Assertiveness Requires The Ability To Have Insight In Another Person's Mind

Assertiveness Requires Insight

To this effect, Cutesolutions, a Belgium-based provider of innovative training, has compiled and categorised a significant number of techniques.

Nevertheless, the effectiveness of these techniques hinges on the ability to know the other person, both in terms of thinking process and emotional response.

I Know That

Most of us take it for granted that we know those or the things we are familiar with.

We often say that we know someone, while we had come across that person just once.

Our built-in recognition system can sometimes play tricks on us, given us the false impression of knowledge and recognition.

Recognition

On the basis of recognition and knowing a person, we are sometimes led to believe that we can trust that person more than others, to communicate with that person in a certain way, or to be off guard.

However, this kind of knowledge is most probably the result of our prejudices of thought.

During our lifetime, we accumulate a "wealth" of prejudices, some of them are useful and some are a nuisance to us and to others.

Prejudices

These prejudices relate not only to what we think but also to the way we think.

On the basis of faulty mechanisms of knowing others, we choose, consciously or not, our style and method of communication with others.

The effectiveness of this communication is thus bound to depend on factors that are not under our control.

Effective and efficient communication with others definitely requires a fair amount of knowledge of the other.

Assertiveness Style

This is valid for people, but also for organisations and institutions.

If you want to assert yourself or your ideas you definitely need to adapt your communication style and method on the basis of fairly good knowledge of your interlocutor.

Otherwise, effectiveness is left to chance and luck.

The instinctive ability to have insight into and to know what is in another person's mind is known as 'theory of mind'.

Mental State

The conceptualisation required to have such ability is complex.

We now know that a particular region in the middle of the prefrontal cortex springs into life when we deal with questions that call for a calculation about another person's mental state.

Personal Memories

We also know that this region has wide-ranging connections to many other areas of the brain, in particular those needed to pull in stored information and personal memories.

This background information is required in order to be able to read between the lines of a story or do guess the real motives behind it, rather than taking the story for its face value.

Feeling Emotions

Another important ability relates to reading expressions and feeling emotions.

The lack of understanding of emotional responses from a given person renders it difficult to connect with that person and to strike the right emotional chords.

Effectiveness of Assertiveness

On the contrary, this lack of knowledge may elicit undesired responses.

In the face of all this, it is fair to say the effectiveness of assertiveness is highly dependent on our ability to know what is in another person's mind, to foresee his or her emotional responses and to read to be able to read his or her reactions.

Cutesolutions, a Belgium-based provider of innovative training, has compiled and categorised interesting assertiveness techniques.

On the basis of this research, a deck a cards has been developed with the objective of providing a practical tool and an effective learning method for boosting assertiveness.

Assertiveness Cards

The assertiveness cards fall under four major categories.

The last category relates to people.

In this category, various techniques aim at enhancing awareness about the importance of the ability to have insight into another person's mind and emotional system.