WHY ASSERTIVENESS IS THE CORE OF ALL SKILLS

With his company SDB Training & Consulting, Serge Dal Bosco teaches a wide range of skills, from basic communication to negotiation techniques, meeting techniques, conflict handling, etc. However, there is one skill that comes back in all of these training courses: assertiveness. Assertiveness is the skill to stand up for yourself without discarding the needs of the other party.

WHAT IS YOUR COLOUR?

Training and coaching people is not new to Serge Dal Bosco; he did it for 17 years at a bank. There he trained the employ- ees not only in bank technical matters such as home loans, but also in commu- nication, sales, management, etc. “I am DISC certified,” says Serge and when I frown he explains: “DISC is a form of character analysis that divides people into colour groups and takes into account the preferred linguistic behavi- our of your interlocutor. That is my strength and my core business, because I integrate it in all my courses. It starts with a questionnaire to determine one’s own colour. Then I show them how they can see the colours of others. Sometimes people will say: ‘I don’t hit it off with this or that person because he has a dominant character or because he is a nit-picker’. When I give colour trai- ning they become more tolerant. Then the person they are talking about is no longer a nit-picker, but blue and there- fore a perfectionist, which isn’t really his fault. A person who is yellow needs a firm dose of fun. When a meeting gets boring he starts cracking jokes. People will accept that once they know that he is yellow and, together with the toleran- ce, also the assertiveness will grow.”

According to Serge, assertiveness is the core of all skills. “It is of the utmost im- portance when I teach time manage- ment,” he says. “Too many people are afraid to say ‘no’ when they are assigned too many tasks. I teach them to be more assertive without being blunt or aggressive. Of course, you can say ‘yes’ when someone asks you to do some- thing and, if you really want to do it, then that is also assertive behaviour.

On the other hand, if you are drowning in work and struggling to finish the tasks at hand, you really shouldn’t accept an extra task. It will force you to stay over, work harder and inevitably you will start making mistakes and the quality of your work will suffer.”

THE LAS-PRINCIPLE

“When I train people in assertive com- munication we practice in a very safe environment,” says Serge. “It really takes practice to learn. Without that practice you will KNOW how to do it, but you won’t BE ABLE to do it. That’s why I limit the theory and invest a lot of time in roleplay. Companies book me for different sorts of training courses; ne- gotiation techniques, for example, but that too boils down to assertive commu- nication. If you don’t dare to ask ques-

tions and you don’t listen, you cannot be assertive. You have to learn to listen and dare to say ‘no’. And when you say ‘no’, you really have to mean it.”

With an example, Serge explains the LAS-principle. LAS stands for Listen – Acknowledge – Solve. “If you want to delegate a task to me and I really don’t have time today, I will first LISTEN to you. What is it you need? Then I will ACKNOWLEDGE your request. ‘I under- stand that you want my help, but I cannot do it today’. Finally, by asking the right questions, I will try to SOLVE the problem. I will not ask: ‘Is it ur- gent?’, because then you will say ‘yes’. But if I ask: ‘How urgent is it?’ then maybe you will say: ‘If it’s finished by the end of this week it’s OK’. Then I can check if my agenda allows me to per- form the job before this week is over and if not my answer will really have to be ‘no’. I teach them this in a roleplay in which I play the other party, so that I can make them aware of the weak points in their communication.”

I can imagine that many people would be reluctant to say ‘no’ to their boss, thinking it might have a negative impact on their appraisal. Serge says: “You can perfectly tell your superior in a calm and open way that your day is fully booked and you cannot fit it in. Then you can enquire about the urgency of the job and if he tells you it has to be done to- day, you can softly play the ball back by asking which other task you should post- pone in order to accommodate him on this one. Acting that way, you show that you are willing to get the job done, but you ask him to work out a solution, be- cause you cannot do it all. That is a much better approach than just agree- ing to perform the task, stretching your nerves to the limit and going home all worked up and letting your spouse and children sweat it out. Sub-assertive people cannot do that. Sub-assertive people are those who think they are assertive, but they are not really. When they are asked to take on an extra task, they will say: ‘Well yeah … but I’m very busy!’ They use a lot of words to communicate a very soft ‘no’, without actually using the word. As a result they will get to do the task anyway. The positive thing about being assertive is that you dare to tell your superior the truth, even when he is doing something wrong.”

THE “I” MESSAGE

“Being assertive is not holding back on telling others what bothers you,” Serge continues. “Say you have a colleague who is constantly humming. It bothers you, but you keep quiet. If you let this go on for a prolonged period of time, it becomes hard to still make a remark about it. One night you come home and your partner starts humming and you explode at the wrong place to the wrong person because you failed to be asser- tive from the start. The best way to deal with this is using the ‘I message’, which is trifold: