BUSN 2034 - Interpersonal Skills: Assertiveness Homework

This homework assignment delves into the concept of assertiveness, a crucial skill in social and professional settings. It begins by defining assertiveness and exploring the factors that hinder individuals from being assertive, such as unclear goals, low self-worth, lack of empathy, and insecurity. The assignment then differentiates between passive, assertive, and aggressive communication styles, highlighting the characteristics of each. Furthermore, it addresses how to challenge and change unhelpful beliefs that impede assertive behavior. The assignment includes self-reflection prompts, asking the student to analyze an example of unassertive behavior in another person and to identify instances of unassertive behavior in their own life. The student provides detailed examples and insights based on their observations and experiences, supported by relevant references.

Running head: ASSERTIVENESS
Assertiveness
Name of the student :
Name of the university:
Authors note :

1ASSERTIVENESS
What is assertiveness?
A skill that is regularly referred to in the social and communication training is the
assertiveness. By this term, it simply means able to stand on your own, or it can also referred
to being a claim for your right and act in a calm and positive way without showing attitude
and turn into aggressive or passively accepting something which is wrong. Those individuals
who are assertive in nature are being able to put the point across without being upsetting
others or becoming upset with themselves only (Chen, Pu, and Johnston, 2014). It should be
noted that an assertive person always has respect and thoughts and belives for the other
people as well. The people who are assertive in nature always respect the feelings of thoughts
as well as felling and belives of other people as well as their own feeling (Mastro, 2014). This
skill facilitates the individuals to act in the best way and for their own good and for the sake
of their own interest and to have honest feelings and comfortably express their wone thoughts
and practices.
What stops us from being assertive?
There are several obstacles for assertiveness in the individual. Firstly people are confused
because they do not know what they actually want and they are assertive whether they should
express their feeling in the right way or not. Life coaches say that in order to express the
concrete feeling, people should have clarity about their own thoughts and feelings. The
second thing that people do not understand and stop them from being assertive is they do not
value themselves and think their needs are not worthy of attention (Wang, Zuniga, and
Giustiniano, 2016). The third point is that people lack empathy and forgot how to put them in
other shoes and consider the situation. They might be super focused on their own well being
and have stopped being considerate. The last thing is people are not confident enough to open

2ASSERTIVENESS
up as they are insecure about their won abilities. The thought of failure comes first rather than
the thought of success.
What is the difference between passive, assertive and aggressive communication?
Some people are brought up by nature, which means that their conditioning is
different from the rest. There are mainly three types of communication that are identified,
namely assertive, aggressive, and passive. The style of communication in which the
individuals have formed a pattern of avoiding and escaping from the feeling opinions and
forgot to protect their own right along with addressing their own needs and meeting their
desire. As a result of this, the individuals practically do not reach much and are not overly
hurtful, and there are no such anger issues in these people (Chłopicki, 2017) as it is evident
from the above answer that assertive communication is a technique in which the person
through their verbal as well as nonverbal communication makes things easy and
understandable. They are also credited for being calm and patient. Aggressive
communication is a method in which the expression of the emotions and needs of a person
does not consider the welfare of another being. It has resulted in social anxiety my making
others view things more harshly.
How could we change our unhelpful beliefs?
Irrational thought s re part and parcel of the lives, and without understanding, people fall into
the trap and start believing in unreliable thoughts. The first step can be looking for proof that
is believed to be true. There is the history of humans f believing inti things which are
unrealistic and inaccurate opinions. Therefore the first step would be checking the evidence
and then decide. The second step is to trace logic behind the same and the culmination pf
both can create wonders and can change the perspective of the individual. In this process, the
foremost step is to make sure that there is nothing extreme and considering the shades of

3ASSERTIVENESS
grey, and there is nothing black and white in this respect (Wu, Zhu, and Kan, 2015). The
second last step is not to think extreme and consider the realistic picture. Finally, it is to be
reflected whether they believe it is helpful or not.
Please reflect on the following:
A person you know who displays unassertive behaviour and be ready to share what that
behaviour looks like?
I have come across one of my classmates ho shows unassertive behavior in the
university. In one of the instances, I saw he was hesitant in seeking approval from the teacher
about a project idea. However, he was hesitant in his approach and surely looked at it at ease.
The voice he was speaking in was very fearful, and it was upsetting the teacher as well as
nobody likes under-confident people.it was showcasing that he des[aretly wanted the
approval ftom the teacher however he was very underconfident about his own capabilities
and fearing the counter-question which would be used by the teacher. As he was under-
confident, his speech pattern was almost broken, and there as an ample amount of hesitation
in this speech, and there was a lack of rhythm as well as flow. In my opinion, the
authoritative nature of the teacher might be subduing the student. Somewhere down the line,
it was very much evident that he was real and was not paying upfront in the situation. In
several other instances, also I have observed this unassertive behavior ib my fellow
classmate.
Unassertive behaviors you have displayed in the past.
Generally, I am an assertive person; however, there are traits in e as well, which can
be termed as unassertive. In one of the instances, I have observed that I was unable to put my
point across and fight for my own right. It is mainly because I think I was deprived of self
belive and was underconfident in nature, thereby unable to put my point across the table. In

4ASSERTIVENESS
many instances, I have observed that be it in my family or among my friends, my goals and
want unclear, and as a result, I am unable to put my point across. The trail of unassertiveness
in me is too much self-criticism about my own work and setting unrealistic goals and
standards and sometimes failing in attaining the goal because of this trait of mine. In doing
so, I put myself in an impossible situation.

5ASSERTIVENESS
References
Chen, D., Pu, X. and Johnston, A.I., 2014. Debating China's assertiveness. International
Security, 38(3), pp.176-183.
Chłopicki, W., 2017. Communication styles: an overview. Styles of Communication, 9(2).
Mastro, O.S., 2014. Why Chinese assertiveness is here to stay. The Washington
Quarterly, 37(4), pp.151-170.
Wang, Q., Zuniga, M. and Giustiniano, D., 2016, December. Passive communication with
ambient light. In Proceedings of the 12th International on Conference on emerging
Networking EXperiments and Technologies (pp. 97-104).
Wu, X., Zhu, C. and Kan, H., 2015. An improved secure communication scheme based
passive synchronization of hyperchaotic complex nonlinear system. Applied Mathematics
and Computation, 252, pp.201-214.