Corporate affair: Make yourself count

Corporate affair: Make yourself count

Most people at the workplace inhabit the far extremes of the spectrum: They either behave like sheep or treat others like them. While the former appear inordinately conditioned by their childhood morals to never come across as pushy, demanding, fussy or impatient, the latter seem to reckon that high decibels and absolutism are the only levers of advancement in a dog-eat-dog world.

The ever-elusive golden median, the trait of assertiveness that has for long been the staple of personal development experts, psychotherapists and self-help books alike, is being increasingly hailed as the make-or-break leadership quality. And yet, in a society split across plastic politeness and presumptive boldness, assertiveness continues to take a bad rap.

In a series of studies carried recently by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Daniel Ames of Columbia Business School and Francis Flynn of Stanford Graduate School of Business have reported a trend that assertiveness seldom qualified as leadership strength when colleagues evaluated one another. On the contrary, it often got bracketed as a weakness, either because the person came across as too aggressive or a pushover. And while the right balance may just be the stuff boardroom role models are made of, striking it is indeed difficult.

Sulajja Firodia Motwani, managing director, Kinetic Motor Company, draws attention to the fluid interpretations of assertiveness at the workplace. “If you are in a leadership role, it is your ability to manage your team effectively so that you can discharge your responsibility effectively. If you are a part of the team, it is your ability to express your thoughts and contribute to team discussions in a meaningful and equal manner. If you are representing your employer in outside meetings or negotiations, assertiveness means communicating your preferences and effectively guarding your interests,” she says.

“One is not being assertive if, in response to someone else’s aggressiveness, one finds oneself doing things that one does not want to do because they are unethical, outside authorised codes of conduct, or outside the job description,” opines Dr Hemant C. Sashittal, a professor of management at the Rochester, New York-based St. John Fisher College.

“Overt assertiveness is when one tries to make a point and change the behaviour of others by trying to argue and win one’s point of view without any public invitation to scrutinise their argument for logic and data, and without offering hard, confirmable evidence to support one’s argument.”

“Assertiveness inevitably conjures up negative images of aggression and combativeness,” avers Rajiv Narang, CMD, Erehwon Innovation Consulting. “This form of assertiveness creates defensiveness and negatively impacts relationships and results, and becomes the greatest block to innovation. Positive assertiveness is the courage needed to express a disconnect with a ‘different point of view’ or with another person’s style of engagement. It is the capacity to not say ‘yes’ when you mean ‘no’ or ‘maybe’; it is the willingness to put forth a radical, unconventional idea without the fear of ridicule; it is the ability to openly express disagreement with a superior without antagonising him or her.”

“Assertiveness is when we weigh others’ rights as well as ours equally,” explains Dr. Sanjay Chugh, senior consultant psychiatrist. “This means being truthful to ourselves and respectful towards others. Assertiveness at the workplace does not mean that we say no to some work because we don’t feel like doing it. It just means that we stand up for ourselves, do not let others trample upon us, and ask for whatever we think is our right. At the workplace, like elsewhere, compromising on things that are important to us will only suffocate us.”

Ames states that an individual’s personality has a strong bearing on his assertiveness. Extroverts, for instance, are likely to be assertive. Often, he observes, people tend to affiliate themselves with like personalities, who then reinforce their behaviour. Experts cannot emphasise enough the need for periodic reality checks on one’s assertiveness. Business psychologists suggest that seeking feedback from colleagues and bosses on how one is perceived or taking stock of whether one is getting the desired results are among the best ways to figure out if one is not being assertive enough or being too assertive in a self-serving manner.

According to Narang, most Indian organisations suffer from a ‘public agreement or public silence’ and ‘private disagreement’ culture. “This breeds mistrust and suspicion and completely dilutes innovative possibilities. Most Indian organisations, both the new players and the legacy organisations, have a hierarchical culture that kills the openness needed to nurture positive assertiveness,” he points out.

As Marie Reid and Richard Hammersley write in Communicating Successfully in Groups: A Practical Guide for the Workplace: “More assertive people tend to have good self-esteem, compared to passive or aggressive people, because self-esteem and assertion are inter-related.”

Ames points out that while overly assertive people tend to be too optimistic and assume too much on other people’s behalf, pushovers may be pessimistic and fear angry reactions to their questions. Changing these attributes, he believes, is more about changing one’s expectations. Ames explains that possessing the right amount of assertiveness is also a matter of reading a situation and fine-tuning one’s style accordingly.

So what degree of assertiveness is indeed right for the workplace? Sulajja Firodia Motwani says that there are three steps to this ladder: assertive, aggressive and abrasive. “The ‘assertive’ is important, I like the ‘aggressive’ too, but I draw a line at ‘abrasive’,” she says. “To me, ‘aggressive’ indicates a strong will and the wish to impose that will, and that isn't necessarily bad. But it can be a fine line between aggressive and abrasive. Abrasive is when you begin to rub people the wrong way through your attitude and that’s not professional.”

Dr Sashittal thus describes the hallmark of proper assertiveness: “First, is trust being built after every exchange of information? Second, is value being created after every exchange of information? Third, have you maintained your integrity? Fourth, and most important, when people agree in a meeting, does that agreement reflect a deep-seated internal commitment? If people are browbeaten into submission, they sabotage the implementation,” he concludes.