Thursday 13 March 2014

How to Say No



Most people don't like asking for help. Even admitting one needs help can be a severe psychological hurdle. Asking for help can be embarrassing and debilitating. It can feel like failure or surrender. It can feel like an admission of guilt. Or, worse, inferiority.

There's only one thing worse than asking for help: asking for help and hearing no.

N. O. 

After all that...can you imagine? Admitting you need help, summoning up the strength and courage to ask for that help, making the call and then, instead of breathing a sigh of relief, you are face to face with this small, two letter word that means all of your efforts were for naught.

No means abandonment. It means being ignored, being ostracized, being devalued. No means that, while the rest of the world continues to survive, to thrive, to function – you have been consigned to be left by the wayside.

Unfortunately, all agencies and non-profits face days when that is the only answer they have. When it doesn't matter how dire the situation, how justified the client, how desperate the need – the organization cannot help.

At United Chesed, we are no different. We're a small organization with very limited funding and a very specific mandate – we offer one-time or short-term emergency care to the Jewish community in the GTA. We cannot support a client on an ongoing basis. We cannot offer legal or medical advice. We cannot give unspecified funds or provide housing. Unfortunately, there's a lot we just cannot do.

But there is one thing we can always do. We can listen. And we do. Even if we can't help, we offer our clients our full attention. By listening, we are saying: we see you, you matter, your problems are important, your existence is valuable. We want to make sure that it is clear, even if we have to say no, that we are not saying no to a client's humanity or to the validity of his or her need. 

In other words, when we say noit's about us, our limitations, not the client. When we say no, we still feel connected to the client, to finding a solution to his or her problem. We just know that we aren't going to be able to offer that help directly. 

That's why we make it our business to be aware of as many resources as possible so that every no can be accompanied with some direction as to where to go to hear yes. Chances are, even if we can't help, there's another organization that can and we want to be able to help our client find that yes.

We all have to say no sometimes but how we say it makes all the difference. No doesn't have to be a cruel word. No doesn't have to mean "you and your problems don't matter to me". No doesn't have to be a slammed door. It can simply mean "I'm not the right person for the job". Because, at the end of the day, saying no should really say more about the person saying it than the person hearing it. Consider this, the next time someone asks for something and you have to say nois your no about you or is it about them? Which no would you want to hear?

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