How often do we mistake assertiveness for aggressiveness? What is ‘Assertive Communications’? Being assertive involves standing up for your personal rights and expressing your thoughts, feelings and beliefs directly, honestly, respectively, and spontaneously in ways that don’t infringe the rights of others.
Basic rights of assertive communication include:
1) The right to express [my] feelings
2) The right to express opinions / beliefs
3) The right to say ‘Yes/No’ for yourself
4) Right to change your mind
5) Right to say ‘I don’t understand’
6) Right to be yourself, not acting for the benefit of others
7) The right to decline responsibility for other people’s problems
The right to make reasonable requests of others
9) The right to set my own priorities
10) The right to be listened to, and taken seriously
Another technique that looks at our basic rights of being assertive is the LADDER technique. The LADDER mnemonic describes a useful process for dealing with problems assertively. LADDER (look, arrange, define, describe, express, and reinforce).
Look at your rights and what you want, and understand your feelings about the situation
The first stage of the process is to look objectively at the problem. Try to understand why you feel that your rights are being violated, or why you feel that something is wrong with the situation. As we grow up, we are exposed to many views of how we should conduct ourselves. These come from many different sources.
Arrange a Meeting with the other person to discuss the situation
By arranging a formal meeting with the other person, you show the importance of the situation to you. You also ensure that due time is allocated to discussing it. Note that in spontaneous situations it may be appropriate to discuss the problem straight away.
Define the problem specifically
In defining the problem, keep information objective and uncolored by emotion. Make sure that your comments are correct, and that they are supported by facts where appropriate. In talking about the facts underlying a situation, you give the other person an opportunity to give you additional information. This may change your perception of how things are.
Describe your feelings so that the other person fully understand how you feel about the situation
Once you have explained the facts of the situation, explain how you feel about it. This helps the other person to understand how important it is that the situation is resolved in a satisfactory manner. In doing this, do not attack or blame the other person for the problem. Explain how the situation affects you.
Express what you want clearly and concisely
Say precisely what you want to happen to resolve the situation. Keep your message short, clear, direct and unambiguous. Be polite in your expression of this; however, do not confuse your message.
Reinforce your message to the other person
Explain the benefits of the course of action that you want to the other person. Show him or her how doing what you want will improve the situation. Be careful in expressing negative consequences of not taking the action, as making threats can damage working relationships.
Tip:
If you find that you start to get emotional when you describe your feelings, use imagery to help you out. For example, if you start to get upset, imagine that you move your feelings into a box on the table beside you. Then describe the contents of the box to the other person. You should find that this helps you to dissociate yourself from your feelings so that you can talk about them objectively.
Using an assertive approach to communicating is a fair and adult way of raising, and dealing with, difficulties in your relationships with powerful people. In using an assertive approach, you avoid both the weakness of passivity and the relationship and career damage that comes from excessive aggression. Assertive approaches avoid the game-play of passive and aggressive communication. They promote clear communication and, because all relevant facts and emotions are considered, are more likely to bring about a successful resolution of the situation.
By being able to communicate clearly, you can bring stress-creating problems and issues to the attention of people who have the power to do something about them. Most managers are rational human beings who want to keep their teams happy recognizing that this actually helps teams to perform well. Often, the main obstacle to this is that people do not communicate problems. You may be surprised by how willing powerful people are to help you out.
