Professionals! Start Here with Assertiveness Skills Training

We can describe assertiveness as a ‘soft skill’, and developing your soft skills is generally seen as vital if you want to get ahead in your professional career. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to assertiveness.
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However, senior managers often tell me that they don’t always feel they’re 

clear what assertiveness is and isn’t.  What’s more, they’re often not sure how to go about improving their skills in this area. Other professionals have told me that even though they may have attended group assertiveness training courses for managers in their organisation, they haven’t made the progress with their assertiveness skills that they might have hoped.

​Assertiveness Training Needs to be Personal. 

​I feel and my experience has also shown that assertiveness training is most effective if it is personalised for the individual. This is because a manager or professional’s base level ability to assert themselves is influenced by many different factors. This means that it will not be enough for any one manager to simply learn the assertive behaviours and assertive language patterns that are taught on a typical group assertiveness training course for managers. ​

Specifically, our ability to assert ourselves can be significantly influenced by the childhood environment we were socialised in – for example to what extent did parents and teachers encourage or punish your assertive behaviours? 

What explicit or implicit messages did​

you learn from your earlier experience about whether your needs were important or not? Were gender stereotypes around assertion at play for you? A key aspect of personalised assertiveness training is understanding how your history impacts your ability to assert yourself now.

As a result of this socio-cultural history and also because of individual genetic make-up, when it comes to building assertiveness skills, people typically are starting from different places. What’s more two managers will likely respond differently to the different aspects of assertiveness training – each individual getting to grips with the various elements at a different pace and with a different level of ease.

Benefits of Assertiveness Training

Increasing your assertiveness skills can transform your career progression as a professional. Assertive behaviours will help you build your visibility, influence and impact within your organisation.

To whet your appetite, here are some assertiveness fundamentals – what assertiveness is and what it isn’t.​

Assertiveness Training for Managers 101

What is Assertiveness?

Assertiveness refers to behaviour that involves: -

• Standing up for your own rights in a way that you does not violate another person’s rights.
• Expressing your needs, wants, opinions, feelings and beliefs in direct, honest and appropriate ways.

For example : Your boss asks you to complete some additional work by the end of the week. You are the best person to do the work, but your time is already fully committed to other work. An assertive response in this situation would be: -
“I appreciate that you would like this work completed by the end of the month. However, I don’t see that I can fit it in with my workload as it is at present, so can we discuss it?

What is Non-Assertion?

Non-assertion includes the following types of behaviour:-

• Failing to stand up for your own rights or doing so in such a way that others can easily disregard them.
• Expressing your needs, wants, opinions, feelings and beliefs in apologetic, diffident or self-effacing ways.

• Failing to express honestly your needs, wants, opinions, feelings and beliefs. A non-assertive response to the example above would be:-

“Well, I don’t really have any spare time, but I suppose I could work late to fit the extra work in, er… I don’t mind.”
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People who behave in a non-assertive way tend to believe that the other person’s needs and wants are more important than their own.  Typically, people who behave in a non-assertive way are seeking to avoid conflict and please others.

What is Aggressive Behaviour?

Aggressive behaviour includes the following:-

• Standing up for your own rights, but doing so in such a way that you violate the rights of other people.
• Ignoring or dismissing the needs, wants, opinions, feelings or belief of others.

• Expressing your own needs, wants and opinions in inappropriate ways – shouting, screaming, bullying. An aggressive response to the example above could be:-

“What! I’m up to my eyes in work already. There’s no way I can do that”.
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People who behave in aggressive ways tend to believe that their own needs want and opinions are more important than those of other people. People who behave aggressively are driven to win, if necessary at the expense of others.

​Next Steps with Assertiveness Training?

Want to start to develop your assertiveness skills?  First, observe and listen at work. How are your colleagues asserting themselves or not? How are they speaking? What words are they choosing? How are they treating other people? Are they respecting their own needs? Respecting other’s needs? What impact are they having? How about you? How well do you assert yourself at work?

You can learn more about personal assertiveness training here. I offer personalised online assertiveness training for professionals which delivers great results and the convenience of online meetings. If you have questions about personalised assertiveness training please contact me.