Assertive Communication.
Corporate Goverment |Many people understand that one would not be able to be assertive when one is not confident about one’s self. Assertive stands for being a confident or having a forceful personality. An example is that medical doctors should be assertive with their patients. How about working people? For certain being a leader, such as any chief, a CEO, a CFO or CMO or even a senior manager understood well that they must be assertive. However, even for the most experienced professionals, being assertive in the workplace can be challenging. Communicating and interacting in good manners may not be easy. To people who are in high confidence may like over reacting, which may lead to being forceful or even negatively arrogant. In any workplace, different personalities and approaches can mean that it’s sometimes feels like people need to be clear and often repeating their sayings for several times. Such situations may upset the atmosphere.
The 3Cs. Therefore the 3 Cs in assertive communication plays a very important role :
1. Confidence. It may be an inheritance being a confident child then becoming a grown-up until one becomes a fully confident manager. However, it’s not only the DNA that leads people to become confident; life experiences and though happenings may lead someone to become more and more confident. To many psychologists, to become confident can be learned progressively. Let’s pay attention on our daily good habit to become confident, and this is possible when we dare to stand-up, dare to face difficulties or even turning these into challenging of good opportunities.
2. Controlled. In line with becoming confident is that one must be able to control oneself every moment. Some will say it’s easy to say, difficult to practice. Again this must become a daily habit. Start from taking mindfulness (some will practice a daily mindfulness meditation), therefore we could control our inner emotions. There are many ways that we can practice daily to control ourselves, since the start of waking-up in the morning. When we can control ourselves, then we may be able to control the words which we are going to say. We also can control our body language. We can control the communication, the sentences, their meaning as well as the intention or goal of our intentions. Control our personality then our communication is controlled.
3. Clear. Don’t be afraid to say “No!” Some ”bosses” thing that when they are the top person at a work place, they have the attitude like “The King can’t do No Wrong!” As managers or subordinate, how to act? For “chiefs” of course the advice is to take care of your tone, and even so for subordinates, you can say “No!” in an empathetic tone. We have learned: use the language of assertiveness, be mindful of your body language. Following is that we have to learn also making it a good habit on the importance of conducting a meaningful discussion. Don’t be afraid to say: “No!” You need to let go of the need to please everyone, including your boss. Difficult? Well. Take a look at a training program on Assertive Communication.
Assertiveness isn’t about concessions and compromises. If we continue
doing these three things (the 3 Cs), we become a strong person in
effective communication.
Ludwig Suparmo – Strategic Communication Specialist.