Assertiveness & Interpersonal Skills

Assertiveness skills are very important in many situations; by being assertive you are letting people know what you want, need or prefer, in a way which is acceptable to both you and them. Put simply; assertiveness is about getting what you want without upsetting anyone!

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ACQUIESCENT, ASSERTIVE AND AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR

ACQUIESCENT
You:
o hope that you will get what you want
o sit on your feelings
o rely on others to guess what you want

You Don’t:
o ask for what you want
o express your feelings
o often get what you want
o upset people
o get noticed

ASSERTIVE
You:
o ask for what you want directly and openly
o ask confidently and without undue anxiety
You Don’t:
o violate other people’s rights
o expect other people to magically know what you want
o freeze with anxiety

AGGRESSIVE
You:
o try to get what you want in any way that works
o often cause bad feelings in others
o threaten, cajole, manipulate, use sarcasm,

You Don’t:
o respect that other people have a right to get their needs met
o look for situations in which you both might be able to get what you want (‘win-win situations’)

Understanding and recognising assertiveness is a major step in helping you to develop your interpersonal and influencing skills.

There are two other important factors however:

• How you prefer to behave with other people
• How the people you interact with, like others to behave towards them.

For example, some people are the life and soul of the party, dress flamboyantly and speak in loud, fast voices; get two of them together and it’s almost a competition to see who can burst the other’s eardrums! Try approaching one of these people in a polite, mild-mannered and factual way and you’re unlikely to make an impression.

Other people like to conduct business in a very formal way, they’re abrupt and to the point and only interested in “the bottom line”. Approach a meeting with these people with a barrage of questions about family, hobbies and what they did during the weekend and you’ve probably burned up 80% of the time they’ve allocated for the meeting!

SOCIAL STYLES
How can you ensure that you approach people in the correct way?

“Knowing About Social Styles”, developed by Merrill and Reid, is very useful. In the Social Styles Model there are four basic “styles” or preferred ways of interacting with others.

Merrill and Reid believe that a person’s Social Style is a way of coping with others. People become most comfortable with that style, in themselves and others. Understanding your own style and those of others can help in making meetings more productive. The main objective of Social Styles is to help people develop versatility in dealing with others.

A person’s Social Style is measured in relation to three behavioural dimensions:

• Assertiveness
• Responsiveness
• Versatility.

THE ASSERTIVENESS SCALE:
Measures the degree to which a person is seen as attempting to influence the thoughts, decisions or actions of others either directly by “tell” behaviour or by questioning, i.e. “ask” behaviour.

TELL BEHAVIOUR: Is risk-taking, fast-paced, challenging.

ASK BEHAVIOUR: Is co-operative, deliberate actions, minimising risks.

THE RESPONSIVENESS SCALE:
Measures the degree to which a person either openly expresses their feelings or controls their feelings. The ends of the scale are “control” and “emote”.

CONTROL BEHAVIOUR: Is disciplined, serious, and cool.

EMOTE BEHAVIOUR: Is relationship oriented, open, and warm.

The two scales combine to give a two-dimensional model of behaviour, which will help you to understand how others perceive you. The dimensions of behaviour will also help you to plan how you can deal more effectively with people of different Social Styles.

MY SOCIAL STYLE
A very simple way of identifying your Social Style is to copy the dimensions of the behaviour model below onto a number of pieces of paper. Now ask people who know you well, to plot your behaviour as they see it. Explain the two axes to them and then ask them to put a cross, first on the horizontal scale and then on the vertical scale. Try not to influence their decision, better still ask them to do it anonymously.

If you have a majority of crosses on “control” and “ask” then your behaviour is seen as Analytical. But if the majority are on “control” and “tell” then you are seen as a Driver.

If you are “emote” and “ask” then you are seen as an Amiable. “emote” and “tell” as an Expressive.

By knowing about your own Social Style and recognising Social Styles in others, you can improve the effectiveness of your meetings with them.

VERSATILITY – MAKING SOCIAL STYLES WORK FOR YOU
First of all it is important to recognise that, there is no best style. Merrill and Reid found that around 25% of the adult population belonged to each Social Style. They also found people from each Social Style at all levels within organisations.

The third dimension and the key to using Social Styles is versatility. Statistically around a quarter of the population have a similar Social Style to yours and so you will find that you are naturally comfortable with them.

Some people are naturally very versatile and are able to adapt easily to the needs of other people; others are less so. By developing your versatility skills, you will be able to relate effectively with a greater number of people.

The people, whom you probably find it most difficult to relate to naturally, are your “diagonal opposites” on the matrix. Study the characteristics of your “diagonally opposite” Social Style.

THREE FINAL GOLDEN RULES
• Person 1 is not person 2– We are all different and individual
• Person 1 today is different from person1 tomorrow– We all have our moods
• Etc.– We can never know everything about a person or situation

The moral right of the author, Jonathan Farrington, has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system or otherwise, unless this notification of copyright is retained.

Jonathan Farrington is a business coach, mentor, author and consultant, who has helped hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals around the world achieve their full potential and consequently, optimum performance levels.
Prior to setting up his own consultancy, Jonathan earned his spurs succeeding in some of the most demanding and competitive market sectors. Challenging assignments took him from the Middle East and Africa to Europe and the USA, providing him with the opportunity to work with a number of the largest and most successful international corporations including: - IBM, Wang, Legal and General, Andersen Consulting, Litton Industries and The Bank of Tokyo.
In 1995, Jonathan formed jfa with the primary objective to deliver unique leadership and sales team development programmes to both the corporate and SME sectors. Since then, he has authored in excess of three hundred skills development programmes, designed a range of unique and innovative process tools and written extensively on organisational and sales team development.
http://www.jonathanfarrington.com