Leadership Today - Practical Tips For Leaders
Business:Management
Summary
Many people want to be more assertive at work. This week we explore assertiveness as a type of conversation.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode 191 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we share practical tips to improve your leadership. This week we explore how to be more assertive at work.
Many people want to be more assertive at work - you might be one of them. Perhaps you feel your perspectives are overlooked, or you struggle to get your opinions across to people, or you’re frustrated that others just steamroll through and always get their way. To address these challenges, we really need to break some misconceptions about assertiveness. Assertiveness is not something you’re born with. It’s not a personality type or preference. Rather, assertiveness is a set of skills any of us can develop and improve.
A helpful way to think about assertiveness is to picture a line. At one end of the line is passive. If I’m being passive it’s 100% about them, the other person and their needs, wants and interests, and 0% about me, my needs, wants and interests. It’s okay to be passive sometimes, particularly on issues that really matter to the other person but don’t matter to you. If it’s genuinely not important to you, it’s perfectly fine and even a great idea to let the other person get what they want. However, if we’re passive about things that matter to us, then that can be a problem. At the other end of the line is aggressive. Here it’s 0% about the other person, and 100% about my needs, wants and interests. Again, sometimes it’s perfectly appropriate to put your needs and wants first. There are issues where it’s important to hold your ground. But if you’re aggressive about every issue, even ones you don’t care about, that’s likely to limit your effectiveness and relationships.
So assertiveness isn’t being passive, and it’s also not about being aggressive. Assertiveness also isn’t the midpoint on the line - it’s not 50% about them and 50% about you - that’s compromise not assertiveness.
Instead, assertiveness is a type of conversation - one where my needs, wants and interests are 100% on the table, but so are the other person’s needs, wants and interests. The best way to measure your assertiveness isn’t by seeing whether you got your way or not - that’s really more a measure of aggressiveness. Instead, you can measure your assertiveness by whether the other person understands your perspective and why it’s important to you, and also whether you understand their perspective and why it matters to them. We may then have a shared problem to work through - you can’t always get a win-win solution right away. Here are a few quick tips for more assertive conversations:
If you found this helpful, check out our Boost Your Assertiveness course.
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Episode 27 - Psychological Safety - The Hard Edge to Feeling Safe at Work
Episode 26 - Self-Fulfilling Prophecy - Why We Get What We Expect
Episode 25 - Leading through Change
Episode 24 - Conscious Incompetence - Why Learning New Things is Painful
Episode 23 - Conflict - Ouch!
Best of 2018 Replay - Feedback is a Gift
Best of 2018 Replay - Influencing Tactics
Best of 2018 Replay - Motivation - What's the Point?
Best of 2018 Replay - Assertiveness! (if that's okay with you...)
Episode 22 - Goal Setting - New Year, Same You
Episode 21 - Resilience and Optimism
Episode 20 - Avoiding the Blame Game
Episode 19 - Intent Versus Impact
Episode 18 - Don't Ask for a Mentor
Episode 17 - Prisoners and Performance Ratings
Episode 16 - Operating in Uncertainty
Episode 15 - Do Teams Still Form, Storm, Norm and Perform?
Episode 14 - Leadership First Impressions
Episode 13 - Control your Email (Before it Controls You).
Episode 12 - The Best Thing About Working Here? It’s the People…
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