MYTH: I have said ‘no’ to my manager for an additional responsibility as it’s unchallenged.
REALITY: If you do not provide the right reason, the manager will think that you’re being inflexible.
In spite of excellent planning, there is always a plateful of ‘open issues’ lying with a manager for completion, which fall outside the main assignment. Some of these items could be interesting—like trying out a new technology or process, evaluating a new product or a new programming language. They could also be about writing a report, analyzing results, looking into some best practices and how to apply them, as well as about enhancing tools—and some of these tasks might be considered unchallenging. The manager wants to distribute all these items among the team members and try to rotate responsibilities so that everyone gets a piece of such ‘non-challenging work’.
A manager often encounters reluctance on the part of team members to take up un-interesting work. While some employees try to understand the scope of the task before saying ‘no’, some others say ‘no’ even without bothering to understand the details. Yes, there could be genuine reasons for saying ‘no’: the additional work might negatively impact the task that the employee had already been assigned; the employee might be overloaded; or he simply doesn’t have the skills to carry out the job; or even that he might have personal issues which rule out extr6 time .at work.
When an employee cites such reasons once or twice for refusing such work, the manager may be lenient, but if he sees a pattern to it, he might no longer ask the employee to do this type of work; and that would mean that the employee loses out on opportunities to learn and improve.
WHAT CAN YOU DO AS THE EMPLOYEE? Every task provides some learning experience which could come useful in the future. When the manager asks for a particular task to be carried out, it means it is important, and working on it might also help in being in the good books of the manager. And in cases where others` have turned down the task, you have a chance to be saviour. The task might also provide you with an opportunity ib work with other teams, which can enhance your visibility. Turning down a request with an unconvincing reason might force the manager to think that you are inflexible and rigid.
WHAT CAN YOU DO AS THE MANAGER? You have to introspect: Why are people saying ‘no’ to these assignments? How often has it been happening? Have I created a good team environment where individuals will be able to understand that they sometimes need to take on additional work for the team, and so something that isn’t exciting or challenging, but is necessary for completing the project?
