Assertive or Agressive? What's the Difference?
Psychological Safety Allows People to Be Assertive
Assertive: disposed to or characterized by bold or confident statements and behavior
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Confidence and bold statements are appropriate in conversations. Most people with confidence tend to speak with clarity and directness. This makes it easier for other people to understand them.
And people are entitled to confidence they know things and can learn more.
If a culture insists that everyone behave as if they have no confidence or softens all their statements, it will undermine people who have earned their confidence or who feel comfortable challenging the status quo. Worse, it will tend to create ambiguity about ideas.
Aggressiveness Destroys Psychological Safety
Aggressive: tending toward or exhibiting aggression
Aggression: a forceful action or procedure (such as an unprovoked attack) especially when intended to dominate or master
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Aggressiveness damages trust in relationships. The conscious or unconscious intention to dominate or master another is inherently dangerous to them. It is the force behind actions or words that creates problems.
What Does it Mean to be Bold Without Being Forceful?
Force is applied when we want people to do what we want them to. Domination is when we use power over people to get them to comply with our wishes.
Boldness is courage, daring, strength.
As son as we want to control the outcome, we become aggressive.
Aggressive phrases commonly found in organizations include:
Get buy in from [person or team] [so they will accept our idea].
Get them to [do the thing we want].
Make sure they [do the thing we want].
In all of these, the speaker has decided on the solution to the problem and made other people the obstacle to implementation.
Assertiveness looks very different. Assertiveness is saying what you think with confidence, suggesting unusual strategies, or not compromising where important values are in danger. Assertiveness comes from having a strong foundation and core. It is about taking a stand for what you believe in.
To be assertive without being aggressive, you have to treat the other person as an person with a subjective experience, needs, and goals of their own. You must focus on disagreements about ideas, actions, or allocation of resources and avoid making the other person the problem. You must be willing to allow someone else to make up their own mind and come to their own conclusions. You must be willing to find an alternative solution to the challenge if your proposed solution doesn’t address their concerns.
A Clean Use of Power Doesn’t Have to be Aggression
It is tempting to jump to the conclusion that all decision-making must be by consensus if it is to be non-aggressive. this is not true. Aggression is an attempt to dominate a situation or force compliance. It makes a status play against another person. It is a personal attack, a relationship conflict.
When a person holds a position of responsibility, there are times when a hard call needs to be made, or a decision needs to be made quickly and there is not time to build consensus. In these situations, the responsbile person can be assertive and make the call based on their assessment of the situation.
If the decision is made about the situation, it is not aggressive even if it is not what others would have done. Such a decision can, however, be aggressive if part of the intention is to control or dominate the affected people.
For such a use of authority to be clean, it is important for leaders to be transparent about the fact that they have that authority and are using it.
Making all decisions alone without being open to influence does not create psychological safety. But having some decisions that get made without input from others is fine as long as there is transparency about what decisions a single decision maker can or should make alone and the decision-maker takes responsibility for the impact (positive and negative) of their decisions.