How To Increase Your Assertiveness in 10 Easy Steps!

When I’m running my assertiveness seminars it is obvious that some people seem to be more naturally assertive than others; they have a degree of confidence in dealing with people. But that doesn’t mean others can’t learn to be more assertive and acquire the skills necessary. It’s great to get to the end of an assertiveness session and see how people have grown in confidence, even in just one day!

Here are my ten top assertiveness techniques. Practise them regularly and you will really see if a difference.

1. Distance and personal space
We all have our personal space limits so make sure people keep to yours. It’s important not to let someone you don’t know intimately invade your space (this is passive aggressive behaviour; it’s manipulative). When you start to feel uncomfortable that’s your cue. Set your boundaries clearly, either verbally or non-verbally. You might, for example, step backwards to give yourself more space.

2 Broken Record Technique
I am slightly ambivalent about including this as it can turn out to be aggressive behaviour itself. But done correctly, with people you don’t need to have an ongoing relationship with (cold callers for example) it can be very  useful. You state clearly and politely what you want (or don’t want) and when you meet with resistance you simply politely repeat it, again and again and… Warning -I don’t think this is helpful with a colleague as it doesn’t actually resolve anything and will irritate the pants off them! But in the right place it can b every effective indeed.

3. Disclosure
Sharing some information about yourself can be very effective when you want to honest and upfront about something you feel the listener may not fully be aware of, or understand. An example of this could be someone with hearing loss asking the other person to speak up because they are a hard of hearing. Or perhaps sharing how nervous you feel in a situation, and how you would welcome their support.

4.Fogging
Fogging is simply agreeing with what the other person is saying and not allowing it to get to you. Literally in through one ear and out the other. When someone criticizes you, you agree by saying something like “You’re right, my dress doesn’t really match my handbag,” or “I think you’re right, I have put on weight over Christmas; I ate too much.” When you use the fogging technique it’s best to see all criticism as feedback. You let it ride over you and don’t get involved with what’s being said. It can be a really good way to defuse a verbal attack and shows your critic just how adult and confident you are.

5. Maintain eye contact
Good eye contact  makes your listener feel that you respect them and it makes you look more confident to the other person. If you spend the conversation nervously glancing around you will look shifty, or gauche, or look as if you don’t care or respect what the other person is saying. Although be careful, too much eye contact and it may look as if you are staring them out and cause more trouble than you bargained for!

6. Watch your posture and body language
If you slouch down you are making yourself physically smaller and this can appear less confident; you may also appear lazy or shy. Nether do you want to be ram rod straight and military (unless you are military, of course!) Try to hold yourself comfortably ‘tall’ and walk slowly when entering a room and you will look more assertive, however you are feeling inside!

7. And when seated..
When you sit make sure you are sitting upright. Don’t cross you legs or fold your arms – it’ll make you look nervous or aggressive. Sitting up makes you look more alert, interested in the listener and interesting to the listener. And remember, people LOVE being listened to. Listening well is the first rule in being more assertive so make sure you show that you are listening as well as doing it.

8. And while we’re on listening…
Make sure you are an active listener by practising active listening skills. Repeating briefly what the other person has said when appropriate is a good assertiveness skill to learn. Make sure you keep it short and don’t interrupt the speaker when they’re in full flow. You can use phrases like “Can I just check that I have this right, your view is…” or “So you’re saying… is this correct?”

9. Tone of voice
Often when we get nervous our voice goes up a few octaves and a bit of a high pitched squeak comes out. This is not good to listen to and will weaken your points. You may speak faster too with everything coming out in a nervous full on rush. If you have a tendency to speak quickly in stressful situations try silently counting to two each time before you speak. And deep breathing helps, (but don’t hyperventilate). A few deep breaths before you speak will also help calm you down. If your voice tends to get higher pitched then imagining the sound coming out of your chest will help to keep it at a deeper tone making you sound more confident.

10. Value your time
Value your time but also value others. If you are always late for meetings etc you are not being respectful of other people so can hardly expect to be treated with respect yourself. Also consider this, being consistently late for meetings or appointments can indicate a lack of self-worth. If you are always late spend some time thinking about why. And don’t over compensate by giving lots of time to other people when it isn’t necessary.  You need to value yourself first.

I hope that quick run down has been helpful. Of course, there is masses more on the topic but these are just a few tips to act as an aide mémoire.  Assertive women usually have high confidence levels and levels of inner self belief. And learning how to be more assertive can increase your confidence levels too!

What are your favourite tips?

And if you’d like some personal coaching on your assertiveness skills, contact me here. You can be amazing!

Courses for Women?

I run courses for women. It’s my passion. I have courses for women looking to move up into senior roles, courses to give women more confidence to do whatever they want to do, and courses for women who want to plan ahead for their next 12 months.  I also devise other personal development type courses for organisations which work for both genders (for example, when companies are experiencing radical change).  However, my original love is working directly with women and helping them boost their confidence and achieve success, in whatever area they choose.

Why Women Only Courses?

I am sometimes challenged as to why I exclude men. Well, the answer is I don’t exclude men. The material for my courses has been designed and written by me with women’s issues in mind but men are most welcome too if they feel it will be useful. And often I do get a chap or two attending and it goes well. Not all men are bursting with confidence and aiming high, just as not all women are lacking in confidence and not going for promotion. But statistically we know that the upward path is strewn with more obstacles for females than it is for men. It’s overcoming those obstacles, increasing confidence both to change oneself and to challenge discriminatory practice, that I focus on.

My information is aimed at women. For example, I make reference to the fact that women tend to wait until they know their current job really well before applying for the next grade up. That isn’t something that generally applies to men who will take a punt on a higher grade role if they meet just some of the requirements.

Incidentally, I coach both men and women on a one to one basis I don’t find any difference at all. It’s in group situations that the different needs are obvious. And I am talking about different needs, and not suggesting that one is any better than the other. Men and women have different personal development issues. Women, generally speaking, when looking at personal development, want to talk about different issues to their male counterparts.

I am not advocating women only groups in every circumstance, far from it. The surest way to keep women out of the boardroom is to make all the issues round flexible working, more adaptable systems, etc purely women’s problems. These issues need to be part of a larger dialogue within organisations, not ghettoised as ‘women’s problems’.

Profits go Up When Women Are on the Board

Companies report a significant increase in profits and all employee satisfaction when obstacles to women’s advancement are removed in an organisation. Everyone needs to be involved in that. That said, companies often bring me in to run women only courses as part of initiatives to have their senior management teams gender equal and to improve their bottom line. If an organisation has not previously encouraged women, albeit often unwittingly, then women only courses can be a huge support in managing the change. As can personal development courses for men only!

Men & Women Learn Differently

Women and men respond in different ways to my type of seminars. They listen differently, and they want different things. For example, if I am working with a group of men, generally speaking, they want to know facts, and why something is true. I always marshal my sources and give them chapter and verse as to research, origins etc. They are less comfortable sharing more personal stuff with other men, especially in relation to work.

Women, on the other hand, (once they have assured themselves that I know what I am talking about), respond much more intuitively and don’t want too much detail. They are interested in the applications of the research, not necessarily the pure research. They enjoy talking with other women (see here for some research on why that may be) and are supportive and encouraging of each other.

Interestingly, my experience is that men like to discuss personal development with women in the group, while women prefer it to be with women. And sadly, women are often less vocal when men are in the groups as well. In short, men enjoy mixed groups and get a lot out of it, while women, while enjoying mixed personal development seminars, get more out of it when working with other women. And that’s why I run personal development courses specifically aimed at women!

If you’re interested in any of my courses, or would like to book one for your organisation, do give me a call, on 01761 438749.

Put Your Past Where It Belongs – Behind You!

We all have a past, a personal history. And we all have views about how good, bad, helpful or indifferent our past is.

Our past, our life history, is important. It has brought us where we are today.

But there are times when the view we hold of our past can hold us back from fully experiencing the present, from developing into the people we can be, from living life to the full and pro-actively shaping our future.

We cannot change our past. The good news, however, is that we can change the view we hold of our past.

I am not pretending this is an easy thing to do. If you have had a particularly difficult time it would be trite of me to say “try this exercise and magically all will be well”. Clearly that is nonsense.

Manage Your Past

What I know is, with care, attention, and support you can take some control of the impact your past has on you. People are extraordinarily resilient. You are extraordinarily resilient! If you need to, you can overcome your past!

In my career I have worked with both criminals and victims of crime, helping them both to overcome the difficulties of their past experiences to move forward in a positive way.

Similarly I’ve worked with women in abusive situations helping them find a way out and break the cycle. I’ve worked with children who found themselves part of the care system and carried enormous feelings of guilt with them. Understanding their past history was fundamental to helping them move on. Knowing their negative internalised messages and neutralising them really put them on the road to living a full and happy life.

The River of Your Life

There are lots of ways of looking at your past but what follows is an exercise that has worked well with my clients. Give yourself plenty of time and, depending on your unique circumstances,  choose a time when you feel strong enough to look at your past.

Take a large sheet of paper and some coloured crayons; the coloured crayons will stimulate your creativity and help your thinking.

If you can, in your mind’s eye, try and imagine your life as a meandering river. You know where it started but you don’t know where it will end. At times it has flowed over stony ground and been split into different directions, sometimes drought has almost stopped its flow, and other times it has been full and strong, overcoming all obstacles in its path. Allow your creativity free rein. If you want to put in little islands or hummocks or a jetty along the way, do. This is simply an aid to help you think.

As you draw your river, imagine that each bend and change in flow represents a significant event in your life. An early memory may be a new sibling, for example, or starting school, a move to a new neighbourhood. It’s a natural human tendency to focus on negative events – resist this! Try to include ALL the significant events of your life.

Spend some time on this so you get some good material to work with. Don’t try to rush ahead to the analysis stage. Take your time and allow your thoughts to wander a little if they need to. If you feel yourself getting upset simply notice the emotion. Don’t try and stop the feelings surfacing; they are an important part of this exercise. Instead, note them in some way.

Some bends in your river may bring a smile to your face. Make a note of that too!

Reflect

Keep on adding bends/chicanes/waterfalls/incised meanders/islands/jettys/moorings and drawing out your river until you have reached a point where you want to stop. Now look at what you have produced and ask yourself these questions:

• How have those bends and turns influenced me in my adult life?
• What practical effect have they had on my life to date?
• What emotional effect have they had?
• What is your view of those events? Good, bad, indifferent?
• If that view is negative, can you come up with an  alternative positive interpretation?
• What coping strategies have you used that have worked for you?
• What strengths have you gained from your life experiences?
• How do you want the rest of your river to flow?

Usually the impact of this exercise rolls out over a period of time. You will remember new bits to add to your river, have new thoughts, relive good and bad times. The purpose of this exercise is to take control of your past, to make it work for you, not against. It’s not about rubbishing or minimising what has happened in your life. It may be more about honouring it, giving it a place (but not too big a place). This applies to whatever your view of your past is

Live in the Present

Living in the past is no place to be. If your past is pulling you back, resolve to deal with it now. Get professional help if you need it, take space if you need it. Resolve to live in the now. And remember:

“We are not touched so much by life’s events themselves, but by the view we CHOOSE to take of them”
Epictetus.

You can always have control, don’t be a victim of your past!

Personal Development or Training?

I had a great conversation recently with one of my clients. She had come to me initially for some coaching about advancing her career. I am not specifically a traditional career coach so we talked for some time before committing to anything on either side. And as we talked it became apparent that she knew exactly what she needed to do to get on but the issue was one of confidence and belief in actually doing it!

She had tried various training courses but they didn’t help. Not because they weren’t good training courses; they sounded excellent, but because she wasn’t psychologically in a place to make best use of the information. She didn’t actually need any skills based TRAINING at that point in time, she needed some personal development.

Training

Although people (including me) often use ‘training’ to describe what I do it’s not particularly accurate. When I am running one of my women’s courses I am not offering traditional training, I am offering an opportunity to reflect, grow and develop in a way personal to you.

Key Differences.

If you attend a training course it’s likely to be work oriented, and skills based. You may attend a training course on manual handling, for example. A manual handling course is often mandatory in particular fields- you have to attend and you have to come away with a piece of paper that says you’ve attended and met a required standard. The person teaching the course has a list of competencies or skills to teach you.

Or your firm may have introduced a new computer system and all employees have to understand how it works so have to either enrol on line or undertake a short course, or turn up for some hands on experience and tuition.

What these have in common is everyone is taught exactly the same way, with the same information. Even if you begin with quite a bit of knowledge on manual handling or the computer system you still receive the same input; there are ‘correct’ answers that you have to give at the end of the day. You can benchmark yourself against others and see how well (or otherwise) you are doing compared with others.

Personal Development

When you undertake personal development everything you have ever done is relevant, regardless of your status or age, or educational achievements. No judgements about your abilities are made.

In personal development, be it through a women’s course or coaching, there are no right answers to strive for. Everyone is unique and everyone has a different response. Never compare yourself to anyone else. You don’t pass or fail, you simply develop. And how you develop depends on so many different factors but most of all on the uniqueness of you.

So you could attend a woman’s personal development course one year and maybe get something from it but it may not be especially life changing. Yet you could attend that self same course six months later and because of where you are at (figuratively speaking) in your life it totally transforms you.

For example, someone may be on one of my courses at exactly the right moment for them and it really does set them off on a new path. So, when I ask if anyone wants to make a comment, they stand up and proudly announce that this opportunity to evaluate their life means they are now going to give up the day job, learn eye surgery (in Flemish) and explore Timbuktu riding backwards on a donkey!

However, if you are sitting in the same group you may be thinking to yourself:

“Well, this period of reflection has been great. I think I’m going to join the local library and get a book out on being more assertive and make sure I give myself some ‘me’ time.”

The point is personal development is exactly that, personal. Don’t compare, don’t set yourself impossible goals, simply be honest and allow the thoughts to do what they will. It’s for you, not a test or exam. Neither is right or wrong; you are simply exploring what is right for you at any particular time in your life with someone who is not judging you in any way, but focussed on helping you be the best you can be.

Coaching

Similarly with coaching; sometime clients come to me having been talking with friends and colleagues who have made enormous life changes following coaching. Coaching is another form of personal development- you don’t pass or fail. You get what you need at the time from it and a good coach will help you identify what is right for you. And that’s rarely what worked for someone else. It’s your life - what is important to you is what matters. So never compare yourself with others.

Another difference with personal development or coaching is that it is entirely voluntary. You cannot be ordered to have coaching or go on a personal development course. (Well, I guess you could but it would probably be a worthless experience for you!)

Research

One point that may be of interest; the Springboard Consultancy commissioned some research a few years back looking at the effectiveness of this type of coaching/personal development work. What they discovered was that managers noticed a positive difference in staff who undertook personal development work; they returned more focussed on problem solving than complaining about what was wrong and they coped better with change. And even more interestingly, women who had done some personal development felt that the effects of it went well beyond the actual time they were doing it. In fact, most said they really began to feel the full effects about 12 months afterwards as they began to see the fruits of the changes they had made in their lives.

And Finally

Back to my coaching client from paragraph one! What she actually rang me to tell me was that she now realised she didn’t want to go on in her career but had been swept along by other people’s expectations of her. The opportunity to reflect had allowed her to seriously think about what she wanted from her life and it wasn’t the role she currently had. She wanted to let me know that she had decided upon a different path and was actually setting up her own part time business which sat very happily with her value base and need for some autonomy. She was being true to herself!

A  Coaching Question

A simple question to leave with you to ponder upon:

If you had no fear and you could do one thing to improve the quality of your life as it is right now, what would it be?

Picture Credit: Sigurd Decroos

Gender Blindness in the Workplace?

My Prejudice

I think I had better begin by declaring my bias! I am a feminine feminist: I do not think women need to, or should have to, behave like men to get on in the world of work. I believe at times we have had to because the world of work has been designed by men for men: if women wanted to get ahead they had to play the game like men (think 80s).

And I think (and this is borne out by research on comparative pay scales, promotion, etc) the skills and attributes women bring to the workplace are still valued and rewarded less than male equivalents.

Now that is not to take a cheap jibe at men, not at all. It’s simply a fact. Women are still a relatively new entry into the world of professional and paid employment. We’ve only really been around in any meaningful way for the last 40 years or so. The world of work was not designed to accommodate women and most of us are still working within systems that work particularly well for one half of the population because that half of the population invented them. When there were roles for women they were in a support capacity, supporting the important work of men.

The Fire & Rescue Service

Let me give you an example. My husband is a fire-fighter. (A few years ago I would have automatically called him a fireman- language is very important). When he graduated from Fire Brigade Training School I attended the parade with our two children, a boy and a girl; our daughter was then 4 and our son a few months old. The Chief Officer gave a speech that made no reference to women at all other than as supporters of their men now in the service (a service I have huge respect for). Later on he tickled my son under the chin and said:

“So, when you grow up are you going be to be a strong fireman like Daddy”

I replied on my son’s behalf:

“No, but I think my daughter might be”.

I wish I could have taken a photo of his face. He was truly shocked and horrified and most people thought I was making a joke, or being provocative as usual. I was, of course, but I meant it!

Yet within a decade of that comment women were employed in fire services across the world. Hooray! But it hasn’t been easy because every system in the operational side of the fire service had been designed to suit men. And in many cases they are still run by men who thought the concept laughable only a relatively few years ago.

Diversity Training

A lot of the changes have come about because of pressure from women and men, which has resulted in diversity and education programmes across the piece, not just to achieve equality for women but to include all minority cultures.

But hang on a minute, minority cultures? How did women get put into the minority culture bracket when we make up at least half the population of the world?

Diversity training exists to break down barriers and promote understanding and equality of opportunity and access – and thank goodness for it. We need it. But a subtext of diversity training is that there is a dominant culture and in most of the Western world at least that dominant culture is white and male. As Wittenberg-Cox & Maitland state in their excellent book ‘Why Women Mean Business’:

“Diversity issues can actually reinforce stereotypes by over-emphasising parenting and work-life balance issues and framing them primarily as a ‘woman’s problems’ that has to be managed”.

It’s based on the presumption that women need help to be more like men!

I have designed a leadership course for women; one of the exercises is to imagine if the world of business and work had been designed solely by women for women. The answers are interesting. There is the expected stuff about childcare and flexible working but also more unexpected issues like interview processes and office environments. Why is office stuff usually grey, for example? We know colour stimulates the imagination and problem solving but creating a nice working environment is often seen as ‘girlie’, with ‘girlie’ being used as a put down – being ‘girlie’ is somehow inferior to being ‘boyey’!

Gender Bi Lingualism

Until the world of work and business truly values what women bring to it we have not achieved equality. Early attempts at equality meant treating everyone the same. But we’re not the same. Men and women are different, whether nature or nurture, we are different. We bring different skills and attributes to the workplace; we serve a world equally divided so at the very least it should make good business sense to have working cultures which encompass both. (See Why Women Mean Business)

Making the workplace open and equable to women is not a diversity issue. It’s plain commonsense and fairness and it’s good for business! After all, women make 80% of all purchasing decisions! Women are 54% of university graduates across OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development) countries. And they are gaining higher grades!

How?

There is evidence to suggest that companies that have women at the top find it good for business. Catalyst, a US think tank, looked at links between women leaders and the performance of Fortune 500 companies, and found that those with most women were doing significantly better than those with lowest number of women. It was even better when there were three or more women on the board, not just one token woman.

I think the key lies in it no longer being a woman’s problem but something that is recognised across the board (literally and figuratively). Modern companies know it makes sound business sense. They are bringing in experts to look at all their processes, from the subtle bias of the way advertisements are worded to in house publications and provision of toilets (trust me that’s a big one. Fire stations had NO women’s toilets at all at first).

If women are underrepresented at senior levels in your organisation maybe it’s time to start asking some questions:

At what grade or level do women stop applying for/being promoted to senior jobs?

Has an analysis been made of the reasons why?

Is there a clearly non gender specific ideal leadership profile for the organisation?

Is there succession planning with a pool of both gender high potential employees?

Is the progress of women monitored and questions asked of managers when there is an discrepancy in numbers of female employees and numbers of female managers?

My biggest fear is that younger women seem to think there is no problem and are accepting of the status quo. They have not experienced the overt discrimination of their mothers and grandmothers. Companies are no longer able to overtly discriminate. Yet there is still a pay gap of 16.4% between comparable male and female jobs!

Women – Not Second Best!

A recent study, ‘The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness’ said that women are unhappier now, after 40 years of feminism, than they have ever been before. It received a lot of media attention in the popular press giving a platform for the old chauvinists to surface with remarks from the like of Stuart Rose, (C.E.O. Marks and Spencer,).

He claimed that the ‘girls’ in his company have no glass ceiling to worry about. I think the clue is in the disrespectful and patronising use of the term ‘girls’, Sir Stuart!

Sir Stuart’s comments were made in the Observer newspaper but they are contradicted by The Fawcett’s Society’s (an organisation campaigning for equality) Dr Katherine Rake. She said there was still no flexibility for women at higher levels of business and that the top strata is generally white and male and does not encourage women’s participation by being more flexible in their working styles.

Women Must be Like Men to Succeed

I think educated women are rejecting the idea of equality currently on offer. On the surface it looks like we have been offered equality; in fact, we have been offered places at a table designed and set by men for men.

Think about it, in my lifetime (I’m in my early 50s) workplaces were inhabited almost exclusively by men. Women had very secondary roles, in a supportive capacity. My school primarily offered girls secretarial and teaching options and the concept of equal pay was laughable.

Try this experiment in your office. Just ask any group of working women how many of their mothers had careers, by which I mean worked full time for a significant period of time. There will be a quite a few, I suspect, maybe as many as half in any office.

Then ask how many of their grandmothers had careers. I suspect that there will be hardly any.

In just three generations the gender make up of the world of work has changed dramatically. But women are still making their way in a world designed by and for men.

And we’re in a catch 22 because if women behave like men they are often described as aggressive and unfeminine but if they exhibit their more feminine side it is generally not valued in the male dominated world of work. Male characteristics and styles are still more highly valued. Is it any wonder than many of us are opting out and the highest number of small business start ups are coming from women?

On Being Gender Bilingual

It is true that equal opportunities legislation has meant that most companies now have an equalities policy in place. And some of them are fantastic. There is a huge trend towards diversity and most large organisations use this term to mean a wide range of areas, covering complex issues of difference in the workplace, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, physical difference, cultural diversity and in this they also put gender.

It is interesting to note that over half the population is put into this category with women being incorporated within the diversity tag. The implicit assumption is that women need help in becoming more like the dominant class, (white males) in an organisation, and if we can be coached to behave like the dominant culture all will be well. The expectation is that women must change.

But women are not a minority culture and we don’t need diversity support. We need to be in organisations that treat women like women and men like men, of whatever diverse background they come from. We need organisations that value the contributions from both genders equally and are not implementing policies to ‘allow’ women to behave like men.

The Economic Case

Women and men have differing leadership styles. It stands to reason. We are different in so many other ways so why not in leadership styles? Organisations that enable both genders to flourish will be the organisations that thrive.

For example, women make 80% of all purchasing decisions. And women do not respond to the same marketing strategies that men do. And they do not respond to the one dimensional approach of let’s do it the same as we usually do but just in pink!

Responsive companies are adapting their style of working to be gender bilingual. The car manufacturer Volvo is a case in point. They used an all female team to research and design a concept car based on what women wanted, and said, ‘meeting women’s expectations makes us exceed the expectations of men’.

If women are underrepresented at a senior level in your organisation maybe it’s time to ask the following questions:

At what grade or level do women stop applying for/being promoted to senior jobs?

Has an analysis been made of the reasons why?

Is there a clearly non gender specific ideal leadership profile for the organisation?

Is there succession planning with a pool of both gender high potential employees?

Is the progress of women monitored and questions asked of managers when there is an discrepancy in numbers of female employees and numbers of female managers?

Recommended reading, available from Amazon or your local library
Why Women Mean Business by Wittenberg-Cox & Maitland published by Jossey-Bass