How Assertive Are You?

[RandomAnthony]

So today I was planning on grading papers and instead have had to put out a fire at work.

Long story short...I have a team of three people working on part 2 of a larger project. I helped out with part 1 to make sure we were all on the same page before the project went to a larger entity. Now in part 2 the team did some of the work and sent the rest to me with the assumption that I'll do the detail work again. Also, the team is framing this as a minimal ownership situation..."we did our part...let's walk away now" type of scenario. Fuck that. Now, these are good people, I want to make clear, and I've always tried to be a service-oriented person, but...fuck this. I sent an email back with this as part of the text...

Last time I did some of the formatting/tightening of the final product because we wanted to make sure the formatting worked with other courses going through at the same time. Yesterday I received messages, both verbally and through email, that people wanted me to do that again. I'm going to ask that 1) instead of asking me to revise rubrics, percentages, etc. that the developers of this syllabus "own" this one and do that revision on their own, and 2) follow through with getting this course through undergraduate curriculum.

I should also mention they're getting paid extra for taking this project on. To be fair, maybe they thought I wanted to do the format..but...no thank you.

I don't have a hard time standing up for myself usually (this may come to a shock to some of you:) but I'm also very much a "fuck it, I'll do it myself" person and I know I would have been pissed at myself if I would have taken on this project because some people didn't want to follow through. So we'll see what happens. But I feel better already.

What about you? Do you stand up for yourself? Do you get pushed around? A little of both? In what context?

[[deleted user]]

I'm with you, RA.

My job requires me to be assertive. I'm a project analyst for a major corporate bank. My role is to work with the businesses within the bank to determine what their technical needs are. Say the business comes to my group with a request to add more servers to their infrastructure. I work with them to compile specific requirements, along with working with other teams, to determine how I'm going to compile a design that meets their requirements. Because there are several teams and groups involved in every project, there's a lot of info and deliverables I have to be accountable for.

I've had a project I signed off on 3 months ago come back to bite me in the ass because of a senior Project Manager who was too un-assertive in doing his job. He came to me in a panic because his deadlines had long passed, and the infrastructure, which I designed, had not been built or handed over to the business just yet. In other words, too many delays that he simply couldn't handle. I took a look at what the issues where just to help out, but I was infuriated at him for being such a pussy. He called for a meeting with all the partners involved in that project, and within 5 minutes of that call, managed to bungle everything; I had to cut him off and explain all the fuckups that had occurred, and work with everyone to try to get all the deliverables either in place or for at least a deadline for those deliverables.

I see the way he acted, by being pushed around and intimidated, and I realized I had to assert myself in order to get everything under control.

Like I said, my job requires me to be assertive without being aggressive. If I come to you with a request to, say, analyze a group of servers and you tell me you'll have it ready by Friday, you better believe I'm calling you on Friday. If you can't have it ready by Friday, we're going to work on getting my request done by Monday.

I actually enjoy being assertive.

[Heidi]

I don't think I'd necessarily consider that being "assertive" so much as "being clear about your boundaries." Good for you, RA! I've gotten some serious occupational therapy on this area in my job - both with the study participants and also with my coworkers... and being firm and clear about your boundaries is encouraged around here. Passive aggressive behavior, splitting, manipulation, etc - NOT encouraged or accepted around here. If I didn't have to be that way though, I'd be a noodle. I like being the behind-the-scenes-and-makes-it-happen kind of gal. I just like to get credit and acknowledgment for the work that I do.

[Angie]

I go through stages. There are times I'm "too nice" and I get taken advantage of (this is what one of my teachers wrote in her recommendation letter for college, haha) and times I'm perceived as being too assertive/aggressive.

Being overseas in a country populated by a billion people has definitely taught me to be more assertive. I frequently piss my mother off by some of the things I do, because she's extremely passive-aggressive. A good example happened in a store when I had just returned from India-- some lady got a shopping cart, pulled it out, and then just stood there with her cart and a coupon booklet out, reading. My mom and I waited for maybe a minute behind her and she didn't seem to realize that she was blocking everyone else from getting a cart, so I spoke up and said, "excuse me" and got a cart for my mom. My mother chided me, saying how embarrassed she was to have such a "rude" daughter. *rolls eyes*

Even now, my mother is passive to a point where she will apologize to someone in the same grocery aisle even though there's plenty of room for her to move past without disturbing the other person in the slightest. Me, I'm weaving in and out of aisles sometimes at break-neck speeds. :P

With projects, it's a much worse situation because if you just back out of it, and your colleagues do a shitty job, you all get the blame for it. If, on the other hand, you do your best and they slack off, they get counted for the hard work too. In school I always made a list of responsibilities and either I or someone else kept track of who did what work; if someone was supposed to do something but someone else ended up doing it, we marked that, and turned it in with the project. Even if we all got the same grade anyways, at least the professor knew who pulled their weight and who didn't, and sometimes would dock the slackers participation points.

Heidi: The real question is, what KIND of noodle? Bow-tie? Angel-hair? :P

[Heidi]

Angie wrote: "Heidi: The real question is, what KIND of noodle? Bow-tie? Angel-hair? :P"

A soggy, overcooked noodle. :/

[Mary JL]

I tend to be assertive about things that are important to me. But in minor matters, it is not worth the hassle of starting a fight.

[Leslie]

I used to be so passive it was ridiculous. I stick up for myself and set boundaries more now than I ever have in my life, but sometimes it's very stressful. I hate that I get so upset about just simply not letting people not take advantage of me--but I do and I'm working on it. And getting better at it. :)

[[deleted user]]

Good job Leslie, keep it up.

[Anita]

I struggle with this one because it's often situational; you've got to consider who's got the power (are you the boss or the subordinate?) and there are a lot of social pressures that we're conditioned to but not always conscious of, and consequently a certain amount of risk involved in every case. When assessing my own assertiveness abilities I find I often err on the side of passivity - but then later I think I should have taken a chance-- and that hindsight thing makes me feel like two different people-the one that didn't, and the one that wished I had. When I was younger, I more often erred on the "I wish I hadn't" side... Like Leslie, I think I'm getting better at it, but true assertiveness is a fine art, if you ask me.

[Leslie]

Jim wrote: "Good job Leslie, keep it up."

Thank you Jim!!

[Leslie]

I work in close contact with 5 other women--we're sort of a team. And when I first got there I thought that everyone would look out for everyone and make sure that everything would be fair. Wrong! I found out the hard way that I had to do that for myself, that other people wouldn't do it for me. Some people are better than others, but no one will "take care" of me, only me. And some people will take everything good they can get away with. Even what's supposed to be mine. It's stressful, but I know it's good for me too. And like Angie said, it's a fine art. We're supposed to be equals, but some of us don't seems to think so. It's gotten me out of my comfort zone, that's for sure.

[RandomAnthony]

I work with a group of almost all women and, frankly, they treat each other in terrifying ways sometimes.

[Daniel]

RandomAnthony wrote: "So today I was planning on grading papers and instead have had to put out a fire at work.

Long story short...I have a team of three people working on part 2 of a larger project. I helped out with..."

Ah, you're a university teacher as well--correct? Well, I'm not very assertive. For this reason, I love playing violent sports like Rugby and Football. I find that when I played those sports, then I had no trouble telling people they were full of it. I guess it's kind of that fight club mentality--everything gets the volume turned down and such. When you have jobs that encourage you to live minimal lives, you tend to put your personality forth minimally. When you do things that encourage you to enforce your will over someone else's it becomes more routine to do so. I'm not sexist or anything, but whenever I work with a group of women, I'm scared that I will be pushed into the stereotypical man category (dirty, lazy, and offensive). It's happened before.