Assert Yourself and Build Confidence — A 2-Day Course

 Open Public Course Closed In-House Course

Course Synopsis

• Do you find it hard to get people to listen to you?
• Do situations tend to explode for no reason?
• Do senior people / 'different' people intimidate you?
• Do people take advantage of you?

If the answer is "YES" - this is the course for you!

We will show you how to take control of your communications and build an unshakeable confidence in yourself.

This course creates strong self belief and a calm, assertive approach to everyday communications. Fine tuning the way you do things to make people understand what you want without feeling the need to become aggressive or back off.

Course Objectives

On completion of this training course, delegates will be able to:

• Build self-esteem and confidence to create empowering self-belief
• Assess their current level of assertiveness
• Understand when and how to give feedback to others
• Learn how to say 'no' when the pressure is on
• Understand how to explain thoughts in a positive way
• Understand the 6 Levels of Assertion and when to use them
• Learn how to stay calm in difficult situations

From the Practical Workshops, students will:

• Complete a self-assessment of your position on the Assertiveness Triangle
• Try out techniques to make yourself listened to
• Practise actively listening to understand where other people are coming from
• Practise using the 6 levels of assertion
• Use NLP techniques to create a confident and assertive frame of mind
• Practise giving and receiving feedback (praise and criticism) in a powerful yet positive way
• Use a powerful calming technique to enable you to stay in control when you feel angry or scared
• Practise saying 'no'

Intended Audience

This course is intended for:

• Anyone who feels pressure when dealing with other people: particularly those who feel submissive or aggressive when put in this situation
• Those wishing to build confidence in what they do so that they feel as though they are speaking to others as equals, regardless of their position

Benefits for your Company

Staff who can assert their opinions are a valuable asset to a business. In contrast those who cause bad feelings by creating a stressful atmosphere or cause individual stress and disharmony from backing away from confrontations create extra work and time spent on resolving issues for the managers and staff around them. Therefore, companies gain time and increased productivity from having assertive staff that get the job done whilst respecting other people's rights and opinions.

Benefits for You

You learn and practice how to stay in control of a situation whilst keeping the communication open and friendly. This will save you time and energy (by reducing stressful situations) and gain you the respect of your colleagues. In addition you will build the self belief to motivate yourself without needing to seek approval from others.

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Outline Course Contents

Introduction & Welcome

You will meet like-minded people and share your reasons for wanting to be on the course. You will write down what is most important in your work. An experienced, friendly trainer will help you visualise where you want this course to take you.

What is Confidence?

During this section we define assertive, aggressive, passive and passive-aggressive and how each style is perceived and recognised by others and the effect this has on how they treat you, including some discussion on people's filters.

Confidence & Belief

Defining what it is that you want from your communication will have a huge impact on how successful it is. One of the most critical aspects of feeling confident is often based in what you believe about yourself, others and the world in general. Some people may consider that our beliefs are static; however the truth is for more fluid. Not only do our beliefs change over time, but often we have to actively maintain beliefs to sustain them.

Building Internal Confidence

You need to be able to rely completely on your own ability to bounce back and motivate yourself. Without a solid base of confidence and self-esteem it is easy to get frustrated by others lack of support or de-motivated by their comments.

To a greater or lesser extent we all talk to ourselves. It might be the warning voice just before you do something dangerous, or a loud, shouting voice telling you to get out of the chair and get on with something. Whichever form it takes it's there for all of us. The first step in utilising our internal dialogue to feel more confident is to become more consciously aware of what we're saying.

Making Mistakes

For many people one of the things which limit their confidence is fear of failure. This fear can paralyse us, and stop us from doing anything new or outside of our Comfort Zone.

Handle Praise and Criticism Positively

We look at past instances of feedback you have received and pinpoint what feels uncomfortable and how you could handle it differently. We will examine underlying messages, whether they exist and if that matters. We will also look at how to give constructive feedback, saying 'why', rather than just saying nice or critical things.

You role play praise and criticism scenarios until you feel comfortable, both giving and receiving praise and criticism.

How Do You Assert Yourself?

During this section we define assertive, aggressive, passive and passive-aggressive and how each style is perceived and recognised by others and the effect this has on how they treat you, including some discussion on people's filters.

You will fill out a self assessment to look at the way you assert yourself. You will look at a number of scenarios to practice feeling comfortable with assertion.

Personal Rights

Our rights always need to be balanced by our responsibilities towards others - and an important part of this is to recognise and accept that others have the same personal rights that we do.

Making & Refusing Requests

One of the first steps in asserting yourself and getting what you want is learning to ask for what you want; and not only ask for what you want, but do so in a way that will lead to you getting it. We look at the six levels of assertion and you practice using them until they feel comfortable.

Assertiveness in Groups

Groups can at times be the most difficult situations to assert ourselves in. Many people feel less confident in a group and will communicate that lack of confidence.

Difficult People

This session explores why certain people appear to be difficult or why giving certain messages is harder for you than for others in the group. We look at turning the problem around and tackling it from a different angle to solve it. We will also look at why conflict happens: both personality disputes and issue based disputes and how to handle them.

You devise tricky situations and the group resolves them using all the information learned so far on the course.

Action Plan

You reassess your feelings of confidence and assertion, as well as writing an inspiring top 3 tips from the course.