How to be more assertive?
Make a conscious choice of both verbal and non-verbal behaviors.

Assertive:
Express what you honestly want, think, and feel in direct ways. Usually start your sentence with “I”, not “you”.

Non-verbal behaviors include listening closely. Stay calm, relaxed, assured, and firm. Also if possible, be caring, warm, and expressive. Look directly without staring. Have an erect posture and sometimes lean forward to show a high level of attention.

If you are not being assertive, you usually are either avoiding or aggressive.

Avoiding:
You avoid saying what you want, think, or feel. Or you say them in such a way as to put yourself down or minimize their importance.

Your non-verbal behavior includes: Voice is weak, hesitant, soft. Your eyes are downcast. You come across as overly agreeable.

Aggressive:
You say what you want, think, and feel at the expense of others. You judge, blame, label, threaten and accuse.

You non-verbal behavior includes: Exaggerated show of strength, superiority. You are tense, loud, cold, demanding. You stare. You appear angry by pointing your finger or banging your fist.

How do these behaviors affect others?

Assertive:
Others feel respected and valued by you. They tend to respect you back and trust and value you. If you invite them to collaborate, they tend to accept.

Avoiding:
Others tend to pity and disrespect you. They may take you for granted. Obviously, we all expect a certain amount of avoiding to occur. However, if you consistently avoid with little other behavior, you will eventually lose people’s respect.

Aggressive:
Others feel humiliated, hurt, disrespected. They react by being defensive, resentful, distrustful, fearful, or vengeful. Yes, if you have enough power to be aggressive, others will obey you in the short term. But they react with a desire to get you back, maybe with an aggressive behavior of their own or just with foot dragging. Aggressive leaders may appear to succeed over the short term. But over the long term, results decline and good people leave them. Some companies value aggressive leaders as turnaround executives. But their performance declines if they stay anywhere too long, so companies move them around.

Obviously, in the long run, the best way to get what you really want is to be assertive.

Want to improve your own assertiveness skills? Explore our individual or group Executive Coaching. Our Web-conferencing Virtual-Workshop, Leadership Communication™
has a full Module on Assertiveness. For more information call me, Bill Murray, at 919-419-9460 or visit our web site, http://www.EagleAlliance.com.