I want you to start making yourself your own priority. What does that mean?! I know this isn’t a phrase that trips lightly off the tongue. And it sounds very much against all the things we are taught about not blowing your own trumpet or being too big-headed or selfish.
But then these are other people’s rules, and I really like breaking rules. For this chapter (and hopefully beyond) I’m going to encourage you to do the same. Let’s take some inspiration from some other marvellous rule breakers:
Madonna
This woman is an outstanding performer and entrepreneur who never does anything if it does not put herself, her work and her family as her priorities.
Right from the start Madonna always believed in her abilities and pushed herself forward in the most crucial situations. She is a woman who sticks to her values and stays in the flexible middle ground of assertiveness, being fair and rational and sometimes having to push back in a stronger manner. The result is a successful, driven, intelligent, wealthy woman. Madonna is a definite example of how choosing to be assertive can only serve you.
Richard Branson
A hugely successful businessman whose success has been driven by adhering to his values, following his instincts and ensuring he was always his own priority. Branson is dyslexic and did not do well at school, and yet still was able to trust his instincts and take himself seriously enough to use his natural people skills and strong nose for business opportunities to develop his company into the success story it is today.
Branson is another role model who definitely operates within his own assertive, flexible place. His natural style is laid-back and non-conformist, yet he still has the flexibility to push back hard in business when he needs to, while still staying totally in charge. Keeping his own priorities in the forefront of his mind, Branson ensures he always makes the right decisions for his company and is always alert and ready for the next move forward.
Anita Roddick
Roddick was a fantastic businesswoman, human rights activist and campaigner who created a globally successful business with The Body Shop by standing up for her own values and keeping her own priorities in mind at all times. Through assertively holding true to her values and standing her ground, she was able to create a store that is now found on nearly every high street. Roddick was made a Dame in 2003 and her business continues to thrive posthumously.
Duncan Bannatyne
Duncan Bannatyne is a highly successful entrepreneur and writer who learned how to do business because of his strong desire for a new bicycle as a child. Coming from a family with very little, he was told that if he really wanted to get a bicycle he had to get a paper round and find 100 interested customers. Through this challenge Bannatyne learned how to work hard in order to reap the benefits of a successful business. He still sticks to his ethos and his values (he still insists that his own children earn their own money and don’t just rely on hand-outs and inheritance). Bannatyne is an honest and assertive man. He has received an OBE for his charity work and is an extremely wealthy success story.
So what about you?
When we look at the daily challenges we all face concerning assertiveness and making yourself your own priority then how might you begin to work this practically into the day-to-day? Here are a few scenarios where there might be some useful starting points:
Business and negotiating
When walking into a negotiation, it is very easy to put yourself at the bottom of your priority list. In fact, why would you be thinking of yourself at all? You’re there to do business, right? And at the top of the list should be the business imperatives (usually financial) you are seeking from the deal?
Er, no.
If you walk into a deal that goes against your values and the things you believe to be right and fair you will be a terrible negotiator. Why? Because it will feel wrong, you won’t be wholeheartedly fighting your corner and you may even give in to the detriment of your business because you simply have no faith in what you are doing. So not only is this an unpleasant place to be, it’s also an unproductive one.
Now I know that in all but the most enlightened businesses it probably isn’t wise to start talking about your values in front of your boss. After all he/she is only interested in the objectives you are all trying to reach. But, if you want to be successful it’s imperative to be clear about where you sit, even if you have no plans to divulge your thoughts.
So, take some time before any negotiation or deal to formulate your thoughts clearly and check how the deal sits within your own set of values.
Establishing the solid ground
What does the business want from this negotiation? Set an ideal, set something the business would be happy with and set the lowest possible acceptable thing.
IDEAL:
OKAY:
BOTTOM LINE:
Now check these with your own values and wants. What do you want from this negotiation ideally? What would you be happy with? And what is the lowest thing you’d settle for?
IDEAL:
OKAY:
BOTTOM LINE:
Are the two lists comparable, i.e. is there a link between each point where you can sit assertively and strongly, knowing your solid ground? Before you move any further forward in this negotiation preparation, this needs to be clear in your own mind in order to create the unshakeable ground that is essential for successful and assertive negotiation.
Keeping it level
The next thing to be sure of is keeping the conversation level. If the person (or people) with whom you are in negotiation turns up their status in an attempt to have the upper hand, don’t fight them or let it knock your status down. Just calmly hold your nerve (the equivalent of the adult state in Transactional Analysis) and repeat your point.
Say less
Don’t over-talk. It’s extremely common that in a pressured situation such as a negotiation, nerves can fuel the rambler in you. In these situations less is most definitely more. Say what you need to say in as few words as possible. Silently, though still pleasantly, hold the confidence in your point of view, which we have now established is unshakeable for you. Simply repeat your offer if you need to, in response to a push from the other side.
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Of those who say nothing, few are silent. |
| Thomas Neiel, poet and photographer |
What to do and what to say
Be interested in the other party. The information they give you is crucial to how you move forward. Not only this, but by listening to the other party you build trust and therefore a more effective negotiation ground. Ask further questions about their vision and point of view. Be specific and genuinely interested.
When time is an issue
If you need time, whether to consult someone else or just to check in with yourself to think things through, then state that you are taking it. Don’t ask for it. Even if the negotiation is urgent, two minutes is doable. If you can, leave the room and walk for two minutes while you mull things through. Time-pressure in the room can be created by another party as a negotiation tactic. Even when the time-pressure is genuine, your decision will be better informed if you take the pressure off. Keep yourself the priority by keeping those stress levels down!
Visualise the win
Maintain a confidence that you will get what you want. Visualise the goal clearly before you go into the negotiation. What does it look like? The more specific and clear you can be with this for yourself, the stronger and more effective the negotiation and the more likely it is that you will achieve a win-win outcome.
Pitching and presenting an idea
As with negotiations, pitching and presenting an idea can often take precedence over taking care of yourself within the whole procedure. Since you are the communication media, which means that an idea or concept either flies or sinks with an audience, keeping yourself okay in there is one of the most important things for staying on track. After all, way over and above anything else, people buy into people.
Using the butterflies positively
Most pitches and presentations come with some degree of nerves, butterflies or adrenalin. When it comes to keeping yourself your priority it is essential that you learn to manage these feelings in a positive and constructive way. Firstly, it is important to note that these feelings are completely normal. We live in a society that tends to frame nerves as a bad thing that we have to change; it’s almost like we have failed if we have them. But I have some news – they are completely normal! Not only are they normal, they show that you are alive and engaged in what you are doing, which can only be a good thing. Don’t fight nerves. Think of them as butterflies or as energy that is going to work for you. Once you make peace with nervousness it ceases to take hostage of you. And then you feel okay, you feel like you’ve taken charge and you’re in a good place to pitch or present with absolute assertiveness!
Using simple structure
Some people like to prepare for a presentation and others like to ‘fly by the seat of their pants.’ Whichever works best for you, use it, and use some simple structure in there too. This helps to keep your message clear, it helps to serve values and it helps to give you something simple to check-in with in your mind. By having a simple structure, you are freer and more flexible within the pitch to tackle tricky situations or manage any difficult questions that may come your way. There are a range of structures out there, from Aristotle1 to Nancy Duarte2. Have a look at some of them and seriously consider their use within your presentation. The message then stays clear and in the middle ground, allowing for far more buy-in from the relevant crowd.
Interacting with your audience
Pitching or presenting is essentially a conversation, and yet many people forget this and feel like they have to be the only one speaking. This is an extremely taxing position, mentally and physically. Start to consider, if you don’t do this already of course, interacting with your audience, letting the subject matter drift between the two of you so that it becomes a shared vision, a shared opportunity and a shared responsibility. Asking questions of the audience is a great way to give yourself a little breather while also allowing you to get more information about how the presentation is from their point of view, which can only ever be helpful and will portray you as far more confident and trustworthy.
When you’re next watching a TV interview or listening to a radio one, start to become aware of how the ‘people dynamics’ are playing out. Who does and says what and how does it affect the other person? This raises your levels of awareness about how we only ever do what we do as a response to something else. As human beings we are responsive creatures. Notice how this might compare to the effects people have on each other in a business negotiation.
Business meetings
One of the trickiest environments to be your own priority, first and foremost, is the classic business meeting. Most of us are so busy trying not to upset the apple cart and managing the big personalities and hierarchical dynamics that we forget about our own needs altogether.
Getting your voice heard
Even the most confident and assertive of us can suffer on this front when there is a room of people discussing a very live issue with degrees of passion. And in my experience there is nothing more disheartening than leaving a meeting having not said anywhere near as much as you wanted to and feeling frustrated with everyone, including yourself, about the way it was all managed.
So what’s the main thing to consider? Give yourself the permission to interrupt. Not constantly, but when you really need to get your point heard then slightly raise your voice above the row, if you can. If this feels too scary then raise your hand and lean forward until someone invites you in. You may still have to up the volume on your voice a little when you finally do speak, but at least the hand in the air and the physical movement make it easier to get in. You will find that you leave the meeting far more settled than if you hardly said anything at all.
There are, of course, those meetings where you really don’t have a strong enough opinion on the subject matter or you don’t have anything to say. But say that, rather than nothing. Name what is going on for you with a sound level of assertiveness. You don’t have anything to say and you one hundred per cent believe it so you can say it with confidence. Or agree with someone else’s point, remembering to be specific and giving voice to it. ‘Absolutely, Dave, I totally agree with your point about the team budget’, gives a much clearer indication for people of what is going on in your head than saying nothing and them having to second-guess you. By giving your voice and what you have to say the same level of importance as everybody else’s you are well on the way to treating yourself with a sound degree of self-respect.
Raising visibility
If you are new to a company, or people aren’t that sure of who you are due to the company culture or suchlike, then it is probably time to realise that the responsibility to change things lies with you. It’s time to get out those trumpets and blow them, it’s time to shelve the modesty and it’s time to not shy away too much from some limelight.
Using email and message boards to talk about what is happening in your world can be a great resource to start to raise your own visibility. Social media is better still. The likes of Facebook and Twitter are excellent (and if you think of yourself as a product to market and gain objectivity in that way, then you will be clearer about how to move forward). Internal communications such as Yammer are also excellent for social networking, general schmoozing, letting people know what you’re working on, what hobbies you have and all sorts of other things, and again are fantastic for raising your visibility in the workplace.
That said, don’t forget the traditional phone call and the good old-fashioned value of talking face to face. Nothing works better alongside all the technical stuff than a bit of human contact. Offering to make cups of tea, making the effort to say hello and asking people how they are or what they have been up to are the essential ingredients in building internal relations and all of the benefits that come with them.
The common trap of hiding behind computer screens and piles of work is certainly not a way to prioritise you or your work or gain any practice in the grounds of effective assertiveness.
Keeping the shared issue in mind
It’s key in a meeting that the shared issue, i.e. the reason for being there, is kept as the focal point, whatever your point of view about it. Too many meetings go off on tangents never to return again and can, if not well managed, end up being a waste of other people’s time.
This can quickly breed blame, resentment and a whole load of other not-so-useful feelings that stew away internally. By using the issue at hand as a reason to bring the meeting back to point, it is a non-personal way of prioritising your own time and energy as well as that of others. It creates a far more effective win-win mid-ground from which to take charge of any meeting, and because it is an objective position it makes it easier for anyone, even the unconfident, to take the reins.
Reiterating the shared issue on the table can also help to keep negotiations, disagreements and potential conflicts objective and avoid the personal criticisms that can ensue in a heated situation. Thinking about the issue as separate from yourself (which, of course, it is) can help provide the confidence and authority to let yourself be heard and to express your thoughts and opinions more freely, thus ultimately taking care of yourself and your points of view. It’s a good image to use, and one I would strongly recommend becomes a common feature at home and at work.
The general day-to-day
When you hold yourself in high esteem throughout all these things, still ensure that you have your attention on what else is going on. Remember that, in order to actively operate within a flexible spectrum of assertive behaviour, you need to know what is going on from other perspectives. It is only when you are clear about this that you can drive an issue forward successfully. And remember how easy it is to misinterpret someone else’s feelings from their actions. So if you are unsure, ask.
Spare some time to think about how parallels can be drawn between the day-to-day and the business situations addressed in this book so far:
Negotiation – this happens just as much in day-to-day life as it does in the workplace and the same rules apply: know your position, keep it level, say less, take the time you need for decisions, go for the win-win, visualise your goal, be interested and ask questions.
Presentation – any time you want to create some buy-in for an idea (a holiday, moving house, decorating, driving to the country for the day, etc.) the tips from giving presentations can be helpful. Remember that structure offers clarity and keeps you on track, butterflies or any other sort of anxiety is totally normal and try to establish a two-way conversation about the subject at hand when you can.
Meetings – any group dynamic in the day-to-day can be managed with the same principles as discussed above. Parties in particular can benefit from you speaking up, even if you have very little to say, and keeping in mind the shared interest or reason for being there. By keeping the party about that thing then there is more buy-in and less chance of conflict or disagreement.
Family matters and other personal relationships
When it comes to those we love, some people find it easy to be assertive and others find it harder. However it sits with you, though, there are a few key points to remember when dealing with those with whom the emotions run deeper.
Letting people know that you care
This one sounds fairly obvious but in actual fact we rarely give voice to this. Saying things such as, ‘I know we don’t always agree on stuff but I still care that you’re okay’, is a very productive and assertive way to build trust in treasured relationships.
Listening
Again this is one of the simplest things in life that we often forget, especially when we are stuck in patterns within households or familiar dynamics. Most of us know the power of listening and yet we still forget to do it day-to-day. If we really want to know and understand what is going on for the other person, listen to what they say.
Think of listening as being like Stephen Covey’s Talking Stick. This was an idea that Covey was introduced to by an American-Indian tribe and it goes like this: whoever has the stick (or other object) is the only person who can talk until they feel they have been understood. Nobody else can interrupt or put their viewpoint forward. Once the person feels understood, they then pass the stick to the other person involved. They do the same, again no interruptions. Even if you choose not to use the object itself you can envisage it, to start to train the mind to engage with and listen to what is being said, rather than jumping straight to your own position.
By listening to and therefore empathising with both or indeed all points of view in a given situation, compromise can be reached far more easily. Compromise is a powerful place to be because all points of view have been considered and then given an equal weight of importance.
The effects of taking on too much
Unfortunately this statement resonates loud and clear with many of us. So why do we take on too much in our lives? We may feel that we are responsible, or that it is just part of what is expected of us in terms of rules. It may be that our own goals and ambitions can be over-extended because we’ve always been a high achiever and able to accomplish almost anything and it is now part of our personal pattern. Or it may be that we struggle to simply say no, especially to those we love and care about.
It is important to have a reality check where this is concerned. Symptoms such as the common cold, IBS, migraine, anxiety attacks, depression, stress, chronic fatigue/ME, alcohol dependency/drug dependency, mood swings, insomnia, hormone imbalance, heart conditions and more have all been directly linked to a lack of assertiveness and not saying no even when we are stretched to our limit.
Think about the effects on your own health and your relationships with those you love if any of these conditions take effect.
If you find it hard to say no then just say yes to part of the task and negotiate the other part out. If you have always had a high bar for yourself simply lower it – chances are the lower bar is still an enormous achievement. If you have set rules for yourself then continue to challenge those rules to see if they are still serving you. Remember that everything we do and say in life is a choice that we are responsible for making.
When conflict kicks in
When conflict happens within a personal or family situation it can be a very emotional and upsetting experience. It doesn’t take long for feelings to take over and the issues to become inflamed.
The steps below outline a useful strategy for staying assertive within conflict. It may be useful for you to go through some past examples of conflict for yourself while reading the text below.
It’s very useful to get into the habit of noticing what is going on inside you when you experience an emotional response to something (good or bad). Training your brain in this way outside of situations of conflict will enable you to recognise these undercurrents when they kick in during a conflict. This is a very powerful way to notice if you are bringing irrelevant baggage from past conflicts into a new situation and making things worse (which is very easy to do). It’s also useful to realise that other people will undoubtedly be doing the same.
What you can do
Firstly, notice the behaviour that is happening around you and the effect it has on you. For example, if someone storms out without discussing something it might feel scary or shocking and unjust or it might infuriate you that they are denying you the chance to respond. Your responses will undoubtedly be drawn from a previous situation where the same thing happened.
Secondly, understand what it is that you ideally want from the situation. For example, you want the person to come back and tell you calmly why they are upset so that you can work out what to do.
Being effectively assertive requires you to use some empathy to try to understand what is going on for the other person. So the third step is to try and work out what it is they want from having behaved in that manner. This is trickier because we cannot know what is happening for sure within another human being, but it is helpful to consider some possibilities.
Maybe they want to get some space so they can get some clarity and perspective on things before they address the issues. Maybe they feel upset and want to be able to get upset in private. They might feel scared or anxious about the possible onslaught of conflict and just want to get out of the way quickly. There is the option here of asking the person what is going on for them and if you can do this calmly then this would be a good time to do that.
Fourthly, you could work out how to ask for what you need. For example, ‘I know you are feeling upset in some way about this. If you need to leave the room to get some space I understand, but please would you come back to talk to me about it afterwards?’
If you are going through past examples in your mind to see how this works, notice how it makes you feel to ask for what you need from the other person in the heat of the moment. Does it make you feel less scared, more in charge, or something else? Notice what comes up. By checking in with your physical response you are starting to prioritise yourself in terms of looking after your own feelings and what they mean within a personal conflict.
And finally, do remember that, above all else, conflict is not always a bad thing. It does have the purpose of allowing people to say what they feel in order to try and resolve issues. The thing to keep in mind is managing conflict effectively so that it can positively serve the individuals concerned.
Getting what you want
What if you could have anything and everything you ever wanted? It’s a scary thought quite often, and one we only allow ourselves to engage with for a limited time period. After all, life isn’t really like that! We can’t have everything, can we?
Really? Can’t we? Why not? What if we could have whatever we wanted? Then that is voluntarily taking a position of power, right? And that is really raising your head above the parapet and that can feel scary . . .
But exciting? Come on it’s exciting! We’re going to go there! Yes, now.
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Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, writer, scientist and philosopher |
Knowing exactly what you want
Goethe so wonderfully pinpointed it – dreaming it. We all daydream, albeit some of us more than others. And we all dream in bed at night. Some dreams we recall on waking, some we recall later in the day all of a sudden and some we never recall at all. Start to keep a diary about all of the things you have daydreamed about, imagined or dreamed about during sleep. This diary need not go into detail or analysis. Notes are fine. After a week spend some time working back through what you have written and you will start to see some guidelines emerging. Our subconscious is incredibly clever at guiding us but we often don’t trust it or take it seriously. For just one week I am asking you to listen to it. Think of it as an experiment.
Start to see what emerges here. For example, if I am preoccupied about a conversation I need to have with my agent and writing more books then that is my subconscious guiding me towards where I need to put some of my energies. At this stage it would be a good idea for me to start to jot this stuff down.
If I am daydreaming about being more impactful with what I say, with what I do and generally being more effective in how I communicate within my profession with others, and so becoming more popular and creating more opportunities for myself, then that is what I am aiming for. It’s what I want to happen. My subconscious is telling me what I need to know. By writing down how I envisage these conversations I can start to realise what I need to shift in my own behaviours in order to make them a reality for myself and so help to create the outcome I am choosing.
Jaynie had always wanted to be a dancer. She loved it, fantasised about it on packed tube journeys through the city to and from her temp job, danced around her flat in her pyjama bottoms and was always singing the music from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker under her breath as she went about her day-to-day tasks. Even on a girls’ night in she would get up and tiptoe elegantly across the room humming some classical ballet tune or other in order to retrieve a bottle of wine and top everybody up.
Her mother had never allowed her to go to dance classes as a child because they were ‘too expensive’ and, anyway, even if she could afford them they were ‘too bourgeois.’ So Jaynie never went, much to her disappointment and upset. She was encouraged to do ‘more practical things’ such as woodwork and learning to cook, which she obediently did, and was competent at, but never felt any real passion towards.
Then one day she rang me squealing with excitement. ‘There’s a dance school down the road and I have just enrolled! They accepted me!’ It turned out she had been squirreling her money away for the last six months since the school had opened and had been practising like mad in her little flat to audition. The school took her predominantly because of her passion for and knowledge of dance, even though technically she still had a lot to learn. That was eight years ago.
Now Jaynie performs regularly as a dancer. Not for the Royal Ballet but for smaller-scale theatre shows. She rehearses a lot. Some would say she is very disciplined but in fact Jaynie simply loves to do it. She can’t sit still so she’d rather dance. Jaynie also works as a dance teacher and dance therapist. She lives her life through dance, makes her living through dance and she is one of the happiest people I know, largely because she is doing what she loves but also because she didn’t let her dream die and worked hard to make it happen.
Knowing how to get what you want
Identifying the goal
Once you have a list of what you want, it is a case of thinking of a strategy. How can I get to be those things? Well, let’s start with where you want to end up. Define how it looks in as much detail as possible:
Building the strategy
So let’s start with the end goal then. Let’s say here that the end goal is for you to be able to deal with the workload your manager is expecting you to do. How would this look?
Well, it would probably have to be a conversation. So now, where would this conversation take place, what time of day and what would you say? You would need to have a discussion with your manager about availability. This might include sending an Outlook request that is linked to diaries and is given a formal title, such as ‘Discussion of workload.’
You may want to have an HR Manager there, in which case you will need to check their availability too. You may want to ensure that there are refreshments available and to make sure you have any paperwork records or other documentation you deem necessary to have this conversation.
Every time you are looking at one stage ensure you have looked after all of the components within it. Working backwards makes it easier to see the bigger picture and identify any possible gaps where you might otherwise miss a key conversation or action, which you can then plan in.
With Jaynie’s example, above, she simply started with the end goal of her career in dance and worked backwards until she got to the first two steps of – rehearsing and perfecting some dance pieces, and reading up on all the dance history she could lay her hands on.
- Give yourself the permission to sometimes ‘blow your own trumpet’
- Be clear about what you want and how you’d like to get it
- Listen to other people and understand their different points of view
- Be open and honest when communicating with others and stand your ground
- Check in with yourself regularly to make sure that you are truly respecting your own values and opinions in the best way you can
- Tune in to what you really want and set about planning how you can get there