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THE ASSERTION SCALE

You'll notice that the Assertion Scale is divided into four equal segments, or quadrants. Here is how we interpret the general behavior patterns that fall into each of the four quadrants:

The Why Bother? Quadrant.   If you find yourself in this quadrant, it is likely that both your discomfort level with regard to threatening or disconcerting situations and your assertiveness in dealing with those situations are low. That is, you tend not to assert yourself in compromising social situations, but you experience little anxiety about denying yourself this option, because few of those situations seem to you to warrant a more assertive response. This could indicate that you're a very passive, retiring personality, or it could indicate that you have such a "philosophical" approach to social conflict that you're willing to take a back seat, even when the "actual" situation doesn't warrant it. Generally speaking, those who find themselves in the "Why Bother?" quadrant are ineffective at motivating others, and not especially interested in becoming more effective.

The "Assertion Problem" Quadrant.  If you are in this quadrant, you have, like the "Why Bother?" person, a low probability of reacting assertively to socially threatening situations. But unlike the "Why Bother?" person, this is likely to cause you some grief. Since there is a conflict between the high Discomfort level that you feel with regard to disturbing situations and the low Response level in those situations, you are likely to feel pressured and resentful in situations where the "Why Bother?" person would simply feel resigned to his fate. We say that a person in this quadrant may have an "Assertion Problem" not because he or she simply fails to respond, but because that failure to respond is causing internal anxiety for him - an anxiety that is bound to come out in the public arena as well, and to make him a less effective motivator or communicator than he otherwise might be.

The "Anxious Performer" Quadrant. In the "Anxious Performer" quadrant, you show a high degree of Discomfort over difficult social interactions, and an equivalently high degree of probability that you will react in an assertive manner anyway. That is, you are perfectly willing to behave assertively, but you are not able to do so without incurring internal anxiety: you stand up for your rights at all times, yet this gives you little personal satisfaction, because you feel yourself continually on the defensive, and are not capable of drawing a healthy balance between speaking up and letting things slide. You find this syndrome of anxious performance a lot in highly motivated people who are never fully satisfied with their performance. They behave often in an energetic but self-destructive manner - like the newspaper writer whom Harry Truman once called "a four-ulcer man on a two-ulcer job."

The "Assertive" Quadrant. In this quadrant, you achieve a reasonable balance between Discomfort about social pressures and assertive response to those pressures. Your anxiety level in the face of social threats is lower than that of the Anxious Performer, but the likelihood that you will stand up for your rights when threatened is higher than that of the person who says, "Why Bother?" Therefore, you draw the appropriate balance between the two equally unproductive extremes of fight and flight.

That's a general and very sketchy readout of where you stand in the Assertion Scale. Before you start going through the Yellow Pages for the numbers of the nearest shrinks, however, let me make a couple of observations.

First, you should keep in mind that the "Recording" exercise you have just performed is subjective and highly personal: it is your own assessment of where you stand with regard to assertiveness. A professional "assertiveness trainer" might assess you differently, and I am not offering this chart as a surefire guide to anyone's personality. I do feel that a personal assessment is valuable, however, because it gives you a litmus test to work from. It is a window on how you feel about the way you interact with others in potentially problematic situations.  The way you feel may not be the final word, but it's a pretty good initial guide to whether you're coming across as madly aggressive, wimpishly passive, or something in between.

Second, do not assume that the "Assertive" quadrant of this matrix is the only quadrant you "should" be in. All of us have different mixtures of assertiveness and compliance in our personalities, and it would be ludicrous to suggest that every officially designated "Assertive" individual was handling all his problems well - or that every Anxious Performer was doomed to be fretful and uptight.

A box drawn in the center of the four-quadrant matrix might indicate approximately where "balanced" behavior lies, whatever quadrant you might find yourself in. It's obvious, when you consider the need for this balance, that you could be way out in "left field" of the "Assertive" quadrant, and be managing your interactions very poorly. What a "low Discomfort, high Response" profile would indicate, in fact, is a person who always stood up for his own "rights," even when it was counterproductive to do so.  The approximate scores that form this box are between 67 and 107 on the Discomfort Level and between 91 and 121 on the Response Probability.

Finally, remember that the "fix" you have made on yourself here is just that: a fix, not a final position. When I talked about the need to establish a baseline of behavior and performance, I didn't suggest the baseline as the goal. The whole point of establishing a baseline is to understand where you're starting from, so you can measure your progress from that point. The same principle applies here. The Assertion Scale identifies a baseline so that, as you practice our repertoire of assertiveness skills, you can re-plot your position and move on.

It's time now to introduce those skills.

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