A lot of us swing between passive & aggressive behaviour. Keeping the middle ground of assertive behaviour can seem daunting. Most of us equally know that the key to getting our point across without compromising ourselves or others is to behave assertively.
The rules which follow are general and comprehensive. You will not need to follow them all in every situation, nor will they have the same order of importance in all cases. They are therefore given in no significant order.
1. Be clear about what you want
If you don’t know what you want, you will find it difficult to communicate your wishes and needs to others.
2. Choose your time and place
Choose the most appropriate place to communicate and time when the other person can listen. If necessary, delay the discussion (even if only for a few seconds) until you can give the matter your full attention. There is nothing wrong with admitting that you need time to make a decision or to gather more information. You should, however, agree to make a decision by a certain date and stick to it.
3. Repeat what the other person says or requests before you respond
This shows that you understand the message and helps you to check that you have understood correctly. It does not mean you have to agree.
4. Take responsibility for what you say
Use ‘I’, ‘Me’ and ‘My’, rather than ‘She/he says’ or ‘Everyone says’.
5. Make a clear statement
Doing this can be more difficult than it seems, especially if you are under stress. It may help to rehearse your statement. Don’t allow yourself to become upset or to lose track of what you want to say.
6. Be specific
Go straight to the point and identify clearly and directly what you want or what you want to convey.
7. Express what you feel
It sometimes helps to say that you feel anxious, happy or angry when making a statement, request or a response. But say it only once and then return to the point.
8. Acknowledge the other person’s feelings
This demonstrates that you understand the situation and empathise with the other person.
9. Be prepared to ask for more details
Asking someone to give more details or to give an example of what he/she means can help to avoid unnecessary conflict.
10. Do not be side-tracked
If the person you are talking to tries to side track you, listen to what is said and then repeat your own point. Do this again if necessary. This technique is known as the ‘broken record’.
11. Give reasons, not excuses
It is better to give reasons rather than excuses for what you want to do or don’t want to do.
12. Be prepared to compromise
Think about your ‘fallback position’ before you start to communicate. When you have expressed your feelings, be prepared to agree an outcome which everyone can accept.
13. Don’t apologise unless there is a good reason to do so
Don’t say ‘sorry’ merely because the other person is unlikely to be pleased, for unnecessary apologies compromise your position. Apologise only when you have said or done something you genuinely regret.
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Monday, 1 November 2010
It's been a wile...again!
Long summer nights have turned into long dark ones and here I am again having avoided blogging for ages. In part I think it's because I'm not that interesting...and then people keep telling me to share what's in my head! My winter resolution is to get into the habit & hopefully it will stick!
I've recently been considering why I do what I do( again!). Challenging & changing times are great opportunities to re-evaluate where we are up to & in what direction we are heading.
My "why" is all about choice, freedom & inner peace. It all starts with that and is shaping all other activity. For example, I have managed to reduce my hourly rate( to make my services more inclusive) by increasing the amount of corporate work. I believe my biggest challenge at the moment is to continue this approach in the face of corporate cautiousness & more limited budgets. In particular there is a good deal of interest in bespoke retreats to enable teams/groups to re-evaluate their own "why". Once the "why" is clear we can tolerate uncertainty & ambiguity much better & our "how" & "what" evolve according to prevailing circumstances.
I've recently been considering why I do what I do( again!). Challenging & changing times are great opportunities to re-evaluate where we are up to & in what direction we are heading.
My "why" is all about choice, freedom & inner peace. It all starts with that and is shaping all other activity. For example, I have managed to reduce my hourly rate( to make my services more inclusive) by increasing the amount of corporate work. I believe my biggest challenge at the moment is to continue this approach in the face of corporate cautiousness & more limited budgets. In particular there is a good deal of interest in bespoke retreats to enable teams/groups to re-evaluate their own "why". Once the "why" is clear we can tolerate uncertainty & ambiguity much better & our "how" & "what" evolve according to prevailing circumstances.
Sunday, 13 June 2010
Seth again...
...this describes my journey perfectly!
Hope and the magic lottery
Entrepreneurial hope is essential. It gets us over the hump and through the dip. There's a variety of this hope, though, that's far more damaging than helpful.
This is the hope of the magic lottery ticket.
A fledgling entrepreneur ambushes a venture capitalist who just appeared on a panel. "Excuse me," she says, then launches into a two, then six and eventually twenty minute pitch that will never (sorry, never) lead to the VC saying, "Great, here's a check for $2 million on your terms."
Or the fledgling author, the one who has been turned down by ten agents and then copies his manuscript and fedexes it to twenty large publishing houses--what is he hoping for, exactly? Perhaps he's hoping to win the magic lottery, to be the one piece of slush chosen out of a million (literally a million!) that goes on to be published and revered.
You deserve better than the dashed hopes of a magic lottery.
There's a hard work alternative to the magic lottery, one in which you can incrementally lay the groundwork and integrate into the system you say you want to work with. And yet instead of doing that work, our instinct is to demonize the person that wants to take away our ticket, to confuse the math of the situation (there are very few glass slippers available) with someone trying to slam the door in your faith/face.
You can either work yourself to point where you don't need the transom, or you can play a different game altogether, but throwing your stuff over the transom isn't worthy of the work you've done so far.
Starbucks didn't become Starbucks by getting discovered by Oprah Winfrey or being blessed by Warren Buffet when they only had a few stores. No, they plugged along. They raised bits of money here and there, flirted with disaster, added one store and then another, tweaked and measured and improved and repeated. Day by day, they dripped their way to success. No magic lottery.
What chance is there that Mark Cuban or Carlos Slim is going to agree to be your mentor, to open all doors and give you a shortcut to the top? Better, I think, to avoid wasting a moment of your time hoping for a fairy godmother. You're in a hurry and this is a dead end.
When someone encourages you to avoid the magic lottery, they're not criticizing your idea nor are they trying to shatter your faith or take away your hope. Instead, they're pointing out that shortcuts are rarely dependable (or particularly short) and that instead, perhaps, you should follow the longer, more deliberate, less magical path if you truly want to succeed.
If your business or your music or your art or your project is truly worth your energy and your passion, then don't sell it short by putting its future into a lottery ticket.
Here's another way to think about it: delight the audience you already have, amaze the customers you can already reach, dazzle the small investors who already trust you enough to listen to you. Take the permission you have and work your way up. Leaps look good in the movies, but in fact, success is mostly about finding a path and walking it one step at a time.
Hope and the magic lottery
Entrepreneurial hope is essential. It gets us over the hump and through the dip. There's a variety of this hope, though, that's far more damaging than helpful.
This is the hope of the magic lottery ticket.
A fledgling entrepreneur ambushes a venture capitalist who just appeared on a panel. "Excuse me," she says, then launches into a two, then six and eventually twenty minute pitch that will never (sorry, never) lead to the VC saying, "Great, here's a check for $2 million on your terms."
Or the fledgling author, the one who has been turned down by ten agents and then copies his manuscript and fedexes it to twenty large publishing houses--what is he hoping for, exactly? Perhaps he's hoping to win the magic lottery, to be the one piece of slush chosen out of a million (literally a million!) that goes on to be published and revered.
You deserve better than the dashed hopes of a magic lottery.
There's a hard work alternative to the magic lottery, one in which you can incrementally lay the groundwork and integrate into the system you say you want to work with. And yet instead of doing that work, our instinct is to demonize the person that wants to take away our ticket, to confuse the math of the situation (there are very few glass slippers available) with someone trying to slam the door in your faith/face.
You can either work yourself to point where you don't need the transom, or you can play a different game altogether, but throwing your stuff over the transom isn't worthy of the work you've done so far.
Starbucks didn't become Starbucks by getting discovered by Oprah Winfrey or being blessed by Warren Buffet when they only had a few stores. No, they plugged along. They raised bits of money here and there, flirted with disaster, added one store and then another, tweaked and measured and improved and repeated. Day by day, they dripped their way to success. No magic lottery.
What chance is there that Mark Cuban or Carlos Slim is going to agree to be your mentor, to open all doors and give you a shortcut to the top? Better, I think, to avoid wasting a moment of your time hoping for a fairy godmother. You're in a hurry and this is a dead end.
When someone encourages you to avoid the magic lottery, they're not criticizing your idea nor are they trying to shatter your faith or take away your hope. Instead, they're pointing out that shortcuts are rarely dependable (or particularly short) and that instead, perhaps, you should follow the longer, more deliberate, less magical path if you truly want to succeed.
If your business or your music or your art or your project is truly worth your energy and your passion, then don't sell it short by putting its future into a lottery ticket.
Here's another way to think about it: delight the audience you already have, amaze the customers you can already reach, dazzle the small investors who already trust you enough to listen to you. Take the permission you have and work your way up. Leaps look good in the movies, but in fact, success is mostly about finding a path and walking it one step at a time.
Saturday, 12 June 2010
Seth Godin
I subscribe to this guy's blog. He has some useful stuff to say...worth a look.
Here's an example:
Fear of shipping
Shipping is fraught with risk and danger.
Every time you raise your hand, send an email, launch a product or make a suggestion, you're exposing yourself to criticism. Not just criticism, but the negative consequences that come with wasting money, annoying someone in power or making a fool of yourself.
It's no wonder we're afraid to ship.
It's not clear you have much choice, though. A life spent curled in a ball, hiding in the corner might seem less risky, but in fact it's certain to lead to ennui and eventually failure.
Since you're going to ship anyway, then, the question is: why bother indulging your fear?
In a long distance race, everyone gets tired. The winner is the runner who figures out where to put the tired, figures out how to store it away until after the race is over. Sure, he's tired. Everyone is. That's not the point. The point is to run.
Same thing is true for shipping, I think. Everyone is afraid. Where do you put the fear?
Here's an example:
Fear of shipping
Shipping is fraught with risk and danger.
Every time you raise your hand, send an email, launch a product or make a suggestion, you're exposing yourself to criticism. Not just criticism, but the negative consequences that come with wasting money, annoying someone in power or making a fool of yourself.
It's no wonder we're afraid to ship.
It's not clear you have much choice, though. A life spent curled in a ball, hiding in the corner might seem less risky, but in fact it's certain to lead to ennui and eventually failure.
Since you're going to ship anyway, then, the question is: why bother indulging your fear?
In a long distance race, everyone gets tired. The winner is the runner who figures out where to put the tired, figures out how to store it away until after the race is over. Sure, he's tired. Everyone is. That's not the point. The point is to run.
Same thing is true for shipping, I think. Everyone is afraid. Where do you put the fear?
Thursday, 10 June 2010
Well worth making time for...
This is such a great metaphor for life...as well as being an amusing insight into the world of an uptight therapist! Grab a coffee, sit back & make 15 minutes for this little movie.
Our time is up
Our time is up
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Monday, 7 June 2010
THE world's worst blogger?
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