Which translates into the other 80% going through life, handling work and personal relationships, effectively with one arm tied behind their back. A lack of assertiveness hamstrings you and renders a large portion of your interaction with others both unsuccessful and/or very stressful!
Assertiveness is not a ‘nice to have’ communication tool – it’s a ‘have to have’ one. Without it, you are either bullying those around you into doing what you want or you’re the one being bullied!
I know this is a somewhat dogmatic statement, but I have being training delegates on what this skill entails and how to apply it in their daily dealings with others for a number of years.…I kinda know what I’m talking about here. It makes me incredibly anxious for those of you who have to rely on a hit and miss approach to gaining cooperation in extremely important areas of your lives.
My favourite example which clearly illustrates how people misunderstand the skill in general comes from a workshop I facilitated some years back.
There were three people from the same company - the Regional Manager (Kevin), the Sales Manager (Sipho), and the Operations Manager (Janine) – (I’ve used aliases here)! When I asked them why they had chosen to attend this particular course they all looked sort of bemused and said their Training Manager had selected it for them and they had simply obeyed her instructions!
I decided to dig a little deeper and enquired why they believed she had made this decision for them and their answers still give me food for thought.
Sipho and Janine both immediately looked at Kevin and with one voice stated emphatically they had absolutely no idea why he was on the course. With something akin to admiration they said he had no problems being assertive, in fact everyone was dead scared of him and did his bidding immediately. Kevin and Janine then turned their attention to Sipho and stated he certainly didn’t need assertiveness skills because he just nagged and nagged and always got what he wanted. Finally, Kevin and Sipho turned to Janine and agreed sagely that they fully understood why she had been sent because she was a doormat who let people walk all over her! Sound familiar yet?
I was amazed at how clearly they had painted a picture of three completely unassertive behaviours!
In keeping with what most people believe, they only saw being a doormat as unassertive. They totally believed that bullying or whining constantly were both assertive because in the end they got what they wanted. They could not have been more wrong…
The reason we need to master this method of communication is that it is the only way to really facilitate true cooperation rather than grudging acquiescence. In fact I don’t believe you gain cooperation any other way and the fact that people jump when you say so, or allow you to brow-beat them into doing what you want are clearly signals that they’re not cooperating, they’re submitting!
In my next blog, I’m going elaborate on some of the essential elements comprising assertive communication, see you then...
Staff Training offers various courses dealing with Assertiveness, click here for more.