Sometimes during the course of conducting business, you might find it difficult to express your feelings openly and honestly. Perhaps you’re intimidated by working with a celebrity expert. Maybe you don’t know what to say to an unhappy customer.

Most often this struggle is due to a lack of assertiveness. Unassertive behavior can cause problems in many areas of your life, but you can learn to change it.

So, what is assertiveness?
Assertiveness is simply a communication style. It’s a way of openly and honestly expressing your feelings, thoughts, beliefs, needs, etc. without causing harm to other people. Assertive communication can help you to bolster your level of confidence, gain respect from other people, and get what you want from every interaction.

There are two other generally-accepted communication styles: aggressive and passive.

Aggressive behavior is never an acceptable way to handle a situation. Aggression is usually punishing, hostile, and demanding. People who communicate aggressively will use threats, sarcasm, gossip, and other negative words and actions in order to get what they want. You can imagine how appealing it would be to form a business relationship with such a person.

Passive communication, on the other hand, involves more harm to you than to whoever you’re communicating with. For example, you might choose to say, “Yes” when you would rather say, “No.” Other times, you might choose to keep your opinion to yourself instead of taking the risk of hurting someone’s feelings.

Unlike aggression, passivity sometimes has its place. For example, maybe in college, you had a professor who frequently gave people lower grades because she felt threatened by students who stated their opinions. If you disagreed with that professor, you might have decided that being assertive in that situation would not be truly beneficial to you. And there’s nothing wrong with making such a decision.

Responsible assertion means having respect for yourself while treating yourself and others with kindness, intelligence and good will. It is a balance that involves communicating your feelings directly and clearly and expressing your thoughts appropriately.

There are 4 main assertion techniques:

1. Basic Assertion

Basic assertion is the simple, straightforward expression of your feelings, thoughts, or opinions. Using basic assertion, you might say something like, “I want to go to the theater instead of the movies.”

2. Empathic Assertion

Empathic assertion demonstrates that you are sensitive to the feelings of the other person. Generally speaking, empathic assertion contains both an acknowledgment of that person’s feelings and a statement of your opinion. For example, “I understand that you don’t want to work late tonight, that you’re tired and frustrated, but I need your expertise so we can deliver this to the client on time.”

3. Escalating Assertion

When the person you’re communicating with doesn’t respond to your basic assertion, you can gradually escalate the assertion and become more and more firm in your stance. Escalating assertion is normally where a negative result is introduced. One example of this technique is, “If you don’t finish the project by close of business today, I’ll be forced to put a reprimand in your personnel file.”

4. I-Language Assertion

I-Language assertion is useful for every communication, but it is particularly helpful when you need to express a negative thought, feeling, or opinion. This type of assertion is expressed in 3 parts:

• When you (identify the behavior).
• I feel (describe how the behavior affects you).
• I would prefer (tell them what you want).

When you use I-Language assertion, be sure your focus is on what you feel. This is the best way to ensure you don’t fall into a cycle of blame and anger. For example, “When you don’t wash the dishes like you said you would, I feel angry with you because that means I have to do it. I would appreciate it if you would take care of the things you’ve agreed to take care of.”

The goal of assertive communication is to develop and foster caring, honest and accepting relationships. Employ these techniques to strengthen all of the relationships in your business and personal life.