Here's What You Need to Do to Become More Assertive at Work

Greater assertiveness at work

You've surely heard a lot about assertiveness at work and assertive communication, but what exactly is it? What benefits does it offer? Can it be applied in the business and professional world? How?

The general answer to all these questions is: yes — besides being assertive in our most personal side, we can bring that assertiveness into our work environment and learn to communicate and express ourselves better with our colleagues, bosses or employees, in order to find, together, a communication style that makes us more effective at work and helps us more easily reach shared goals.

To start from the beginning, it's worth explaining that assertiveness is understood as the ability to respect others and to have ourselves respected by others. It's about working on active listening, respect and empathy towards others, but also learning to say NO when that's exactly what we mean, or not staying silent out of fear of what others might think of our ideas or opinions. What matters is learning to defend our own interests and express ourselves freely, with respect, always keeping others' rights in mind.

And this, which can often be tricky enough on a personal level, is even trickier professionally, where we're forced to face the opinions of others — our superiors and colleagues — to try to reach shared solutions and goals.

Three different communication styles. Which one do you recognise yourself in?

There are three basic forms of communication:

• Aggressive communication: which usually involves violent, aggressive verbal and body language: a loud tone, intimidating looks, unconstructive criticism, raised hands, pointing fingers. This type of communication generally doesn't take the other person's rights into account.

• Passive communication: the other side of the coin. Here, the rights we don't respect are our own — we tend to try to please others, look down, lower our head, hide our personal opinions, always say yes to everything… This usually ends in a strong feeling of guilt for not being able to freely express what we feel or think, along with stress, victimisation, aggressiveness, etc.

• Assertive communication: which sits between the previous two — we're able to respect the other person's rights while also respecting our own.

Advantages and benefits of assertiveness at work

Without a doubt, learning to be more assertive leads us to feel better about ourselves, freer and more fulfilled, and if we achieve this in our work environment too, the benefits can be many:

• Reducing work stress.
• Improving our social skills.
• Managing anger and frustration.
• Boosting our self-image and self-esteem.
• Earning others' respect.
• Improving our decision-making skills at work.

Expert tips for greater assertiveness at work

The good thing about assertiveness is that it can be learned and improved. But how? According to experts, there are a series of fundamental guidelines and aspects we need to work on to boost our personal and professional assertiveness:

• Replace negative thoughts. This means changing how you interpret your emotions. You're not a bad friend for not picking up that person from the airport when it's genuinely inconvenient for you. If you said yes, you'd be acting against your own self-worth. With the right assertive message, that person will understand, without getting angry, that you can't go pick them up.
• Try to be clear — others aren't mind readers. Experts say this is common among passive people: believing others genuinely know what they think or what they need. It's best to learn to say it directly, respectfully and politely. Often others don't know what bothers or worries us.
• It's not enough to just describe the situation — you also need to clearly state what you want and not lose sight of your goal while communicating with the other person. Otherwise, you risk the other party (often your boss) ending up making the decision for you, and it might not match what you actually wanted. And remember to be very clear and direct in what you say! That way you won't leave room for misunderstandings.
• Facts, not judgments. There's a big difference between telling someone their work is sloppy and telling them their work is poorly focused and has spelling mistakes. To improve assertiveness at work, experts advise always focusing on facts, not the conclusions we draw ourselves from a situation.
• Give reasons when you ask for something. It will help the other person understand why you're making a request, declining something, etc. In this last case, when turning someone down, a good option is, besides briefly explaining why you won't do it, offering an alternative. This will make you seem less abrupt.
• Use "I messages" instead of "You messages", which helps the other person avoid feeling attacked when you talk about your needs or feelings. There's a big difference between these two phrases: "You've spoken to me very badly this week" and "I feel upset about how you've been speaking to me these past few days". No one can ever argue with an emotion, so I-messages followed by a feeling or emotion won't lead to arguments, but to working on the other person's empathy.
• Practise daily. To this end, Team Building activities at your company are one of the best ways to learn to communicate correctly and assertively with colleagues, bosses or employees.

Ready to start communicating more assertively? You'll gain professionally, but above all you'll know yourself better and respect yourself more ;)