Assertiveness
Posted on April21, 2010
Assertiveness is the process of expressing thoughts and feelings while asking for one wants in a appropriate way without jeopardizing the rights and respects of others. Assertive communication is appropriately direct, open and honest, and clarifies one’s needs to the other person. Assertiveness is a trait & is linked to self-esteem and considered an important communication skill. As a communication style and strategy, assertiveness is distinguished from aggression and passivity. How people deal with personal boundaries; their own and those of other people, helps to distinguish between these three concepts.
Passive communicators do not defend their own personal boundaries and thus allow aggressive people to abuse or manipulate them. They are also typically not likely to risk trying to influence anyone else. Aggressive people do not respect the personal boundaries of others and thus are liable to harm others while trying to influence them. A person communicates assertively by not being afraid to speak his or her mind or trying to influence others, but doing so in a way that respects the personal boundaries of others. They are also willing to defend themselves against aggressive incursions.
The key difference between aggressiveness with assertiveness is that individuals behaving assertively will express themselves in ways that respect the other person. They assume the best about people, respect themselves, and think “win-win” and try to compromise. In contrast, individuals behaving aggressively will tend to employ tactics that are disrespectful, manipulative, demeaning, or abusive. They make negative assumptions about the motives of others and think in retaliatory terms, or they don’t think of the other person’s point of view at all. They win at the expense of others, and create unnecessary conflict. In a study subjects, were selected for testing, which included the Maudsley Personality Inventory, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Fear Survey Schedule II. Analyses of variance confirmed that assertiveness relates inversely and highly significantly with measures of neuroticism, trait anxiety and interpersonal anxiety for both males and females.
Assertiveness training proved especially useful for clients who had anxiety about social situations. Therapists use different reciprocal inhibition techniques, utilizing assertiveness training. Reciprocal inhibition can defined as anxiety being inhibited by a feeling or response that is not compatible with the feeling of anxiety. Building up emotional competence is a way of learning to handle such behaviour.
Another aspect is learning to be assertive when feeling emotional. Assertiveness training involves learning a range of ways to handle any situation so that a person is able to choose a way which seems appropriate for them on each occasion. With respect to emotions, people are encouraged to notice and accept what they feel. They then have choices from handling the situation calmly through doing so and saying how they feel to letting the emotion out, all of which involve emotional competence.
People who have mastered the skill of assertiveness are able to greatly reduce the level of interpersonal conflict in their lives, thereby reducing a major source of stress.