Public Assertiveness Skills Course
(Click here for Tailored Assertiveness Training)
This one-day public course is designed to explore and understand issues around assertiveness.
Assertiveness Skills courses are run by
Tina Lamb - Katherine Grice - Doug Osborne Sara Jordan - Julie Wales
It's not possible to turn a gentle soul into Anne Robinson - thank goodness! Instead we look at how to be less accommodating and set clearer boundaries for others.
The idea is to feel better about saying 'no' without having to change who you are.
This is a practical assertiveness training course, which will leave the participants feeling more confident in their ability to handle others, and feeling better about themselves.
Click here for our Body Language Course - Interview Skills Evening Course - Interview
Skills Training Course - Personal Impact Course - Stress Management Course - One to One Assertiveness Training
Assertiveness Skills Course Objectives
* Dealing with delegate's own feelings
* Setting boundaries for others
* Presenting clear messages
* Closing conversations
* Gaining increased confidence
* Tools you know you can use
* Handling difficult people and situations
* Practising The Art of Saying No
* Moving awkward situations forward
* Managing conflict
Assertiveness Skills Course Programme
Assertiveness and your Feelings
This assertiveness exercise specifically recreates the feelings that people have when they have to do something they find particularly difficult. For instance what happens to them when they are in an uncomfortable or new situation. We then look at the ingrained behaviours associated with those feelings.
Assumptions get in the way of being Assertive
Here we help identify the assumptions individual participants make about other people and look at how that can affect how any communication then happens.
Setting Assertive Boundaries
This section of the assertiveness course deals with personal space boundaries as well as internal issues that people would rather not talk about. It is particularly useful for people who have a hard (if not impossible) time saying 'No'. It's particularly useful for people who have a hard time setting priorities because of other people's demands.
Holding an Assertive Status
This set of assertiveness exercises looks at situational, rather than hierarchical status.
They demonstrate that it isn't always necessary to be assertive in order to get your message across. Participants learn to lower and raise their status depending upon the situations they are in, in order to change the outcome of the interaction. It helps people begin to see how a change of behaviour can be an easy, unassertive way of not getting involved in other people's agendas.
Assertiveness and Conflict
These are two assertiveness exercises which deal with conflict resolution and defusing potential arguments. We look at the reasons for conflict and ways to build bridges between people.
The Language of Assertiveness
Language is one of the most powerful tools we have for conveying overt or covert messages, or ones we didn't intend. We look here at the phrases, words, clichés and axioms accommodating people use to apologise, justify and defend themselves and generally use to pad out what they are saying rather than get to the point.
Assertive and un-assertive Patterns
This exercise is designed to demonstrate to delegates that even when offered wider latitude in choices of behaviour, we will revert to type and do what we normally do.
Assertiveness Behaviour Model
We use a visual model to explain assertive behaviour and unassertive behaviour that is too accommodating and what happens to people under stress.
The Art of Saying 'No' and other Useful Assertiveness Tools
Using material already identified by the delegates we will look at some of their more common difficult assertiveness situations and people to see what other choices they could make to create a different outcome.
Assertiveness Support
The final exercise of the Assertiveness Skills Course is for each delegate to devise a personal Plan of Action, identifying their personal take-out of the programme, where they know they will practise and areas for development.
Finally we have people identify what will stop them putting this into practise and what support they need to help themselves put the Assertiveness Skills Course work into practise.
Confidence
Confidence
Find the next available Open Assertiveness Skills Course
What a wimp!
That's what it feels like. You're a wimp if you feel like you have no confidence or self-esteem. People will walk all over you, take advantage or just ignore you. You'll be the last one picked for the volley ball team and certainly you won't be trusted to make the big presentation in front of your company's major new client.
Then the cycle goes on. You try something and fail and get humiliated, so it makes it harder to try again. Because you don't try, even thinking about it feels impossible. That, of course, gives you a whole lot more inventive an arsenal with which to beat yourself up.
Boy, you really are a wimp!
As the cartoon on the front cover says, 'It's easy'. Just entirely change who you are.
Because that's also what it feels like; that you'd have to change everything about yourself in order to feel like tackling the world's challenges.
Doesn't all that sound just awful?
When you lose confidence it can genuinely feel awful, and for many as though there is nothing you can do about it. We've heard over and over again, "If I could just get some more confidence." It's as though we want to walk into a shop and buy a pound of confidence please (or should we say 500 grams).
We know that there are times when you feel you could do anything, conquer any fear, take on any project, deal with any problem. Those are the good times!
It's the difficult or tricky situations that erode confidence.
We also know that though confidence may take a while to build, it can be undermined or lost in a nanosecond. All it takes is to feel wrong-footed, tripped up, embarrassed and you'll feel demoralised, deskilled and at a loss. It only takes one episode where you feel humiliated or were 'caught napping' or weren't sure what to do next, and the whole wall of confidence cards comes tumbling down.
Wouldn't it be great if we could just avoid those situations? Well, you'd need to lock yourself in a room to do that and then, of course, you'd be left with yourself, and we already know that people with low self-esteem are particularly good at making matters worse by the things they tell themselves.
Depressed enough, yet?
Never fear - the good stuff follows.
What trips you up and what doesn't?
There will be some situations that undermine your confidence more than others. Take a piece of paper and divide the page in two. On the left side make a list of the areas where you know you feel more confident. Look at the list of things you do well as your starting point. If you know you're a good listener, for example, you probably feel relatively confident when you take on the listening role.
On the other side of the paper make a list of the places and situations where you don’t feel confident. Meeting new people, giving a presentation, defending a decision, challenging someone further up the food chain than you, etc.
Now do a confidence inventory. What do you have on the left hand side of the paper that you could 'borrow' to use in the right hand side? Let's say you don't feel very confident meeting new people, but you do feel confident as a good listener. Combine the two by 'featuring' your listening skills when you meet someone new. People love to talk about themselves, so you only need a good opening question (see below under The Practise Cycle) and they'll be off. Then you can listen to your heart's content because you know you're good at it, only having to interject the occasional comment to keep them going.
There will be plenty of other places where you can borrow one skill to help you
overcome a deficit in another. If you can get your head around this idea, you can become a whole lot more confident much more quickly than you think.
Not only that, if you look at the places where you do shine and feel good, make sure you put yourself into those situations more often. If you're good at riding a bike, go on more bike rides. Simplistic we know, but it's another small thing that really does work.
There's also nothing wrong with every once in a while deliberately avoiding those situations that do trip you up. There's nothing so confidence-undermining as putting yourself in situations where you know you're vulnerable. So take a holiday from it if at all possible when you're having a bad hair day. You'll have given yourself a break and will feel stronger to enter the fray when you choose.
The Practise Cycle
We've already commented right at the beginning that there's the undermining cycle of feeling unsure, getting humiliated, being less sure about trying something out and then dribbling away to not trying at all.
Of course, we know we're being a bit extreme here. We know it isn't always like that.
Everyone has some areas of their life where they're really confident, or at least confident enough. This is when those lists of qualities and skills come in when we look at the Practise Cycle.
This is how it works: when you feel confident, you'll try new things, and the more you try the better you'll get. Like public speaking, for instance. Any good presenter will tell you that the more they get out there in front of an audience, the more confident they feel about handling whatever happens. NOT that they feel less nervous (some people, no matter how practised they are, ever get over being nervous), just that they know what to expect and also feel able to deal with the unexpected. If they get wrong-footed they have enough belief in their skills to get themselves upright again.
But you won't try new things unless you're feeling confident - real chicken and egg.
Where do you begin?
The one and only place you can begin is to practise. Practise lots. And don't practise where the stakes are highest. Practise where no one will necessarily notice; where the spotlight isn't on you; where feeling a bit foolish won't undermine you.
Alongside practise goes preparation. Whatever the situation is you can prepare for at least some of the eventualities. Like meeting new people. To prepare for this situation you can make a list of opening gambits that you can try out.
We'll go back to our public speaking example. If you feel you have zero confidence speaking in front of a group, don't start practising in front of a group: all your fears and concerns will simply multiply. Practise in front of the mirror first; then practise in front of a trusted friend. More than once. Yah yah we know it can feel false and embarrassing, but practising with an audience of one who's on your side is a whole lot better than going into the lion's den of an audience you think isn't.
Now if you take that example and look at the areas of your life where you don't feel confident, see if you can identify the simple, unthreatening places where you could practise. If you have to have a difficult conversation, for instance, take some time before hand to write out the main points you want to get across (this is the preparation bit).
Whatever you choose, don't throw yourself in the deep end. The shallow end will do; the paddling pool will do.
To Sum Up
Years ago, when we were bemoaning the absence of confidence, someone gave us some very wise words: "confidence is when the need to 'do' outweighs the need 'not to do'".
All of us have the choice: we can either let our fears (and other people) run the show, or we can choose to build our confidence by practising every chance we get.