit uncollegiate and you don't get asked to do stuff. It's wonderful.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not uncollegiate - I do my admin role and I do it very well, I take my turn doing viva/upgrades, I have a decent number of PhD students, I do sit on committees etc. But I only do these things when I see a benefit or where I think they'll be fun.

My standard response to an "opportunity" is the classic MN - 'That won't work for me at the moment' or I'll say 'I don't have capacity for that right now'. No need to explain, no need to apologise. Men don't.

On the odd occasions that people have come back and asked why I don't have capacity, I always make sure I have a robust answer back. Often I will draw on the years I spent saying 'yes' to things. For example, when I was two years into my lectureship, I had about 10 PhD students, some of whom were incredibly difficult cases. If someone asks me to come on-board as a second supervisor (and it's not a project which is beneficial/interesting to me), I will say that I had a period where PhDs took up far more of my time than was reasonable or fair and I'm still playing catch-up.

The other option, of course, is to say 'yes' to things and then just do them really badly such that you never get asked again. That seems to be a tactic widely used by my male colleagues.

A colleague who was very good at saying no once told me that saying no to other people is saying yes to yourself. I often think of that and try to say yes to myself more often these days.

So good to hear all the advice here - I've only recently started doing this after realising that I said yes to everything because I wanted to seem collegiate/dependable and thought some of the tasks would not take very long so might as well say yes etc etc.

But everything carries an opportunity cost and typically with some of these roles while I enjoy the work they carry beaurocratic overheads like filling in tons of forms which just adds to my admin workload (something I despise doing as it is).

Had a very manipulative colleague (who says no to everything himself) convince me years ago that it's good for me to do these things (vivas, upgrades) when he had approached me to do an upgrade for his PhD student because it's good for my name to be on the forms when it's passed up to the department etc. This was years ago when I was naive and probably half believed him but was also keen to do it because it was the first time I'd been given that sort of responsibility.

Anyway, now that I've done dozens of these I really don't care to do them anymore. Recently said no to him (for the first time) when he asked to do an upgrade and for reviewing a paper on behalf of the group. He wasn't pleased. Came back with something like we're all required to pull our load. Pissed me off - I've done nothing but said yes to everything thus far!. Anyway, definitely the right way to go for me.