Being an EA means you're often required to be assertive to get everything done on time. Your executive's counting on you, so you need to feel confident about speaking your mind when you need to. Here are three tips to help you do so.
1. Be confident in your value
Commonly, the things that stops us from being assertive is an insecurity about the value we provide or how correct our perspective is. Listening too much to your internal critic can build an unhealthy level of self-doubt.
You should challenge negative thoughts as they rise. When you do this, you'll find that sometimes, your internal critic is right, but also that (perhaps more often) they are wrong. It's much easier to speak up when you're confident in your position and taking a moment to reflect on your thought process can help you to know when to trust your judgement and stick to your guns.
2. Don't confuse assertiveness with aggression
Being assertive doesn't mean shouting others down, dismissing their opinions and bullying them into seeing things your way - that would be aggressive. Assertive communication is all about clearly getting your point of view across, not criticising those that don't agree or doing anything you can to get your own way.
A simple example can demonstrate the difference; a fellow employee suggests a new way of doing something. An aggressive response would be to say "That's stupid", whereas an assertive one would be "I disagree and here's why". They share the negative opinion of the idea, but differ wildly in their tone and effectiveness.
3. Try adopting an 'assertiveness formula'
This is effective because it's direct and communicates your position clearly and assertively.
Andy Molinsky, professor of Organizational Behavior at the Brandeis International Business School, suggests that people try employing an 'assertive formula' when dealing with a problem colleague. The formula goes like this:
Put those three parts together, and you have a complete sentence that gets your point across; "When you interrupt me I don't have an opportunity to get my point across and this makes me feel undervalued." This is effective because it's direct and communicates your position clearly and assertively.
It can hard to be assertive sometimes, but keeping these tips in mind can make things a little easier.