Nguyên bản tiếng Anh bàigiảng về \”Assertiveness\” của Giáo sư Jeffrey Berman – Salem StageCollege – Hoa Kỳ.

One of the mostimportant, yet difficult to master aspects of personal communications isassertiveness. Assertiveness is something we often call \”standing foryourself\”.

\”Standing foryourself\” is as an important factor as a business relationship and apersonal relationship. While assertiveness implies Assertiveness is somethingwe often call \”standing for yourself\” is such a way that you do notviolate another person\s rights. Another way of thinking about assertiveness is\”getting what you want, getting what you need\”, using fair andreasonable means.

Being assertive does notmean being aggressive. Some people compare assertiveness to aggressiveness interms of being kind a continuum of behaviors, but they\re really two differentand separate concepts.

Assertiveness: standingfor your own rights.

Aggressiveness:violating or using whatever tactics that are unnecessary that may hurt or harmanother person in order to get your way.

The opposite of assertivenessis not assertiveness. The opposite of assertiveness is NON-assertiveness. Inanother word, that if you don’t stand up for your rights, you don\t try to getwhat you need by using fair and reasonable means: you\re not being assertive.

What I don\t understandassertiveness is to think about various situations in which assertive behaviormay be called for. One that we\re familiar with is when somebody stars smokingin a non-smoking area, a lot of times we may be reluctant to call a person forsmoking and non-smoking area. However by asking them to go to a moreappropriate area to smoke, we\re being assertive.

Another example ofassertiveness is when you want to return an unsatisfactory purchase that weshopped, some store will have a policy of accepting returns without anyquestions, but many times, when you\re trying to return a unsatisfactorypurchase, you\ll need to make sure that the store takes back the unsatisfactoryitem and will refund. That\s called assertiveness.

Another example ofassertiveness is asking for a pay raise. Sometimes, it\s politically incorrectto ask for a pay raise. But in other organizational context, the only way toget a raise is to ask for it, so therefore you prepare for your case, you go toyour superior or your boss, and you make your case and ask for your raise.That\s being assertive.

Another case ofassertiveness might be in terms of reprimanding a subordinate. Many managersfear reprimanding a subordinate because they fear that person will be throwingfor another job right away, or they fear that they\re gonna become demotivatedby the reprimand. On the other hand if the subordinates is doing somethingwrong or the subordinates is doing something that violate some companypolicies, the appropriate thing to do is to give that person… if you wanna callit disciplinary or a reprimand in such a way that they will know they won\trepeat that behavior.

Another example of beingassertive is to reopen a conversational dialogue with someone you\ve had anargument with. If you\ve had an argument with someone, a disagreement, perhapsit’s emotional. You don\t necessarily feel comfortable so… that again. On theother hand, the sure thing to do, is to reopen a relationship and reopen adialogue with that person so that you can work with them, going forward.

Assertiveness is a largesubject. And it\s surely impossible to cover every possible situation that maycome up. So I’d like to present to you some \”dos\” and\”don\ts\” about being assertive.

If someone ignores youlike trying to be assertive, don’t be discouraged. Simply continue to presentyour case until the other person stars to listen to you. While being assertive,you can refuse to be distracted by the other person. Another person that tryingto sidetrack your assertiveness by bringing up unrelated issues or by changingthe subject – don’t let that sidetrack you, don’t let that stop you beingassertive until you get it right.

While being assertivecan also being empathetic. After all, another person is going to have adifferent point of view, another person may have their own opinion andtherefore, you\re asserting your rights. On the other hand, try to understandthe other person at the same time.

When expressing yourpoint of view and being assertive, try to avoid the domineering or dogmatic.And, the best way to do that is to assert yourself in an even tone of voice. Ifyour tone of voice reveals some kind of attempt to dominate, you\re going tolose the stream of effectiveness in trying to be assertive.

One typical situation thatoccurs in assertiveness is if a prior agreement you had with someone is beingviolated in other words behaviour or situation that has fallen back into theoriginal state where you were originally needed to be assertive. What do you dothen? You then reassert yourself and point out the discreteness between what\sgoing on now and what you previously agreed on, trying to bring the situationback to one that meets your needs.

An important backgroundfactor in assertiveness is what I might call “self control\”. Self controlhas to do with our self image, with our self esteem and with our selfconfidence. If we are positive in our self image, we well tend to be assertive.The more positive your self image and self – esteem is, the more likely it isthat we will be assertive. This is an important thing to keep in mind.

Another aspect of selfcontrol with regard to assertiveness is \”How do we deal with stress?\”Very often, the need to be assertive is most important when things arestressful. For example, in a stressful work situation, so under thosecircumstances, don\t back off, you have your needs, you have your rights, beassertive despite the high level of stress that you\re encountering.

Finally, there is issueof what happens if I\m assertive and the other person gets angry or aggressive,in other words, I recognize my rights and needs and I\m being assertive. Theother person has blown up at night. The appropriate approach there is to usethe concept of silence into personal communication. Don\t respond to the otherperson\s anger or aggressiveness, eventually things may calm down and you cansay in the injurer that your considering what the other person has to say, butin the end, continue to be assertive.