Assertiveness

More than once my manager has told me that I am very nice, but sometimes I really need to assert myself. This includes telling people to "shut it" when they are talking too much, and putting my foot down way faster than I usually do. So I took the feedback and registered for a two day assertiveness training, which took place this past week.

Even though I don't think that being particularly assertive is something that will ever come natural to me, I enjoyed the training and learned (or at the very least remembered) a thing or two. Something that particularly made me laugh was learning more about my personality type, if only because the description given seemed to be very much right on. Turns out I am someone focused on "Influence", which comes along with the following tendencies and desires:

1. Optimism
2. People oriented
3. Motivated by popularity, social recognition, public recognition of ability
4. Basic fear is social rejection
5. Desires democratic relationships and freedom of expression
6. Likes to create a motivating environment, generating enthusiasm, and feels responsible for entertaining people.

So there it is. I may not be the most assertive person in the world, but at least now I know where I belong. And it's not like I am doing something wrong. Hopefully I will be better at raising my assertiveness when I really need to, but the rest of the time I will just continue being my happy "influencer" self, and doing my best so that we can all get along.