Whatever your role in the workplace, a clear and assertive approach to communication will prevent misunderstanding and ensure that your message is heard.

Discover whether you are communicating assertively – or using a more submissive, aggressive, or even passive-aggressive communication style.

🤔 Submissive-passive-assertive-aggressive quiz

Choose a, b, c or d in the answers below to identify how you tend to behave in the situations listed.

Tip: Your first answer is usually the best and most accurate. Go with your gut instinct, and try not to over-analyse!

1. You're making plans for this year’s Christmas holidays or other big celebration. Your partner wants to bring their family. Do you:

   A) Imply that it’s unfair and hope that things will change
   B) Invite the family – anything for peace!
   C) Say how you feel and what you would like
   D) Flatly refuse to invite them
   

2. When a co-worker borrows your phone charger regularly and forgets to return it to you, do you:

   A) Drop hints at regular intervals

   B) Let it go

   C) Explain the effect it has on your work, and ask for it back

   D) Get angry and demand it back
   

3. You have just started to drink your coffee in a café. It should be hot but it’s cold. Do you:

   A) Order another one while remarking to the barista that the last one was no good

   B) Carry on and drink it

   C) Tell the staff member it's cold and ask for a hot one instead

   D) Point out this isn’t good enough and demand better
   

4. An interview panel member asks a question that seems sexist to you, do you:

   A) Quip back a quick retort

   B) Answer as best you can

   C) Express some concern about the question only if you feel OK to do so

   D) Point out how wrong it is to ask such questions and refuse to answer it
   

5. You're about to join a queue at the supermarket, when another shopper nips in and jumps ahead of you. Do you:

   A) Try to block the person out of the line

   B) Ignore it and queue behind them

   C) Tell the other shopper how annoyed you are and ask him/her to move

   D) Give the person a scolding for his/her rudeness
   

6. When someone criticises your brand new coat, do you:

   A) Say something like “Well, it’s the most expensive coat I’ve ever bought!”

   B) Blush and say nothing

   C) Check what is specifically being said and check for yourself

   D) Tell him/her it's none of their business
   

7. You are involved in after-hours conference calls with the US for the third time this week. You have already made alternative arrangements. Do you:

   A) Give what you think is a cast-iron reason for not taking part

   B) Try saying no but end up taking part

   C) Say ‘no’ firmly and say when you will have to leave for your other appointment

   D) Complain that it’s the third time this week and say a definite “NO”
   

8. Your family doesn’t seem to be listening when you tell them your plans for the weekend. Do you:

   A) Say something like “Well if anyone’s interested I’m…”
   B) Keep quiet
   C) Say how you feel and how it’s important to you to tell them about your plans
   D) Talk more loudly
   

9. When you keep quiet in a situation, it is because:

   A) You know the silence will have an effect

   B) You are too upset or frightened to speak

   C) You have nothing to add

   D) You're sulking

How did you do?

Add up the number of letters you have chosen in questions 1-9.

Mostly a) passive-aggressive behaviour

If your answers are mostly a)’s, then you tend to engage in conflict through indirect or ‘passive-aggressive’ means. Although superficially your communication resembles a submissive/passive communicator, deep down you are not simply accepting an unfavourable outcome. In fact, your intentions are much closer to those of an aggressive communicator, which seeks to drive concessions or outright apologies from others.

However, rather than engage in disagreement openly, you tend to use hints, understatement, meaningful silences, ‘jokes’ (that aren’t really jokes) and non-verbal clues to get your message across.

People can resort to a passive-aggressive communication style because they aren’t familiar with asserting themselves calmly. Instead, they see the ‘only alternatives’ as total surrender or outright hostility, neither of which feel appropriate. In some cases, this approach has its roots in childhood encounters with conflict – perhaps an aggressive adult we would prefer not to resemble, or a sense that ‘sticking up for yourself’ is unlikely to get results.

Passive-aggressive communicators, in extremis, sometimes ‘snap’ directly into aggressive-aggressive: whereas others may perceive their behaviour as quite light-hearted or ambiguous, the pass-aggee feels they have been being making themselves perfectly clear for quite some time.

Passive-aggressive communication can also stem from a lack of confidence. By implying (but not spelling-out) their real desires, passive-aggressive communication avoids the vulnerability of admitting they exist or having them rejected. When their requests aren’t met, they can resent others for not paying attention to their hints, but if their requests are noticed “I didn’t say anything!” As a last resort, they can always say they were ‘only joking’, ‘just saying’, or so on.

Mostly b) passive-submissive behaviour

Your behaviour tends to be passive or submissive. Simply put, in a conflict you tend to ‘just get on with it’, take a deep breath, and let other people have it their way.

Submissiveness can be a really useful coping strategy in certain situations, and can be very powerful – depending on the circumstances, and who else you are working with. For example, you could accede to the extraordinary request of a valued client, in order to retain their business and loyalty.

And indeed, a world where nobody ever took a submissive role would be even more conflict-riven than our own.

But, like any behaviour, if submission becomes an automatic instinct, you can be left feeling disempowered, while others start to take your concessions for granted. On some level, you may be ‘keeping count’ of the numerous occasions on which you’ve sacrificed for others, hoping that one day your constant ‘giving in’ can be cashed in for having things your way. On the contrary, it’s more likely that, by never asserting that you have any preferences, others around you have stopped noticing your sacrifices altogether, and happily take your compliance as a sign that you’re a super-easy-going person who never has a problem with anything.

Fortunately, there is training to overcome barriers to assertive communication.

Mostly c) assertive behaviour

This shows that you tend to be comfortable communicating assertively. This means you express yourself confidently and directly, rather than through subtle remarks or sarcasm. Essentially, people around you can trust you to say what you mean, when it matters. On the other hand, being assertive also means you’re respectful of others, open to negotiation, curious, and prepared to (sometimes!) be publicly wrong or not get what you want.

Alas, you can’t always assert your way to total satisfaction! But by having the inner courage to clearly state our opinions, preferences and needs, we at least start up conversations that a more passive communicator would never have.

An assertive person is careful to have their say, knowing they won’t always have the final word.

Mostly d) aggressive behaviour

Your communication style tends to be aggressive. People often confuse assertive behaviour with aggressive behaviour, so it’s not unusual to have a high score here. When being assertive, it’s a common concern to feel that your behaviour will be perceived by others as aggressive. But there is a difference between assertiveness and aggressiveness.

Assertiveness is about stating how you feel while being respectful of others, while aggressiveness leans into the notion that the situation must have a winner and loser. In this mode, we go beyond trying to make ourselves heard, and are simply determined to ‘win’ from outset. And at our most aggressive, upsetting others is not just a risk worth taking, but a desirable side-effect.

On some level, rather than seeking to resolve the conflict so everyone can be happy, aggressive communication attempts to transfer our current negative emotions (frustration, resentment, offence) onto our ‘opponent’ (making them feel intimidated, embarrassed or guilty) in the interests of mental justice.

If a desired outcome is making someone ‘rue the day’, you are probably in an aggressive mindset.

You might think it strange that there would ever be a justification for aggressive behaviour.

Sometimes, an aggressive approach makes your intentions very clear, especially if you are not being heard: people often resort to this approach if they feel the other person is just waiting for them to go away. Aggressive communication can also send an uncompromising message that it’s “your way or the highway”, so there can be a moment for this when you need to make it clear that a situation is totally non-negotiable. But be warned: by shutting down even the possibility of negotiation, you can foreclose the kind of exploratory conversation that reveals even better resolutions than the one you were aggressively insisting upon. (We’ve probably all encountered someone aggressively demanding X, whose strident communication makes it impossible to provide the information that would reveal they really need Y.)

Just be aware that regular use of such tactics may lead to others seeing you as forceful and bullying in your style.

If you’re aiming to communicate assertively, but are coming across aggressively, you can soften your approach by…

• Making your opinion subjective: “Personally, I don’t like it” as opposed to “This is terrible”

• Assuming the best in others and acknowledging the context: “Listen, I realise you feel very differently about this”, “I know you’ve put a lot of work into this”

• Taking a ‘beat’ between your assessment and proposing to a solution, rather than rapidly declaring “I think X so of course you’ll now do Y, right?”

• Staying aware of your tone and body language to reduce non-verbal signals of confrontation

How the communication styles compare

Although the styles all seem quite different, assertiveness is actually the only one that is truly begins with one’s own perspective, while all the others are oriented towards managing the reaction of the other person.

• The passive or submissive style gives up what it wants, in order to make the other person happy

• The passive-aggressive style gives up what it wants, but expects the other person to feel bad about it

• The aggressive style insists on getting what it wants, AND hopes to make the other person unhappy at the same time

• Conversely, the essence of the assertive style is to ground your communication in your own humble viewpoint alone, neither telling people what they want to hear nor going for the jugular. Instead, we simply remain adaptable and empathetic to the response of others

As deeply social creatures, it feels slightly unnatural to communicate in a way that we might sometimes see as ‘selfish.’ But in healthy relationships, whether at work or in our personal lives, being able to clearly say what we want – without sugar-coating, point-scoring or guilt-tripping – is an important ability and, delivered with an open-mind, a gift!

Want to learn how to use assertiveness effectively in the workplace today?

Being assertive requires a high level of consideration for the needs of all involved in the matter concerned, as well as a high level of personal courage to stand firm in the face of opposition, whether this is real or perceived.

Training course: assertive communication

In this live two-hour training session for 4 – 15 people, we teach employees at your organisation the essentials of communicating assertively: with openness, honesty, clarity and respect. We also explore the pros and cons of alternate communication styles. It’s a powerful, interactive experience, perfect for any team that wants to communicate better, and delivered by our experts at your workplace or remotely.