No means no

People work at their best when they’re not overburdened. Sometimes that means having to decline when colleagues make requests for your time or your effort (and even foregoing things you might want to do yourself). Joining that committee, taking on that extra project or helping with a task for me? Absolutely not.

But while ‘learn to say no’ is a classic piece of career advice, ‘learn to accept no’ is more rarely advised. Yet that is often the more important part of the conversation if you’re going to encourage a healthy workplace culture.