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BEYOND FLIGHT OR FIGHT RESPONSE

"Assertiveness" is a healthy and balanced response to a perceived external threat. In nature, an animal who feels threatened typically experiences a "fight or flight" response. In the fight or flight response, which consists physiologically of increased heart rate, dilated pupils, and generalized muscular tension, the animal is getting ready to defend itself against the threat, either by running away (flight) or by meeting aggression with aggression (fight). Running away would be a passive response, and standing to fight would be an aggressive one.

All of this makes perfect sense if you are a rabbit being chased by a fox, or a fox being cornered by hounds. But the "flight or fight" response is ultimately very limited; it allows the threatened animal only two clear-cut choices of action, neither one entirely satisfactory - and neither one entirely appropriate to human situations, in which the perceived external threat is likely to be the more tenuous "attacks" of insult, oversight, or noncompliance with something that you, the motivating manager, want to get done.

If you're not able to express yourself assertively, you're going to be continually caught in the simplistic "natural" response pattern, torn between running away from disagreement and causing outright conflict. And you can't get people to see things your way when you're in that double bind. Nobody will listen to a manager who is bleating about "getting no respect." Or to one who threatens to burn down the house if he doesn't get his way right now. And yet that's the way a lot of managers typically react to confrontation.

To be an effective motivator, you often have to walk a thin line between firmness and abrasiveness, and a lot of managers never negotiate that line effectively because they fall prey to one of two opposite, and equally demotivating, behavior patterns. In trying to get their points across, they become either inveterate  "wind-testers" or unyielding "standers of the ground."

* The Wind-Tester is someone who is afraid to come right out and say what he needs to have done, because he doubts his own rights in the situation. He doesn't want to appear "forward" or "bossy," and he doesn't want to be disliked by the people he has to work with every day. So he over-compensates by becoming so "likeable" that he can never get anything done. Every directive he gives is merely a straw in the wind; the only reason he expresses an opinion at all is because it's expected of him, and if you shoot that opinion down in a team meeting or a one-on-one confrontation, he'll be happy to back off.  Naturally, the Wind-Tester is a lousy motivator: since he's unwilling to commit himself to a particular course of action, he's hopeless in getting others to commit to what he wants to do.

* The Stander of the Ground knows he's right - even when all the evidence is going against him - and he's going to stick to his guns even if it kills him. Which it often does.  This kind of manager is constantly overstepping the boundary between firmness and pigheadedness, and cannot be made to acknowledge that, in certain cases, he may be wrong. His way of getting others to follow his lead is to announce in a loud voice what he expects to have happen, and then sit back and let them do it - or, even worse, to look over people's shoulders until they all fall into line.  Ironically, even though he's completely committed to his course of action, this guy is no more successful in creating motivated players than the guy who passively retreats. As I've said before, people will not commit to a decision unless they feel that it's owned - and the manager who stands his ground at all times doesn't allow that ownership to develop.

These are extreme portrayals, obviously, but I think you will recognize the types. They're all over today's business world, mucking things up for the rest of us by making it impossible to develop consensus, impossible to sort out real decisions from hasty or hesitant ones, impossible to generate real Involvement.  The happy medium is Assertiveness. To the assertive manager, everybody's rights are equally important, and everybody's opinion is valued. That doesn't mean everybody's ideas are seen as equally sensible, only that the expression of opinions, from motivators and motivated alike, is seen as a necessary element of humans communicating together. In true Assertiveness, because everyone is perceived as an equal, you can express yourself openly and directly, without either the fear of being "beaten" by another or the need to win at another's expense.

To most people in most situations, the middle way of open assertiveness remains little more than an ideal. Most of us are bogged down, in most conflict situations, into choosing between the equally nonproductive responses of timid retreat and hostility. A few examples:

Example 1; The Stolen Parking Space

You are about to back into a parking place when another driver, ignoring your signal, scoots into the space ahead of you. It's clear that you were there first, and that he has violated your rights. What do you do? How do you get him to change his Behavior?

The passive response would be to shrug the infraction off, saying to yourself that it's not worth a hassle, and to drive on, looking for another place. That would have two major drawbacks. It would probably make you resentful and "used" (as indeed you have been), and it would allow the other driver to remain immune to punishment, or correction, for what was obviously an act of gross discourtesy. No Behavior change. No results.

The aggressive response would be to climb angrily out of your car, calling the second driver choice names, and to try to "persuade" him by threats that he had better relinquish the spot.  The likely outcome of that approach would be to make him all the more convinced that the spot was his for the taking, and that you are a fool for objecting. In other words, the Punishment Effect. And, again, no results.

The middle-way, assertive response would be to calmly point out to the other driver that you were waiting to enter the space, and would appreciate it if he would vacate it. It is difficult to say how effective such a response would be in this particular situation, because it is so seldom tried. But it certainly can't have worse effects than passiveness and aggression.

Example 2: The "Expert" Speaks

You are a member of your company's planning committee, and are attempting with the other committee members to draft a set of new directions and goals. Your comment about the need for "more product innovation" is met with stiff hostility by the committee's chairman. His assessment of your suggestion is entirely dismissive: "We know those damn blue-sky schemes always fail; let's talk about something that can succeed."

The passive response would be to hang your head, sheepishly acknowledging the superior wisdom of the chairman, and to butt out of the rest of the discussion. The aggressive response would be to tackle his resistance head on, adducing evidence of "conservative failures" to match his allegation of innovative flops. The middle-way, assertive response would be to point out that his characterization of your suggestion as a "blue-sky scheme" was an unfair generalization, and to ask him to consider your specific proposals before jumping down your throat.  It would be, in other words, to aim for an open exchange rather than a "one up, one down" altercation. That's communication.  Which leads to Motivation and Involvement. Which in turn leads to results.

Why is true Assertiveness so rare? Why do we have so many Wind-Testers and Ground-Standers, and so few people who - like Davy Crocket's motto implies - are able to listen carefully first, to check out the situation and to give everyone's opinion a chance, and then come out directly with what they want?  

One reason is simple inertia. Given a variety of responses to a ticklish situation, most people tend toward the response that will bring them the least negative Consequences in the short term. Failing that, they'll go for the response that will allow them to suffer the Consequences with which they're already familiar, rather than taking on new, unknown ones. A kid will eat spinach any day rather than tackle an oyster, because he knows what spinach tastes like.

But in the long term, a policy either of acquiescence to injustice against you or of intransigent disregard of others' rights, leads to precisely the same dead end. The only policy, the only set of behavior, that ultimately enhances all those things we want from our social interactions - better communication, better motivation, better performance - is the middle-ground policy of assertion. That is why, in spite of the awesome power of inertia and convention, it is essential for anyone in a position to influence the behavior of others to learn assertiveness skills.

We will move to those skills in a moment. First, though, let's go to what I called the first step in our program of learning to ask for what you want; the preliminary "Recording" or assessment of where you stand right now, in terms of the ideal middle ground.

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