A small boy in rags gets up from the table and, with enormous trepidation, he approaches the intimidating figure looming over the cauldron of gruel. Using every ounce of courage he says, with trembling anxiety, ‘Please, sir, I want some more’.
This well-known scene from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist is one of the most memorable moments in English literature and its message is loud and clear: speak your mind, particularly to one hierarchically above you (parent, employer, bank manager, etc.) and you risk being publicly humiliated and facing dire consequences. It can feel like a risk that may not pay off, and that is a huge thing indeed. The trepidation felt by Oliver in that critical moment is one we have all experienced and remember well from various times in our lives to date.
This fear can be so ingrained that we don’t always realise it has become a fact in our heads. The idea that speaking up equals negative feelings and consequences has buried itself deeply in our subconscious and the thought can be ever-present, lurking deep in our minds.
And the intimidation that keeps this concept company can be debilitating because we start to believe that if we speak up there will be some sort of earth-shattering consequence to our actions. There are many examples that validate the ‘truth’ of this idea in the world at large, so why would we challenge it?
Of course, if you think about it there are just as many significant examples that disprove this ‘truth’, but our brains are very practised at ignoring things that do not reinforce our view of the world. After all, isn’t the bad stuff easier to believe? Especially having been exposed in childhood to a range of examples of it being a risky thing to stand up for yourself against authority, via personal experience, stories, books and films. These factors come together to make it pretty much inevitable that the fears become deeply established by the time we reach adulthood.
All of which makes it easy to see why both children and adults feel uneasy about being assertive and honest. We are all battling against a deeply rooted fear that we will be punished, rejected or humiliated, viewed as an idiot, labelled a failure, or at the very least be seen as ‘a bit odd’ if we dare to state how we really feel. So why would we take the risk? Much better to play it safe and keep our heads down.
Now this is the bit where you get curious. Is that really true? Undoubtedly it can be a tough call to make, especially in the heat of the moment. It can feel risky and unsafe, and for most of us it can be far easier if we don’t venture into that territory. It is far simpler to push things onto the bottom of the pile and ‘forget’ to deal with them.
But there are consequences to that sort of behaviour too. Ones that are far less desirable or productive than standing up for what is really right for us and risking what might follow. After all, if we don’t go there then we will never really know.
When I was five years old, and in my first year of school, I remember feeling suddenly desperate for the loo. I did not want to shout out for fear of being told off by the classroom assistant, Mrs Anderson, for not raising my hand first (my hand had been raised for what seemed like an age and nobody had noticed), and there was a huge queue for book marking happening by the desk of the teacher, Mrs Chapman. So instead of pushing to the front to ask permission to go to the toilet, or even just leaving the classroom to go, I waited obediently in line. It took forever and yes, you guessed it, I ended up having a rather humiliating accident on the wooden floor. So my then lack of assertiveness for fear of being told off or being seen as disobedient meant I ended up in a far more embarrassing situation in reality. Right in front of the blackboard too!
When we end up doing things we don’t want to do or going along with things we don’t agree with, and we don’t speak up and say what we want to say, then it is a very big issue indeed. It is a big deal to be unassertive because it feels disempowering, frustrating and generally out of control, in a kind of implosive way. It can be lonely and miserable and we can feel very lost when we are stuck there with what feels like no options.
The flip side to this is that when we feel so disempowered or frustrated we may end up flying into overly-assertive or perceived ‘aggressive’ behaviour to try and make up for it. Unfortunately this has the same effect – it’s out of control and disempowering and has the added disadvantage of upsetting other people. None of this is productive for our careers, none of this builds good relations and none of this equals success. And if we are out of control we can become untrustworthy, incapable. What’s more, other people will see us as unable to cope and generally unreliable. Not a recipe for success.
A history of assertiveness
It is an interesting exercise to look briefly at what happened to some of those in history who dared to raise their heads above the parapet for things they strongly believed in. These people, however far back they might go historically, show us that if you actually do speak up and assert yourself then the human race either adores you or wants you publicly reprimanded. Often the facts as they are laid out in history would have us believe that there is no middle ground at all in life and that any action whatsoever will only result in one of two extreme responses – either love or hate. It is easy to forget that usually responses fall into neither of these categories and are, in fact, far more complex.
William Wallace, leader of the Wars for Scottish Independence
Wallace rallied Scotland to rise up against Edward I, winning battles against huge odds. He was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1305 at a young age for high treason. Opinion is divided as to whether he was a hero or a villain.
Elizabeth I, queen of England 1558–1603
A strong, highly-educated woman who ruled with a hand of steel in a world of men. Her reign was known as ‘The Golden Age’ and she died a much-loved and respected monarch.
Winston Churchill, British WWII prime minister
Despite an early career in which he was shouted down and ignored by his political peers, Churchill was tenacious in refusing to accept defeat by Nazi Germany and led Britain to victory in World War II. He died a national hero.
Che Guevara, freedom fighter in Cuba and South America
Perceived as a rebel and a saviour of men, Guevara stood up against economic inequalities, resulting in a successful revolution in Cuba. He was executed by the CIA-assisted Bolivian forces in 1967.
Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Britain 1979–90
Thatcher was adored and despised in equal measure by the public for her extreme measures in what she saw as a solution to the economic crisis of the 1970s. She never waivered in what she believed to be the right course.
Florence Nightingale, nurse 1844–1910
Born into a rich, upper-class family, Nightingale turned her back on the then-traditional role of women, that of being a wife and mother, to educate herself as a nurse in order to serve the wounded in the Crimean War. She shunned several proposals of marriage in favour of committing to her career. On her return she fought the establishment for improvements to nursing, which benefit us to this day.
Whether you agree with these people’s viewpoints or not, and whatever you think about them on the whole, there is no denying that the list consists of those who have been clear with their boundaries and have handled some potentially tricky situations in strong, measured and assertive ways in order to move things forward.
It is the negative perceptions that surround them (selfish, rude, ruthless and dangerous, among others) that can make us think it is not such a good idea to be assertive, and the more positive perceptions (brave, honest, strong, ambitious, forward-thinking) that make us aspire to be more like these key figures.
What are the benefits of being assertive?
The most famous benefit of being assertive is the ability to say no, or at least not to say yes so quickly and therefore end up biting off more than you can chew. But there are other benefits:
- The confidence to get your voice heard in any situation, be it one-to-one or in large meetings.
- Having the clarity to say exactly what you want and to have people hear it.
- The capacity to better manage conflict and confrontations.
- Having more options around what to say or do, rather than feeling disempowered by the lack of choice in the heat of the moment.
What a lack of assertiveness can cost us
When you lack assertiveness things can become quite unpleasant:
- We can end up feeling very stuck in situations where we are not happy or comfortable.
- We feel afraid of the consequences if we dare to state how we feel.
- We end up taking on too much through saying yes too easily, and then we get angry.
- We make do with disrespectful behaviour, bad service, bad food or faulty goods because we don’t want to cause a fuss or create conflict.
This can all lead to us feeling very low and disempowered and can be incredibly damaging to our confidence levels. We also end up being afraid and possibly resentful of people in authority or in senior positions. We stop looking at them as simply another human being and allow their title to intimidate us. We are terrified of being criticised and not being liked.
When we have a lack of assertiveness it tends to be an indication of low self-esteem. Through not speaking up about what we think or feel we end up giving ourselves a hard time and feeling worse. Eventually this can become incredibly stressful and can sometimes be the root of anxiety and depression-related illnesses.
What gets in the way of being assertive?
We are all aware of what assertive and effective communication looks like but it can be quite a different matter when it comes to actually doing it. Many things can get in the way: a lack of confidence in the ability to be able to communicate well; the fear of not being liked or approved of; not being seen to be helpful; or the worry that you might lose your job if you don’t say yes or help out by doing that little bit of extra overtime. Sometimes a fear of being perceived as too weak or easily taken advantage of can lead to overly-assertive behaviour, which can damage relationships just as much as the under-assertive behaviour.
Most of the time these fears that reside deeply in our subconscious are unfounded and bear no resemblance to what the likely outcome will be. Our brains tend to go to the worst-case scenarios and expect that they will happen if we go anywhere remotely near any assertive behaviour. In actual fact, as we’ve discussed, those fears are very inaccurate. Why would someone be that cross when we are simply asking for what we want?
More importantly, it is key that we remember that we are not the centre of everyone else’s universe – only our own. By which I mean, we can think that other people find our comment or request a big deal because we find it a big deal in our heads. In actual fact, we have just a small impact on anyone else’s day. You know all of the stuff you have to manage and juggle on any average day? Well, guess what – everyone else has the same amount of stuff too. We all have far more important things to be worrying about than the odd exchange over a piece of work or piece of overtime. Keeping things in perspective is highly important.
It is imperative that we always have in mind the idea that we experience ourselves from an internal perspective (our thoughts and feelings) and yet we experience other people from an external one (how they are behaving and what they say). We then judge ourselves comparatively, which can affect our self-confidence. For other people it is the other way around. This can be a tricky equation to balance in life.
It is rare that we ever come across to others exactly as we think we are coming across. More often than not it is the strong internal fears we have around ‘being too strong’ or ‘not being pushed around’ that can give us a false indication of how we are being perceived, and therefore means we hold back or give out more than we need to. In order to get a gauge for how your behaviour is representing your internal state, try the exercise below.
- Write a list of things that you feel have annoyed, upset or frustrated you, either in the past or you might use some current examples:
- Write down your feelings about the situations:
- What were/are your thoughts about what happened?
- Now list any of the behaviours associated with the thoughts and feelings above.
- Does/did any of the above truly communicate what you wanted to communicate to the other people involved? Does/did the behaviour represent your thoughts or feelings?
It is important to remember that other people are not mind-readers, and though it might be crystal clear to us how things are landing, unless we are able to indicate this to others through our external behaviour, they may not be aware.
So, for example, imagine your manager has asked you to stay late again to make changes to that report for the umpteenth time – do you feel taken advantage of and as if you are delivering way above your job spec? Have you found a way to indicate this to your boss? If not, how is she/he supposed to know? You can’t presume that your definition of unreasonable behaviour is the same as theirs.
It’s so important to let people know when you are unhappy with their behaviour. It gives them the chance to do something about it. Usually it doesn’t take much of a shift for people to realise they have overstepped some sort of boundary. So instead of festering and sulking about it, find a way to address the problem and offer your boss some solutions that will help you both.
Sam said that he thought Lars was doing too much at work and looked terrible as a result. Lars felt insulted, firstly because he felt he was responsible enough to gauge whether or not he was doing too much and, secondly, he thought it was downright rude of Sam to comment on his appearance like that. Lars responded with, ‘Do you?’ At which point Sam replied, ‘Buddy, have you looked in the mirror?’ Lars then felt even more patronised and insulted but felt there was nothing else he could say. The whole day Lars carried feelings of resentment that affected his working relationship with Sam for quite a while afterwards.
Does the behaviour do justice to the internal thoughts and feelings of Lars? Sam had no idea he was annoying Lars, and in his mind believed he was being helpful and supportive in showing that he had noticed how much Lars was working and that he was actually genuinely concerned.
How else might Lars have managed the situation? What else could he have said? There is no one ‘right’ way to manage this situation of course, but there are a range of options. Even if Lars had chosen simply to say nothing it would have had a different effect. Sam would have known that Lars had a handle on things, or at least did not appreciate his intervention. Or Lars may have said something simple like, ‘I’m aware of my workload and I’m actually okay with it.’ The point is, the answer needs to be something that Lars is comfortable with, something that serves his purpose and, in this case, also takes care of Sam’s concern to some extent.
Think about any situations where you have been in a similar position, i.e. on the receiving end of criticism or concern. Write some of them down and then see if you might have liked to have said or done something different in response. Then imagine that is what you did do. Imagine you said or did that ideal response. Notice how you feel when you imagine it. You could feel like this all the time in life when you start to operate from a more assertive position. It is more empowering and it is more productive.
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If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got. |
Mark Twain |
Degrees of assertiveness
Often people tend to refer to assertiveness as aggressiveness, and the opposite is often referred to as quiet or reserved. So, if aggressiveness sits at level 10 on a spectrum and forthrightness sits at level 8, then it could be said that quietness sits across 1, 2 and 3. If this is the case then it makes sense that assertiveness would sit across levels 4, 5, 6 and 7, in a flexible mid-ground.
This means, then, that if you are naturally quite reserved and speaking up does not come easily, assertiveness is just as accessible to you by aiming for level 4 or 5, which is not a huge stretch, as it is to those of you who may be naturally strong and direct on the spectrum (who would be aiming at around level 7).
If assertiveness were a see-saw, we’d like it balancing in varying degrees at all times. Ideally we don’t want either side to hit the ground.
Within this middle ground of assertiveness are a massive range of options that we will further explore in Part 2. For now, just begin to consider your options and get your brain used to the concept of consciously choosing how you want to respond.
Good assertiveness
‘We’re going to need to you to stay on for another hour this evening’ was a statement often made by Ben’s boss. And Ben’s reply was often the same: ‘Sure, okay, I think I can do that.’ This happened for several weeks when Ben was new in his job at a media company.
When it got to month three Ben started feeling taken advantage of so he went back through his diary and added up the extra hours he had done. It came to 25 in total, which was the equivalent of three extra days’ pay (around £500). The next time his boss asked him to stay he said he couldn’t at such short notice this time, and then arranged to meet with his boss the next day.
At the meeting Ben calmly asked what the arrangement regarding those extra 25 hours was and he was told that it was ‘just expected.’ Ben asked to have his contract reviewed by saying: ‘I completely understand that workload is heavy at the moment and I am more than happy to do my share. I wonder if we could review my contract so that I could accommodate these extra hours more willingly and ensure that I know ahead of time so that I can give the job my all.’
What was important about Ben’s request was that he asked to have the review process in calm, neutral language and in a fair manner. So it would have been pretty strange for anyone to think that this was a weird or unfair request. And, more to the point, the situation got resolved very quickly, meaning that Ben did not feel resentful any longer about the extra time he was working because it had been agreed by contract and the boundaries were much clearer from both points of view.
Gemma worked at a reception desk at a big university and regularly had paperwork ‘dropped’ on her desk. She had got into the habit of just picking up the paperwork (which normally had a Post-it note on the front telling her what to do) without question and doing exactly as was requested as soon as she could. But that was getting stressful and her own workload was suffering significantly.
After a conversation with a newly recruited colleague, Gemma realised that these expectations were a result of what she had unconsciously made the norm. By always making it okay for people to ‘dump’ their papers on her desk, and always doing the work in record time, she had been largely responsible for setting that pattern of work. She realised that she had to break it.
The next time someone put papers on her desk, Gemma stood up and calmly called after them, using their name:
G: ‘Shane?’
S: ‘Yeah.’
G: ‘What are these papers?’
S: ‘Well if you read the Post-it . . .’
G: ‘Actually Shane, could you fill me in?’
S: ‘Erm . . . they are for the meeting tomorrow.’
G: ‘Don’t you have the time to do them?’
S: ‘Well I’m really busy.’
G: ‘I’m really busy too I’m afraid.’
By using his name in a level manner and asking questions, Gemma helped Shane realise that he couldn’t just dump stuff on her desk and expect it to be done in the wink of an eye.
She was not being confrontational, after all Shane probably wasn’t deliberately taking advantage of her, he was just doing what everyone did and was probably completely unaware of the impact of his behaviour. All Gemma had to do was reset the communications and expectations so her colleagues would have more awareness next time around. And, in this instance, she did it incredibly well.
Observe how other people handle tricky situations around needing to create some pushback, and acknowledge these responses for yourself. Whether you think it is a fitting response or not, note the reasons why you think what you do. By unpicking situations for ourselves, and being specific about what works and what doesn’t, we can start to look more closely at the components within assertiveness that will allow us to come across more effectively in tricky situations.
- Assertive behaviour is on a spectrum and not one fixed thing
- Our awkwardness around being perceived as assertive or unassertive often stems from conditioned behaviour in childhood
- Public perception of assertive role models tends to differ depending on the individual
- We often imagine that our response to a person or situation will be more harsh than it is likely to be in actuality
- Assertiveness is not the same thing as being aggressive or forthright and sits in a far more flexible and accessible middle ground