A manager gains respect through honest, clear, direct self-expression—the assertive approach to communication. Managing assertively can help you:

• Increase your effectiveness at handling conflict and criticism.
  
• Encourage positive dialogue so that difficult issues can be resolved successfully.
  
• Have a consistently positive influence on others.
  
• Increase your potential for career advancement.

Take a look at the skill foundation supporting your management style. If any of the following building blocks are weak, wobbly or entirely missing, it may be time for a little skill renovation.

1. Build Self-Esteem

Promotion, recognition, and power go to people who are self-confident. Modesty can work against you when you are selling yourself to others. Allow yourself to feel satisfied when you function at your best. Acknowledge your strengths and abilities. It’s harder to see the best in others when you don’t see the best in yourself.

2. Know How to Listen

One of the most troublesome communication problems in the workplace is the lack of effective listening skills. Listen carefully to the needs, ideas and feelings of those with whom you work. When someone is talking, focus on what’s being said rather than spending valuable time thinking about how you will respond. Listen to the whole message, verbal and nonverbal. Information is easily distorted and misinterpreted, so resist the temptation to jump in and tell an associate what to do. Hear the person out so that you really understand the situation.

Even if you don’t agree with an associate’s point of view, give the person respectful attention and ask thoughtful questions. Poor listening habits force others to repeat the same information over and over. People often respond to poor listening by sharing less and less. If you want associates to come forward for assistance, demonstrate your openness and availability.

3. Take Risks

The risks you need to take fall into four categories: 1) speaking up for what you believe, 2) asking for what you want, 3) stating your limits, and 4) expressing your expectations of others. If you worry about being judged negatively for asking for what you want, do it anyway. Assertive behavior gets easier with practice.

Take the initiative and let your associates know what you want done, how you want it done and why it is important. Passively hoping an associate will guess what is expected leads to resentment and poor time management. Do the same when delegating tasks. Failure to provide clear up-front information often results in lack of employee follow-through.

4. Know How to Say No

Your success relies heavily on your ability to meet goals, implement plans, distribute resources, and mediate and negotiate with your associates. To carry out these functions effectively, you need to establish boundaries and state what is okay and not okay with you. Learn to do this in a manner that shows respect for the other person and encourages continued participation.

Say no to unwanted tasks. Without this ability you may be flooded with tasks that are not your responsibility, and you may not have time to do an effective job on tasks for which you are responsible.

Say no to unrealistic deadlines. If you go along with an impossible deadline rather than negotiate a more realistic one, you will probably fail to complete the task on time, thus reducing your effectiveness in the eyes of others.

5. Know How to Give Constructive Feedback

Most managers have difficulty providing corrective feedback because they have difficulty receiving it themselves. Generally speaking, people want to improve at what they are doing, but when criticisms are stated with a fault-finding attitude and expressed with judgments and threats, people understandably respond with anger, hurt or defensiveness.

Call attention to problems in ways that motivate associates to correct them. Use descriptive (not judgmental) terms to describe the problem behavior, delineate exactly the behavior you want instead, offer coaching and other resources as necessary, and express confidence in the associate’s ability to take corrective action.

6. Accept and Handle Criticism

When criticism is directed at you, strive to handle it effectively, not emotionally.

• See the criticism as corrective feedback—don’t take it personally.
  
• Mentally separate founded from unfounded criticism.
  
• Don’t read into the criticism messages that aren’t there.
  
• Don’t view criticism as an invitation to get angry or to judge yourself harshly.
  
• Always get specifics and examples of what is being criticized.
  
• Train yourself to believe that criticism can be both constructive and productive.

7. Know How to Express and Receive Positive Feedback

An effective manager knows that people are motivated when they are appreciated, treated with respect and given credit for a job well done. Keep in mind how good you feel when your accomplishments are acknowledged. Don’t get caught up in the “managing by exception” dilemma where you pay attention only to what goes wrong and ignore what is done correctly or well.

8. Know What You Want

Assertive management relies heavily on persistence, perseverance and an unwillingness to give up despite obstacles. Set long-range personal and professional goals. This includes personal development as well as on-the-job skill building. By knowing both your strengths and the areas in which you need to improve, you will be more successful in reaching your goals.

Take the time to diagnose the system in which you work, the types of personalities with whom you work, and the kind of organizational structure with which you must deal. Learn to be flexible and versatile. Know that success is based on adapting your style to others, rather than expecting others to adapt to you.

About the Author

Madelyn Burley-Allen is founder and president of Dynamics of Human Behavior and has conducted thousands of management seminars throughout the world. She is the author of Managing Assertively: A Self-Teaching Guide, Listening: The Forgotten Skill, and Memory Skills in Business. Visit her website at www.dynamics-hb.com