I used this activity following ‘Yes but, No but!’ for delegates to think further about the different behaviours and characteristics. The scenarios were a good test of learning following the ‘Yes but, No but!’ activity. And in the second part of the activity using flip charts, I incorporated some of the questions from the ‘Who is Assertive?’ module. This worked really well.

This is a great starting quiz to get people thinking assertively. It is a funny thing, assertiveness, in that we find it very easy to describe the extremes (aggressive and passive), but because assertive is somewhat in between, it is a more nebulous construct, I think. This quiz helps. Getting people in groups of 3 or 4 is good for me – 5 is possible, but more difficult for the passive ones to get included! This is an exercise of two halves! The questionnaire sets the thinking right. There is usually some discussion on one or two of them – and it is a great opportunity to talk about tone and voice here. (You can read some of the situations in an aggressive voice, for example.) Beware of situation 9 – we don’t have smoking in restaurants any more – but as long as you explain that up front, it is still a valid scenario – although now historical. During the second exercise I usually add a thought provoker – “think about tone of voice, eye contact, stance, listening levels, body language, facial expressions...” The whole thing gets you to the point of defining the characteristics for Assertive behaviour very quickly.

This was a very useful exercise because it really explained the differences between passive, assertive and aggressive. I liked the way that the exercise was split into two so that firstly they could decide in a team which response was passive, assertive or aggressive and then they could decide on the traits of each. We then discussed why an assertive approach would be best. Those in the group were all passive so it was a useful way of getting them to realise that they need to work on their assertiveness.

I ran this course with a group of administrators that frequently have contact with the advisers within the company. Although we have processes for dealing with the adviser requests, they often walk over and speak to the administrators directly to get work done quicker. This course was great for the administrators as it helped them to understand and identify submission, assertive and aggressive behaviour. The second exercise in particular was really good for them as they got to bring in the of experiences of giving / receiving those behaviour characteristics and the consequences of them. Out of the back of exercise two came a number of interesting points to discuss and for that session it was extremely important to resolve them and so we ended up going longer than we would have done. The team now interact better and if someone does point a finger then they have the humour between the group to take the micky out of the aggressive body language. It has also helped them in general with dealing with the advisers, although some may still need some additional coaching in this area.

I used this to qualify what assertiveness is.

The questionaire handout, the questions were very straightforward and easy to understand. They readily allowed everyone to understand the key distinction between “submissive”, “assertive” and “aggressive”. I ran this as a group exercise and felt the exclusion of “passive” was an omission as some people fell into this category rather than “submissive” (see below for more detail):

Passive-aggressive behavior refers to passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following through with expectations in interpersonal or occupational situations. It can manifest itself as learned helplessness, procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate/repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible. It is a defence mechanism, and (more often than not) only partly conscious. For example, suppose someone does not wish to attend a party. A passive-aggressive response in that situation might involve taking so long to get ready that the party is nearly over by the time they arrive. [Extract from “Wikipedia”]

Overall, however this more than satisfied the learning need and allowed us to progress comfortably into the next stage and how to appropriately manage ‘assertive’ behaviour.

Used this exercise which is meant to demonstrate the difference between assertive, submissive and aggressive approaches. Found this very useful, as all trainees could easily relate to the examples used. Only one example that is used has to do with a smoking area in a restaurant, which I amended slightly in the light of the smoking ban.

The module I have used most is What is Assertiveness? I really like this as it gets everyone into a good mindset and is so helpful in determining not so much what assertiveness is, as what it isn't! There are lots of courses and so on that promote tips and strategies for being more assertive, but I much prefer this approach.

I recently ran a half day course for a group of around 30 care workers on the topic of assertive communications. As a part of that event, I used the “What is assertiveness” exercise.

I did consider using the “How assertive are you” questionnaire but decided that I would use another questionnaire that gave an indication of whether the delegates ‘preferred’ communication style was aggressive, assertive, submissive or submissive/aggressive. After having explained these terms, I used the first element of the “What is assertiveness” exercise. This was very well received and the delegates were very quickly fully engaged in discussion – or I should say lively debate as they sought to achieve consensus in their views. To add ‘a little something’ to the exercise, I suggested that one of the group read out the response given in the same manner as they felt that the originator of the response would have used. This venture into amateur dramatics for some added immensely to the enjoyment factor and was a very good way of reinforcing the importance of NVC and tone in communications. Additionally, when working through the ‘answers’ in a plenary session, I invited people to give alternate response in the other styles – for example, if the response was submissive, I asked how it might have been expressed assertively and/or aggressively. Once again, this was a useful technique to reinforce the learning.

Towards the end of the event, I moved onto the topic of NVC and used the second half of the exercise to elicit shared perceptions of NVC is terms of effective communications. The earlier part of the exercise proved to have been an ideal intro as the delegates were very quickly able to make the necessary links between NVC and effective assertive communications.