Just say no.

It might come in the form of a last-minute deadline, or an extra project. Perhaps it’s a request to do a favour for a friend. These are all common impositions placed on people every day around the world. They come from our bosses, colleagues and our families and ignite feelings of fear, stress and frustration.

When people around us notice the tension, the most common advice that we’re given in these situations is that we should “just say no”. This advice is easily given but not easily taken. It’s easily given because the person providing it is often observing from a distance – they have nothing at stake in the situation, and often nothing to lose. But this advice is not easy to take, because of the obvious potential consequences of making the call to refuse to comply with the request.

To say that we’re just complying with an unreasonable or difficult request to avoid the consequences for refusal is an oversimplification. Many seem to think that the reason for complying with a request when you’d rather not is obvious – it’s because you don’t want to get fired. But I don’t think this is the whole story.

If you want to oversimplify, say that it’s about people-pleasing.

One explanation that is proffered when complying with an inconvenient request is that the person receiving it is simply a people-pleaser. That is, the person enjoys pleasing others by being agreeable and amenable to whatever is asked. I’ve come across many people who self-identify as people-pleasers, and when they tell me this they usually wear a small, slightly-embarrassed smile.

It’s better to please somebody than to refuse, because refusal may cause conflict. So now we move into the realm of conflict-avoidance, which is a common pastime that people everywhere enjoy. The threshold for what constitutes conflict varies wildly, depending on who you speak to. Some people can gleefully engage in vigorous debate, with raised voices and angry exchanges, and come out the other side thinking of the situation as just a small disagreement. Others will perceive any minor difference of opinion as a potential first-degree murder waiting to happen, and head for the safe pastures of agreement instead.

But is it as simple as all that? Some people enjoy and tolerate conflict, and others hate it, preferring to please people by being more compliant?

If you look back at your life, it’s probably not too hard to find examples of times when you have refused to comply with a request. Where you’ve pushed back, said no, or proposed an alternative that suited you better. Even an accomplished people-pleaser has their limits.

The question is – what defines the limits? What factors are at play that clarify the situation, and allow you to easily see that what has been requested is simply not going to work for you?

Unbalancing the scales.

Many situations seem as if they are simply black or white. Somebody requests something of you, and you have a choice – it’s either to say yes or no. But exploding out of these two simple choices is a myriad of options in terms of how you might respond. You might be direct and offer no explanation as to the reason for your refusal. Or you might decide to refuse, with an open offer of how you could accommodate the request at a different time.

But even when we consider the high-level responses of yes or no, there is an amount of complexity that goes into choosing between them. And these decisions are often not well planned and exhaustively considered – we don’t always have time for that – they’re spur of the moment, rapid reactions where our instincts drive us toward one choice or the other.

Where there appears to be a binary choice, we actually have a spectrum ranging from a definite refusal to a definite compliance. Imagine a scale that is perfectly balanced, with equal weight on both sides. Both of the plates are side by side, perfectly horizontal. But when a tiny weight is added to one side, the balance will tip in that direction. When it comes to a decision of refusal or compliance, we’re following a similar process – gradually adding weight to the sides of compliance or refusal, eventually tipping the balance to the side that carries the most weight. It’s just a matter of whether one side has enough weight for us to head in that direction.

A simple decision.

Consider this situation – a total stranger comes to your house one day and asks if they can borrow your car for the day. They say they’ll bring it back later on. It seems fairly obvious that the correct answer here is to refuse. After all, you don’t know who they are, and you’re not sure whether they’ll bring your car back at all, let alone undamaged. Even before you start thinking about whether you definitely need your car today, it’s likely that declining is the smart option.

Let’s pretend that it’s now your neighbour who is asking to borrow your car. You know them a little, and you’ve seen them in the street before so they are familiar to you. You aren’t great friends with them, but they haven’t done anything to deliberately upset you previously. For some, the decision becomes a little more difficult. Wouldn’t lending the car be a neighbourly thing to do? Others would believe it’s a little presumptuous for a little-known neighbour to make such a request – they haven’t earned the right to do so. We can now see that the fact that you are somewhat familiar with your neighbour adds a little complexity to the situation.

Now it’s the same neighbour, but they come to your door flustered. Their young son appears to have broken their arm and needs to be taken to the hospital, but their own car is unavailable. It is neighbourly to help out in this situation, surely? Would you refuse and tell them to call an ambulance instead for a broken arm? Or would you tell them to order a taxi or use a ridesharing service? Or perhaps you’d offer to drive them, instead of giving them your car? This decision has become more interesting, because you now have the added weight of expectation. No reasonable person would expect you to lend your car to a complete stranger. But what about a neighbour who is in trouble?

Ding dong. It’s the complete stranger again at your door, but this time, they have a baseball bat and they say they’re going to hit you with it unless you give them your car. What was an obvious refusal is perhaps now a much easier decision… except that some people would still fancy themselves as being able to potentially fight off the requestor. But if you amped up the situation further and gave the total stranger a gun, it’s likely that a greater proportion of people would comply with the request to take the car.

What started out as a simple decision has become much more complex, with a variety of different factors adding weight to either side of the scale.

Complicating factors.

Even in the simple car-borrowing example, there are several confounding factors that complicate the decision of whether to comply or refuse in any given situation.

One is the relationship with the person asking. How close are they to you? Do you regard them positively? Do you trust them? Would your refusal strain the relationship and are you comfortable with that? With closeness and trust comes the feeling that the person has your best interests at heart, and compliance feels more natural.

Another is the societal expectation surrounding the request. Would you be perceived negatively if you refused? Could your reputation be tarnished, or would refusal simply be regarded as a rational and reasonable thing to do in your situation? When the expectation of compliance is high, additional weight is added to that side of the scale. For your response to be anything other than compliance, there would need to be a stack of weight on the side of refusal, to counterbalance it.

Then comes power. Compliance becomes more likely when the requestor has greater power than the receiver. Power can come from knowledge or force and often has a significant influence in the decision to comply or to refuse. But it doesn’t always tip the balance – sometimes we see much less powerful entities refusing to comply with a request from a more powerful source. How is this so?

It’s because of our personal values. Our personal values are the entrenched beliefs that guide us and shape the way we respond to situations. When we value family, we might be more likely to help the child with the broken arm. When we value community, we might take the risk of damaging the car, to strengthen that bond with the neighbour. Or perhaps we value self-reliance, and would expect the neighbour to sort out their own situation before asking us for a favour.

But our values are not the end of it – underlying our values is the universal human concern for safety. This can include physical and emotional safety, as well as financial stability. When safety is threatened, decision-making can become simpler, and our choice between refusal or compliance may favour the response that preserves it.

Values are a simplifier, not a panacea.

The situations we face are often unknown, unexpected and uncertain. We don’t know who is going to come to our front door and ask to borrow our car, or if it will even happen at all. As such, with any situation where you’re forced to choose between compliance or refusal, there will be uncertainty and associated tension that comes along with it.

Understanding your personal values can simplify the situation somewhat, but this is no silver bullet. It’s true that if you make a values-based decision you’re likely to experience fewer regrets, and may feel more content with the direction you chose. But the potential tension that may come from challenging relationships or dysfunctional power dynamics will remain.

I like to think of well-understood values as your foundation – the anchor that keeps the boat from drifting away from the harbour or crashing onto the shore. But a powerful storm can still sink the ship, capsizing or smashing great holes in it which no amount of personal reflection will repair before it’s too late. Your values will simplify decisions, weighing your response to one side or the other, but they won’t remove the potential consequences of the choice you make.

Advice which involves telling people to just say no or to set better boundaries overlooks and oversimplifies the complexity in the decisions we need to make – especially those that involve complying or pushing back on a potentially unreasonable demand.

You’ll come across people choosing to answer work emails late at night, take on that additional project or wondering whether they should disagree with the boss’ idea in the meeting. From the outside, making these decisions may seem simple, because we’re looking at them through our own set of tinted glasses.

Don’t tell people to just say no. It’s advice that might be a perfect fit for you, and a terrible fit for someone else.