Assertiveness

It is our pleasure to introduce Georgina in her first guest post for jelssie, on the topic of assertiveness. Over to George!

My Jelssie friends, some confuse assertiveness as always getting your own way. But it is no such thing. Assertiveness is politely, with appropriate tone, stating your own position, so that either a compromise or some form of decision can be reached.

I would like to show you the assertiveness progressive line:

Passive aggressiveness>>>>>>>>>>>Assertiveness>>>>>>>>>>Aggressiveness

You can see that on the left is passive aggressiveness. For example, you are upset that you were left to clean up after church after everyone else left. You say on facebook: "Grumpy because I had to clean up by myself". Do you see how this is stating your position, but it is being the victim? "Ah, poor me, so hard done by". And it's not likely to help next time. The people who you are aiming at reading your post will simply get grumpy at you, after feeling guilty (if they're not sociopathic, that is).

The opposite end of the scale is aggressiveness. You may yell directly at someone, as I am prone to do, when you're grumpy because they never clean up, and the house is always a mess. This is also a mistake. Not only does it affect your relationship in a bad way, you look ill-mannered and nasty. Not what a Jelssie reader wants.

In the middle is assertiveness: Stating your position politely, without blame, and asking for change.

Instead of on Facebook (passive aggression) or yelling (aggression), you state:

"I feel upset when I clean up by myself after (event). I would like you to help me next time". The key elements are the I statement: "I feel (feeling) because (behaviour you are unhappy with) and finally what you'd like to change.

A final example happened to me 2 years ago. I went to the hairdresser and asked for them to lighten my nearly black hair. They said it would take several hours, but that I would end up with lighter brown hair. After 6 hours in the chair, 3 bleachings, my hair was orange - burnt orange. Then they coloured it, twice, with the brown dye and it was still orange - slightly brown orange. I had to go to a wedding, and I'd been there for so long, that when they said "Do you like it?" I said "Yes". (Passive aggression, because inside I was seething).

I went to the wedding with this awful hair, and the next day woke up and looked in the mirror. I was so angry and frustrated that I wanted to yell and scream and go and inflict bodily violence on the hairdresser, because after 6 hours, and $300 (!!) the hair was awful. (This would be aggression my friends). Instead, I rang up the hairdresser, and I said "I was in yesterday. I am not happy with my hair. It is orange." They said come in, and they fixed it (another 2 dyes). That is assertiveness.