Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection (14 page)

In addition to his politeness, another thing that impressed me about Jordan was his directness. When I asked him if he was interested in blogging, he stated clearly that he wasn’t. He didn’t show fake interest. As a result, I respected his rejection—and him as a person as well.

I haven’t always been a practitioner of this approach. Many times when I have had to say no to someone, I have delayed and procrastinated. Then I’d try to find the least painful way to deliver my rejection. This approach is usually counterproductive. A lot of people have the tendency to give indirect, sugarcoated rejections. They usually come in two forms: big setups and yes-buts.

With “big setups,” rejectors spend a long time explaining the reason for their rejection before they actually deliver it. Companies are notoriously good at this.

In July 2014, Microsoft laid off 12,500 employees from its Nokia mobile phone division. To deliver the bad news to his employees, the head of the division, Stephen Elop, sent employees an eleven-hundred-word memo.

Elop began the memo casually with “Hello there.” Then he spent ten paragraphs explaining Microsoft’s new strategy, plan, and focus, the iconic nature of its products, the shifts in market, and the needs to selectively “right-size” the company.

Finally, in paragraph 11, Elop delivered the bad news:

“We plan that this would result in an estimated reduction of 12,500 factory direct and professional employees over
the next year. These decisions are difficult for the team, and we plan to support departing team members with severance benefits.”

I believe Elop had the right intention—to soften the blow of the layoff, which is among the worst professional rejections. But as successful as Elop had been as a corporate executive, he was afraid to give a straightforward rejection. So he painstakingly used reason and logic to set up the news, perhaps hoping the employees would be so convinced by the time they read the bad news that the blow would be lessened.

If Elop’s goal was to use the memo to set up a smooth mass layoff, it didn’t work. The laid-off employees didn’t gush over Elop’s essay. Instead, hundreds of them set up some very ugly protests.

Layoffs happen all the time. But Elop’s approach caused a PR nightmare. The media took the memo public, writing stories with headlines like “Microsoft Lays Off Thousands with Bad Memo” and “How Not to Cut 12,500 Jobs: A Lesson from Microsoft’s Stephen Elop.”

The second form of indirect rejection is even more frustrating. “Yes-buts” happen when the rejector verbally acknowledges or even validates a request, then uses the word
but
or
unfortunately
to deliver the rejection.

Who hasn’t called a customer support number, only to hear something like: “Yes, I understand that you are frustrated with these extra fees, and you want them to be taken off. And we value your business and try to provide the best
service possible.
Unfortunately
, we are unable to accommodate your request at this time.”

“Yes-but” rejectors seem as if they are being polite and acknowledging the other person’s concerns and frustrations. Yet the word
but
—and especially the word
unfortunately
—totally undermine the rejector’s good intentions. Apple considers the word
unfortunately
so detrimental in customer service that employees (or “geniuses”) at the famously customer-focused Apple Stores are banned from using it when talking to customers.

In his book
Conversation Transformation
, organizational consultant Ben E. Benjamin (that’s his actual name) discusses the danger of “yes-buts.” Not only do they send mixed messages, he says, but also they make the idea difficult for the rejectee’s brain to process and could elicit a defensive response.

Last, when a rejector starts a sentence with “Yes, it is true that…,” “Yes, I understand that…,” or “Yes, I know that…,” the rejectee already senses that a “but” or an “unfortunately” is coming. He or she then ignores everything the rejector is saying, painfully anticipating the upcoming rejection and even forming a response.

When you deliver a rejection to someone, give the bad news quickly and directly. You can add the reasons afterward, if the other person wants to listen. No one enjoys rejection, but people particularly hate big setups and “yes-buts.” They don’t lessen the blow—in fact, they often do quite the opposite.

100 DAYS OF REJECTION: SPEAKING OVER COSTCO’S INTERCOM

I was shopping at a store with my family one day when a voice came on over the intercom. “Attention, shoppers, the store will be closing in five minutes; please bring your cart to the front.” Knee-deep in my rejection journey at the time, I was looking for every opportunity to make a rejection request. I immediately knew what I wanted to try next.

The next time I went to a store, I told a random employee that I’d like to use the store’s intercom system to make an announcement. She immediately referred me to the store manager, a middle-aged man named Robert. When I told him what I wanted—basically, for him to let me praise the store for its fabulous service over the loudspeaker—he looked at me closely, as if assessing whether or not I was serious.

“Unfortunately, I can’t,” he said. “We aren’t allowed to.”

I showed him my membership card. “I have spent thousands of dollars here,” I told him. “There is no downside for you, really. If you say yes, everyone here will be happy.” As speeches go, this was a little dramatic, but it was a throw-in-the-kitchen-sink moment. I could feel Robert slipping away.

He looked at me and shook his head. “Listen, I would love to do it, believe me. But unfortunately I can’t.”

But then, rather than walking away, Robert surprised me. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

It was my turn to be confused. I stood there, not knowing what to say.

“Come on, I will buy dinner for you and your family,” he said.

Then he walked over with me to the food court. “Give him whatever he wants,” he told the clerk, adding that it was for “member satisfaction.”

After I ordered a pizza and a hot dog, Robert explained that he had really wanted to say yes, because he thought word-of-mouth marketing was the best kind of advertising. He said that while the company wouldn’t allow a customer to speak over the intercom, it did have a membership magazine that would probably love to hear my story.

I opted to tell the story on my blog rather than share it in the magazine. But I appreciated Robert’s attempt to come up with an alternative to my desired intercom moment. A few weeks later, after posting the Costco video to my blog, I went back to the store. Robert spotted me and came over to shake my hand. Quite a few shoppers had seen the hidden video, he said, and had stopped him in the store to say hi. I was happy that my blog post gave him the opportunity to be appreciated by customers. He deserved it.

The Costco rejection attempt not only gave me a full stomach, but also taught me a great way to reject someone: by offering an alternative. Robert could have just said no. Instead, he was patient and respectful and gave me real reasons for his no. Notice here that he did give me a yes—but with the word
unfortunately
. But then he offered a free dinner that I hadn’t even asked for. How could I not be a fan of Robert and Costco after that?

Jordan at 24 Hour Fitness also offered me an alternative by directing me to his friend’s gym. So had the gray-haired man who didn’t want a rosebush in his yard, by sending me to someone who ultimately loved the offer.

These examples have something else in common—something very important. In each case, the person rejecting me was making it clear that he was rejecting my request—not rejecting me as a person. It can be hard, once you’re rejected, to separate the two. In fact, one of the reasons people hate rejection so much is because they can’t actually draw this distinction in their minds. They can’t separate the rejection from who they are as a person. It takes practice and conscious thinking to separate the two and not take things personally.

However, by offering alternatives when rejecting someone, the rejector does this job on behalf of the rejectee. He or she is really saying, “Sorry, I can’t do what you want, but it’s really not because I don’t trust or like you.”

Rejection is a deeply personal experience, no matter who you are or what you have invested in the answer. So when you are rejecting something, you have to be specific. Make sure the person knows what exactly you’re turning down, and be honest about the reasons why. This will save everyone a lot of time, trouble, and heartbreak.

O
ne of my favorite poets is Lu You. Born in China in AD 1125, Lu was a child prodigy with an uncanny writing talent who started crafting poems at age twelve. When he was twenty-nine, he took first place in the Imperial Exam, a national standardized test given once every three years. In ancient China, the Imperial Exam was a big deal. The highest scorer usually became the emperor’s favorite new cabinet member. Winning the exam could transform the fate of a person and his family for generations to come.

When Lu took first place, it seemed like he was headed for a life of power, wealth, and glory. But there was one problem. On the exam, Lu placed one spot higher than the grandson of Qin Hui—the most corrupt and powerful government official in the country and perhaps the most infamous in Chinese history. Qin was enraged that someone could dare to
score higher than his beloved grandson. So he used his influence to remove Lu’s name from the final ranking.

While Qin managed to block Lu’s victory, he could not stop his writing. Over the years, Lu continued to write poems that expressed his ambitions and aspirations for the country. His writings became so influential and celebrated that they eventually caught the attention of the emperor, who granted Lu the cabinet position he had always desired.

But Lu’s story didn’t end there. Soon, the problem of being “too good” once again changed Lu’s fate. His intolerance for corruption and his tough foreign policy stance didn’t sit well with many established government officials. They ostracized him and spread rumors to impugn his character. Eventually the emperor turned on Lu as well, removing him from his cabinet.

Again jobless and disappointed, Lu went back to the countryside and picked up his pen. His writings about patriotism and rejection during this period became some of the most influential in Chinese literary history. His beautiful ways of capturing the pain of rejection—and the discovery of hope—are part of what drew me to his work.

One line in particular kept coming back to me throughout my 100 Days of Rejection: “After endless mountains and rivers that leave doubt whether there is a path out, suddenly one encounters the shade of a willow, bright flowers, and lovely village.”
*
It was a parable about the ups, the downs, and the breathtaking discoveries Lu encountered in his own life.

Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” This is very true when it comes to rejection. Everyone gets rejected countless times over the course of their lifetime. Ultimately, few if any of these rejections will prove life-threatening or fate-altering. Yet nearly every one of them offers us an opportunity to grow, to challenge ourselves, and to overcome the fears and insecurities that block us from meeting our full potential. Indeed, one of the greatest lessons of my journey was that any rejection can have hidden upsides, if only we are willing to look for them.