Assertiveness Skills

Covers 1 to 2 days course, Includes Practice Sessions, Recommended Readings and Detailed Exercises

Training Course Description

"We are injured and hurt emotionally, not so much by other people or what they say and don't say, but by our own attitude and our own response."
Maxwell Maltz

Have you ever felt intimidated by others? How many times have you told yourself that you could have done better when handling a conversation only to repeat the same mistakes again? Do you like to stay out of conflicts and keep to yourself? Do people take advantage of you?

This course is for anyone whose answers to these questions are "yes". Delegates will learn how to boost their confidence and express themselves assertively. Handling other people, whether they are aggressive or passive, is something we all need to do no matter what we do in our jobs and doing it well consistently requires a skill. This course helps delegates to master this skill.

Assertive staff are extremely lucrative to companies because they can express themselves freely, get things done, don't take no for an answer (which is useful when dealing with clients) while at the same time appear polite, professional and fair.

This course contains many practical, step-by step guidelines on how to approach others and construct sentences to get maximum results. Delegates will learn about the right attitudes, body language, styles of communication and psychology behind manners such as passive-aggressive behaviour. Delegates also learn how to stay in control and project that feeling into others as well.

The best approach to master assertive techniques is to go through case studies, participate in practical exercises and keep repeatedly performing the skill until it is completely memorised. This approach which is used in this course allows the delegates to learn the content fully during the course and leave the course knowing that they can confidently address real-world challenges as they appear.

Ability to Extend the Course to 2 Days

Optional content and exercises are provided which you can use to extend the course to more than 1 day. Guidelines on this extension are provided in the package. If you run the course for more than one day, an exercises included in the course allows you give homework to delegates which you can subsequently use the next day to see how well delegates have learned the skills discussed in the course.

In this highly practical course you will learn:

What is Assertiveness?
• How does assertiveness differ from aggressive or passive behaviour?
• What are examples of assertive behaviour?
• How to avoid appearing aggressive, when you want to be assertive?
• What is passive-aggressive behaviour and how to deal with it?

How to Criticise?
• What kinds of criticisms are good and what kinds are bad?
• How different types of people react to criticism?
• How to criticise and change someone's behaviour?
• How to receive criticism?
• How to use a step-by-step approach to give constructive feedback?

How to Deal with Emotions?
• How to appeal to emotions to get maximum effect?
• How to present your view systematically and assertively?
• How to take advantage of body language to say and get what you want?
• How to distinguish between different behaviours using non-verbal communications?

How to Request?
• How to ask for what you want?
• How to construct your sentences to get your message across confidently?
• How to use a number of advanced techniques to respond to someone when your request is not registered?

How to Praise?
• What does praising do?
• Why praising is difficult?
• How to deliver your praise to get maximum results?

How to Disagree?
• How to express your disagreement and stay friends?
• What is the 6-step disagreement technique?
• How to say No?

Audience

Anyone

Prerequisites

None

Course Duration

1 or 2 days. The course contains optional content and many practical exercises which you can use to easily extended the course to cover more than one day.

Course Level

Beginners & Intermediate

Delegates will learn

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
• Distinguish between assertive, aggressive and passive behaviour
• Express yourself assertively using specific verbal and non-verbal techniques and get maximum results
• Request what you want assertively and get it
• Criticise and change behaviour while staying friends
• Use a simple technique to reinforce the behaviour of others
• Disagree with the other person in such a way that helps them understand your stance on the matter without taking it personally
• Say No and be loved for it!

The Philosophy Behind Assertiveness Skills Training Course

Knowing what to say and when is not a trivial task. We are engaged in different conversations everyday and use ever more sophisticated ways to communicate with our friends, family and colleagues. The more opportunity to communicate, the more we need to know how to effectively express ourselves and handle all sorts of communication challenges. For example, it is not always easy to assertively say no, but then if you know how to say it correctly it may not be that difficult. In fact it might be quite satisfying and rewarding.

The philosophy behind this course is to help the delegates to practice these daily encounters in a controlled environment using a variety of powerful exercises on assertiveness and communication skills that help the delegates put together effective words and mean what they have in mind to get results.

Many delegates may know what they ought to do, but when it comes to it, they may feel paralysed and helpless. This course will be incredibly useful for anyone who has ever wondered he or she could have done better in a previous conversation.

Packed with lots of group and individual exercises, the course aims to teach the skill by repetition form many points of views until the idea ‘sinks' in. Delegates are not required to ‘memorise' a set of procedures. Instead, exercises are designed to teach them the sequence until they absorb the material in their long term memory through repeated use. They will know how to express themselves assertively without becoming aggressive. This way the course feels less intense, more entertaining and of course more effective.