Here are some strategies to lessen the odds that your refusal will be taken as a personal affront
Case No. 1: You are an assistant professor sitting in your office, poring over some data from your most recent experiment. If you can just get a few more hours of work in today, you might be able to submit a paper for a national conference before the deadline.
Suddenly a senior professor knocks. It is Von Doom, head of the department’s tenure committee. “I have some great news,” he states cheerily. He has started a major new research project, and he wants you to be his partner and co-author.
You freeze: A big start-up project would throw off your research agenda and publishing schedule. You also know Von Doom’s reputation — “co-author” means “you do the work and I’ll sign my name to the publications.” But how can you say no to a man who, at least in part, controls your promotion-and-tenure destiny?
Case No. 2: Albert was your first doctoral student, but the relationship has frayed. He keeps changing his topic, taking up more and more of your time, and falling behind in the work he is doing (badly) as your assistant. As the semester ends, you delicately bring up the possibility of his finding a more compatible adviser.
He is astonished. You are the only one in the university who really cares. That’s true; three other senior professors have given up on him. Should you slog along for months, perhaps years, to come, knowing in your heart that he will never finish?
Both cases convey the same point: The single most important skills a junior faculty member can develop are the ability to say no and stand by it, and the ability to gauge when refusing a request is not an option.
An inability to say no is a widespread problem in many professions, judging by dozens of self-help books on the subject. But academe presents some special circumstances that make it particularly tricky to say no.
On the pragmatic side, there are people in our work lives who hold what might be termed “ambiguous power” over us. A senior professor asks a favor: He does not have the power to fire you, lower your salary, or get you transferred to the north Alaskan office as would a senior executive in the corporate world. But maybe that professor will nurse a grudge come time to vote on your tenure case.
Then there is the ethical dimension of saying no. That, too, is a familiar issue outside academe; a number of self-help books promise to tell readers how to say no “without guilt.” But declining a request is especially problematic for young professors who, after all, become teachers because they like to help others. We are built, by inclination and training, to be “yes” people. What teacher wants to be thought of as selfish and self-centered?
Fear and guilt are real feelings not easily dismissed. But there are ways to deal with both practically — strategies that will lessen the odds that your refusal will be taken as a personal affront and that will allow you to satisfy your own conscience.
Let’s return to Case No. 1: How should you deflect Professor Von Doom in his quest to sign you up as his new research partner?
Your initial reply should sound something like this: “That’s interesting and promising. I’m honored you would ask me. Let me look it over.”
In other words, be polite but delay an answer until you can take the following steps:
- Develop an accurate assessment of the size and scope of the proposed project.
- Consult your dean and trusted mentors about the proposal.
- Consider how working on the project will affect all of your work, not to mention your personal life.
- Assess the tangible benefits of success in the project. Would it lead to publications that will boost your tenure case?
Afterward, if you decide not to commit to the project, diplomatically say, “This sounds great, but I am already in the middle of these other tasks, and if I took on your project, I’m afraid I would not have time to do it justice.” In last month’s column (The Chronicle, August 22), I recommended that assistant professors create a chart to manage their time and projects. Here is the payoff for making that chart look both snappy and serious instead of mere scrawls on the back of an envelope. You have evidence to show Von Doom how busy and committed you are.
Sure, he may feel spurned and react badly. But if you are sincere and pleasant, he may leave impressed by your professionalism and organizational skills. On some level, the Professor Von Dooms of academe understand that learning to say no helped them achieve their career goals. Perhaps he may even decide that, because you are so busy, you probably would not be the best partner for his labors (or the best mule to carry his pack).
In short, the key to saying no with few repercussions is to avoid rejecting a proposal out of hand, without due thought. Show that you’ve considered the offer and you care. Describe your logic. Explain your reasons. Tone and body language matter: We all know people who, as the saying goes, can make enemies by the way they say yes and friends by the way they say no.
Denying a request can also be justified by simple fairness. Say an undergraduate begs you to change her low grade. She will lose her scholarship, upset her sick grandmother, or fail to achieve her dream of graduating in seven years unless you relent and let her do some quick extra credit to bring up her grade. That is a case where you could use institutional policies — such as those stipulating that points in a course must be available to all students, not just one — to make clear that your no means no.
Another technique for saying no to something you don’t want to do is to lay out the alternatives to a “yes.” Perhaps your department chair has asked you to take on a new service project that you fear would interfere unduly with your other work. Turn the question around, show your chair what you are working on, and ask: What should I give up in order to do this new thing? Maybe it will be a simple matter of horse-trading one service project for another. Perhaps your chair will insist, but I suspect that in the future, it will register that when you say you are busy, you mean it.
The point here is maintaining a balance that is easy to advocate but difficult to master. Woe to the assistant professor who refuses all service work. But when you do commit to something, do it well. In fact, that’s often the best argument for declining further requests: because saying yes would jeopardize your proven success elsewhere.
Which beings me back to Albert, the troubled graduate student. In some ways, his case is trickier than others. Say no to Von Doom and the only one who gets hurt is you (but probably less than if you committed to his project). Say no to Albert and you could be hurting his life and career.
A vital consideration is whether your efforts can really help him. As a friend of mine once put it: “You can’t drag them across the finish line.” So, objectively, even if you gave Albert your maximum effort, would you really help him? Or just delay the inevitable?
Saying no in such cases is difficult, and the consequences uncertain. But to survive the tenure track, your first loyalty has to be to your career. I realize that sounds Machiavellian, and I understand that some people will want to engage in certain tasks purely out of a sense of altruism.
But at the end of the day, you provide no service to anyone if you fail to get tenure. Your highest duty is to become a productive member of the faculty. Being a doormat for all and sundry requests will sabotage that goal. Don’t become like the proverbial pastor who spends so much time helping his flock that his own family falls apart.
