Being Assertive

PRACTICE GUIDE – Inside-Out Energy

What is Assertiveness?

Being assertive means being able to stand up for your own or other people’s rights in a calm and positive way, without being either aggressive or passively accepting that you could be are ‘wrong’.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines assertiveness as:

“Forthright, positive, insistence on the recognition of one’s rights”

Being assertive involves standing up for your personal rights – expressing opinions, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, in a direct, honest, and non-violent way. Assertiveness should not be confused with aggression, which is to having power over others. Assertiveness brings power from within and respects the values and beliefs of other people. We all see the world differently and these different perspectives can be valuable in challenging our own values and beliefs.

So what does this mean?

Assertiveness is a powerful resource anyone can access from within themselves. It’s about choosing to be:

• responsible
• honest
• clear
• accepting
• forgiving
• effective
• risking
• spontaneous
• questioning

These traits enable you to express your feelings, wishes, wants and desires appropriately. It’s an important personal and interpersonal skill that everyone should practice – not just those in a management or supervisory role. In all our interactions with people, whether at home or at work, with employees, customers or colleagues, assertiveness can help you to express yourself in a clear, open and reasonable way, without undermining the rights of yourself or others.

Being assertive can help reduce stress because it enables us to act in our own best interests and reflects our concern to care for the welfare of others. It’s about standing up for ourselves and those less able, trying to deal with undue anxiety, to express honest feelings comfortably and to express personal rights without denying the rights of others.

But an important distinction has to be made between assertiveness, aggression, and passiveness.

Passiveness.  We  observe people behaving like victims – helpless  – self-obsessed –  vague – apologetic – inhibited – deferring

Responding in a passive or non-assertive way tends to mean compliance with the wishes of others and can undermine our human rights and self-confidence. We see this behaviour in people who adopt the victim role, always moaning and playing the martyr. Many people adopt a passive response because they have a strong need to be liked by others. Such people do not regard themselves as equals because they place greater weight on the rights, wishes, and feelings of others. Being passive results in failure to communicate thoughts or feelings and results in people doing things they really do not want to do in the hope that they might please others. This also means that they allow others to take responsibility, to lead and make decisions for them.

Although everyone acts in passive and aggressive ways from time to time, such ways of responding often result in a lack of self-confidence and, therefore, are inappropriate expressions of what such people really need to do

Aggressiveness. We observe people behaving like bullies – pushy – arrogant – offensive – violent – domineering – blaming – vengeful – sarcastic – manipulative

By responding in an aggressive way, the rights and self-esteem of the others is undermined. Aggressive responses can include a wide range of behaviours, like rushing someone unnecessarily, telling rather than asking, ignoring someone, or not considering another’s feelings.

Good interpersonal skills mean you need to be aware of the different ways of communicating and the different response each approach might provoke. The use of either passive or aggressive behaviour in interpersonal relationships can have undesirable consequences for those you are communicating with and it may well hinder positive moves forward.

Stress is generated when aggression becomes a frightening or distressing experience. Being spoken to aggressively leaves the receiver wondering what instigated such behaviour, or what he or she has done to deserve the aggression. If thoughts and feelings are not stated clearly, this can lead to individuals manipulating others into meeting their wishes and desires. Manipulation can be seen as a covert form of aggression whilst humour can also be used aggressively.

Now what?

It’s not always easy to identify truly assertive behaviour. This is because there is a fine line between assertiveness and aggression. A distinction needs to be made between assertive and aggressive behaviour.

Assertiveness is about balance. It requires being forthright about your wants and needs while still considering the rights, needs, and wants of others. When you are assertive, you ask for what you want but you don’t necessarily get it.

Aggressive behaviour is about winning. It requires that you do what is in your own best interest without regard for the rights, needs, feelings or desires of others. When you are aggressive, you take what you want regardless, and you don’t usually ask.

Practices

1. Benefits of being assertive.  Make a note of the benefits you see in being appropriately assertive and what are the blocks i.e. increased confidence, people know where they stand

2. Assertion techniques.  Which of the assertive techniques listed below have you used yourself or seen someone else use?   Give examples . . . .

• Broken Record – use of calm repetition until you have been heard
• Fogging – Accepting what others say, whilst reserving your own judgement and think about it
• Negative Assertion – Accepting the negative assessments of your errors without apology
• Self-Disclosure – Initiating a discussion of positive and negative opinions of the situation to reflect on
• Workable Compromise – Offering a compromise that does not damage your self-respect
• Blocking and Avoidance – Hold on to what you think and avoid questioning or alternatives
• Laughing Off – Respond to negative assessments of your assertions with a joke

3. Being assertive.

Choose a situation and clarify your intention. Note what actually happened, what you would do differently and what you think you handled well.

• Did it increase your self-confidence?
• Were you properly understood?
• Others knew exactly where you stood?
• Were you more open to feedback?
• Observations based on verifiable evidence instead of opinions?
• Stood a better chance of getting what you wanted?
• Fewer situations remained unresolved?
• You feel better for speaking up and having your say?

Tease out an example of:

1. The situation
2. What was your aim/intention?
3. What actually happened?
4. Looking back, what did you do well and what would you do differently next time?
5. What main lessons did you learn about yourself?

References

Assertiveness by Judy Murphy. Createspace 2011

Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.  Sounds True 2012