A Guide to Assertiveness
This blog is the first of four covering the Four Pillars
Create an environment of reason and resolution.
Most people are familiar with the concept that communication is key to a successful relationship. Although this is true, it is imperative that it be quality communication. Talking is easy. Using the right language and thoughtfully choosing the right words requires creativity. In conflict, people may often experience attacks on their character, leaving the person defending themselves. Assertiveness helps to end unwarranted attacks on the person with whom there is conflict and prevents one from needlessly defending their words and actions. Most people automatically resort to offensive attacks or rely on defensive strategies when engaged in conflict. These methods of operations are used to win wars, not diffuse them. In relationship conflict, offensive attacks and defensive strategies only reinforce the other’s stance or, worse, drive them away defeated.
Three-Second Rule
The Three-Second Rule is taking three seconds to respond to a question or statement, allowing time for several more thoughts to come to mind, providing you with a more effective response. Effective responses will increase as you master assertiveness skills. On average, people can have three thoughts per second. If you allow yourself three seconds to reply to the other person’s statement, you are potentially able to process nine additional thoughts. These thoughts can spawn alternative ideas for more positive responses, enhancing conflict resolution.
Apologies
Apologies should only be issued when necessary. Your apologies should carry a lot of weight and be given only after careful consideration. Do not overuse them. When apologies are used too liberally, they lose their effectiveness and will only serve to fuel resentments. Furthermore, limiting yourself on how many apologies you allow yourself displays high value in the sense that you are not willing to be shamed or manipulated. Most importantly, being selective with your apologies forces you to become more creative with your assertiveness. Being creative with your assertiveness without apologizing creates space to take ownership of your behavior, assume responsibility for managing the conflict, and positively steer the conversation. Unapologetically owning your failures and shortcomings shows that you can withstand your mistakes and continue improving the quality of your responses despite your flaws.
Nonverbal Communication
Nonverbal communication includes eye contact, body posture, tone of voice, and timing. Proper eye contact shows that you are interested and demonstrates candor. This is important in the sense that the other person can see in your eyes that you are focused and determined. Body posture should coincide with the nature of the message you are getting across and strengthen the stance of what you are communicating. Tone of voice is often the most vital component of nonverbal communication. The volume of your voice should indicate that you are authentically passionate about your needs while conveying thoughtful consideration for the other person’s needs. Your voice level should be one that is convincing yet non-threatening.
Timing is essential because it can be the difference between your message falling on deaf ears or being heard at times when the other person is most receptive. For instance, do not try to get an important yet potentially emotional message across to your partner when you two are on your way to an important business networking dinner or just before meeting friends for a gathering. This will only cause an emotional distraction, which will deepen the conflict and defeat the purpose. Carefully consider how receptive to your message your partner will be and practice patience. However, do not procrastinate. Do not pass up on a prime opportunity to deliver your message. It may be during a time in which they happen to bring up a related issue or when they are simply free of distractions and not preoccupied. Make it clear up front that you need to have a serious conversation and communicate your message.
I Statements
I statements are often underrated and underused. Using I statements allows you to focus on your needs and wants instead of focusing on your partner's shortcomings. I statements help to eliminate the perception of attacking your partner's character. Although this technique is designed to demonstrate ownership, it highlights the effects of your partner's behavior directly and honestly without being critical, which is beneficial to cultivating harmonious relationships.
Assertiveness Skills
Conflict is unavoidable and merely a part of relationship growth. Conflict does not have to be detrimental to a relationship. What damages relationships are how people respond to conflict. Below are skills to resolve conflict, based on Manuel J. Smith’s book, When I Say No, I Feel Guilty.
The assertiveness skill of Broken Record
The assertiveness skill of Fogging
The assertiveness skill of Negative Assertion
The assertiveness skill of Negative Inquiry
Workable Compromise and keeping your self-respect
Broken Record
Broken record is repeatedly saying what you need or want. There is no need to rehearse arguments. Practicing the assertiveness skill of broken record enhances your capacity to maintain composure by keeping sight of the outcome you desire and brushing off the other person’s manipulative tactics. Utilizing the broken record skill increases the likelihood that the other person will comply with your request or, at the very least, begin progress towards a workable compromise. Effectively conveying your message is your responsibility, and persistence is key to having success with your message being received.
Broken record is an assertiveness skill that allows you to effectively get your message across to the other person by overcoming distractions. Such distractions might include verbal remarks from your partner that point out their needs or your shortcomings, as well as argumentative baiting. This assertiveness skill is most effective when you stay calm and use positive, nonverbal communication. Broken record is straightforward, which prevents the need to psych yourself out, which means psychologically manipulating yourself to engage in a stressful situation, such as a confrontation, resulting in undermining your confidence. When you psych yourself out, there is a tendency to create a false sense of confidence, and you will undermine your efforts to manage conflict assertively. Your false confidence will bleed through any attempts to veil your uncertainties.
Fogging
Fogging is a skill that enables you to be comfortably receptive to criticism. This skill helps to diffuse accusations and verbal attacks issued to you by the other person. Fogging is merely acknowledging any criticism by agreeing that there is at least some degree of truth to what the other person is saying while maintaining that you are ultimately the one that validates your behavior. Do not reward undesirable behavior from the other person. However, there is no need to become aggressive and retaliate when displaying negative behavior or harshly criticizing you. An example of fogging could be, "I understand that you are upset, and I can see why you would be" or "You are right, I did say/do that, and I understand you are upset about that."
Fogging serves to diffuse accusatory statements and hostile arguments by empathizing with the other person’s emotional response to the conflict and diminishing the impulse for them to aggressively defend their stance. If you ignore these types of statements and behaviors from the other person, you minimize their emotions, which will make them resent you more or negatively escalate their emotional responses. This assertiveness skill improves the capacity to accept harsh criticism by peacefully letting the other person know they are heard and understood.
Negative Inquiry
Negative inquiry is a skill that deliberately prompts criticism, which encourages the other person to be more assertive. You are essentially asking clarifying questions about particular statements made about you by the other person. These statements may be accusatory in nature or assassination of your character. Using this skill, the other person may not even realize you are maneuvering the conversation and leading them to be assertive. An example of a negative inquiry about an accusatory statement from the other person might be, “What is it about me that feels like I am ignoring you?”. An example of a negative inquiry about a character assassination statement from the other person might be, “What is it about my humor that upsets you?”. These types of clarifying questions eliminate the need for you to defend your actions and character and allow the other person to express themselves without using harmful or hurtful tactics. Eventually, you will get to the root of the conflict and then reach a workable compromise.
Using negative inquiry provides a degree of useful information about yourself from the other person. This skill can also be implemented to diminish the other person’s manipulative ploys to control your relationship arbitrarily. Asking for criticism helps you manage the conflict by removing your defensiveness while disarming the other person’s manipulative tactics. It allows you to take ownership, which allows you to recognize critical comments and seek to understand those criticisms. Negative inquiry actively looks for criticism about yourself from the other person by eliciting sincere expressions of the other person’s negative emotions about you, leading to quality communication.
Negative Assertion
Negative assertion is a skill that enables you to accept your mistakes and flaws through the use of paraphrasing the criticism of those mistakes and flaws. This assertiveness skill allows you to display comfort and a sense of stillness in the face of accusations and character assassinations without needlessly defending your behavior. For instance, if the other person makes a critical statement about the way you irritate them with particular behaviors of yours, you could respond by saying, “Yea, I can be annoying sometimes. I should be more mindful of that.”. This diminishes the power of the other person’s criticism of you by not only concurring with their criticism of you but by overtly criticizing yourself. Essentially, the other person will simply grow tired of criticizing you because it will have lost its effectiveness over you.
Workable Compromise
All the previously mentioned skills can give you an immediate sense of satisfaction when used. However, the greater reward comes from combining these skills and consistently utilizing them to reach a workable compromise. A workable compromise is an agreement or settlement which allows you and the other person to have both your needs met. However, if a compromise requires you to put into question your self-respect, then there should be no compromise; continue using these assertiveness skills until you can reach a workable compromise without sacrificing your self-respect.
Practice Empathy
Another aspect of assertive communication is the use of empathy. The problem with the way many people use assertiveness pertains to a lack of empathy in its implementation. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Empathy is what will most enhance all the assertiveness skills. When empathy is practiced, people feel understood. When people feel understood, they are more receptive to the person practicing empathy with them. Practicing empathy in your attempts to be assertive will cultivate the other person’s willingness to change their behavior as it pertains to you. This concept is illuminated in this case study article.
Internal Assertiveness
Although assertiveness is partly defined as being forceful, it is more about being confident and willing to do what needs to be done. Sometimes this means fighting the urge to say something. You may be conflicted with two ideas or values, and you must be assertive within yourself to arrive at a workable compromise. For instance, in a meeting, or group of people, you might find yourself wanting to assert yourself regarding an undesirable behavior taking place or some potentially harmful information being conveyed. You may, in part, want to assert yourself by speaking up. However, the other part of you may realize that the people discussing the issue know much more than you, and they have their style of arriving at a solution. If you speak up, you might provide helpful insight and be appreciated. You might provide insight yet be viewed as egotistical. Either way, you would be asserting yourself into the situation. On the other hand, you might choose to sit back and say nothing. Although this is not indicative of being assertive among the group, choosing your actions requires practicing assertiveness within yourself. The decision itself does not hinge on assertiveness (it hinges on what you value the most), yet, assertiveness enables you to act upon that decision.
Successful Implementation
Successful implementation of assertiveness entails progressing towards an agreement between you and the other person in a way in which both of you maintain self-respect. Assertiveness results in an improved quality of communication when successfully utilized. Practicing assertiveness skills in seemingly insignificant situations bolsters your ability to implement them in more serious situations. The workplace is often an optimal environment for practicing assertiveness skills. Relationships at work are not as complicated as our relationships at home. They come with a different set of consequences and, other than financial repercussions, there is not much to lose if you do not always hit the mark with your attempts to be assertive. Successful implementation of assertiveness skills breeds confidence.
Wrongful Implementation
Wrongful implementation of assertiveness is simply not utilizing it. So is using the skills incorrectly, especially in serious conflict. Assertiveness, like many skills, can be viewed as amoral. Morality should be emphasized on the boundaries you set and the environment in which you set them. Haphazardly being assertive with someone about a serious concern of yours during lighthearted moments will prove ineffective and push the other person into resenting you for it. You can have the strongest assertiveness skills, yet, how you use them and where you use them is vital to achieving workable compromises that maintain self-respect.
Inappropriately utilizing assertiveness creates confusion, which further obscures your path to arriving at an agreement on which you and the other person can settle. If you are inconsiderate with your assertiveness, you could fail to be a safe place for the other person to express themselves. This is why it is imperative to consider all the assertiveness skills when practicing any of them; they enable you to be more thoughtful. Assertiveness that is self-seeking diminishes connections by distracting you from achieving harmony in your relationships.
Corrective Actions
As with anything you are attempting to master, you will inevitably encounter various failures to some degree or another. How you respond to failures defines your character. Responding to your own failed attempts of assertiveness with more attempts to be assertive is quite admirable. However, you must assess your failures with the intention of modifying subtle nuances of your skillset. Although there may be times when you need to make radical adjustments to your delivery of assertiveness, this is usually symptomatic of a complete failure to implement any assertiveness skills whatsoever. Focusing on your skillset's subtle nuances and the use of them allows you to make gradual, more sustainable changes to your responses.
If you inappropriately utilize assertiveness and cause more harm than good, simply own your mistakes by acknowledging them. Then begin to reassert yourself appropriately based on the reevaluation of your skillset and necessary adjustments and become more consistent with them. Negative assertion can be a powerful skill when correcting your unsuccessful implementation of assertiveness skills. This shows you are willing to expose your flaws in a confident, relaxed manner. Whatever you do, correct what needs to be corrected, yet assert your previous stance when you believe it is right to do so.
Keys to Improvement
Maintaining self-respect is one of the most essential principles to keep in mind while mastering assertiveness. Do not give up your self-respect when striving towards a workable compromise. When faced with conflict, responding with nearly anything other than assertiveness puts you at risk of losing self-respect, at least temporarily. There are several ways in which you can lose self-respect. The most common of these ways come in the form of poor responses to conflict, such as being aggressive and attacking your partner's character; becoming defensive and needlessly rationalizing or justifying your behavior; becoming submissive and overly apologetic; or impulsively distancing yourself from the other person and giving them the cold shoulder. These are low-value responses that cost you your self-respect. If you do not display self-respect, others will be less inclined to respect you.
Up next, A Guide to Character Building covers the second of the Four Pillars.
