0104 - Get Assertive!
Course Description
Course Details
Are you tired of being intimidated and treated badly by others? Learn specific techniques to become more assertive in all parts of your life. Discover how people manipulate you and how you submit to being a victim. Understand the difference between passive, aggressive, and assertive behaviors, and see how inner dialogues keep people acting in passive ways. Explore ways to change your inner dialogue, such as using affirmations and visualization, creating new labels for yourself and others, and keeping a journal. Do you think you speak non-assertively? If so, master the skills that will empower you to talk in an assertive manner, including specific verbal techniques and phrases for a variety of situations. Anger and criticism from others are difficult to deal with, so you'll get many tips on how to handle these. And because your body can reflect an inner uncertainty, you'll learn how to use facial expressions, eye contact, gestures, and your voice to reinforce the assertive statements you're making. You teach people how to treat you through your behaviors as well as your words, and this course will help you understand which behaviors to use with others so they perceive you as being assertive. When you begin to exhibit your new confidence in relationships, people will counter in various ways. You'll learn how to stand firm in the face of this resistance. Get the assertiveness training you need in order to be more confident and powerful with family members, friends, bosses, co-workers, professionals, service people, and even total strangers. It's your turn to speak up!
How It Works
This course is fully online, you require internet access and an email account. The course duration is 6 weeks, followed by a 2-week period to complete the final exam (online, open book). Lessons are released on Wednesdays and Fridays of each week, for a total of 12. You are not required to be online at any specific time. In addition to the specific lesson content, there is a discussion board with each lesson and often there is an optional assignment to apply the learning. Following each lesson, there is a short multiple choice quiz. Your score on these quizzes does not count towards the final mark but completing these helps solidify your learning as well as prepare you for the final exam. The final exam is an open-book, multiple choice exam and you need to achieve a minimum of 65% on the final exam to pass the course. There is only one opportunity to pass the exam. A certificate of completion from WatSPEED is available within four weeks of successful completion of each course and can be accessed in your student portal. Many of the Ed2Go courses are eligible towards the various online certificates offered by WatSPEED.
Syllabus
Lesson 1 - The Importance of Being Assertive. This first lesson will mark a turning point in your life. You'll begin by measuring your assertiveness quotient, you'll learn about the many surprising consequences of not being assertive, and you'll learn to recognize the different behaviors of passive, aggressive, and assertive people.
Lesson 2 - Inner Changes to Become Assertive. Before you can begin to act assertively, you need to be able to identify your self-canceling thoughts and change your inner script. In this lesson, you'll learn why you have negative thoughts about yourself and what those could be. I'll share with you several techniques for replacing them with a positive inner script, including visualization, affirmations, storytelling, writing a journal, and creating a collage.
Lesson 3 - How You Lose Power Verbally. One of the ways non-assertive people lose power is through the use of certain types of language to either gain approval or avoid opposition, criticism or disagreement. Today, you'll learn how to recognize when you're doing this, and you'll discover some simple and painless adjustments to the way you say things that can help you avoid this problem.
Lesson 4 - How to be Verbally Assertive. Now that you've learned what takes your verbal power away, it's time to learn how to be verbally assertive. In this lesson, you'll learn how to make the four types of "I" statements to tell others about yourself, respond to others' requests, ask for cooperation and support, and confront another person. You'll also learn about techniques you can use to deal assertively with people who are angry with you or criticizing you.
Lesson 5 - Creating an Assertive Body Image. Just as an actor perfects the nonverbal aspects of a role, you need to pay attention to the nonverbal nuances in your new assertiveness role. What you'll learn in this lesson is how to use eye contact, facial expressions, voice, body posture, gait and clothes to create an assertive image.
Lesson 6 - Adapting Your Message to Others' Personalities and Resistance. In order for you to be most effective, you need to be able to adjust your assertive message to the personality of the person with whom you're communicating and to deal with resistance. In this lesson, we'll study four behavior types and five sensory types to help you understand which assertive approach works best. You'll also find out how to identify resistance in others by observing verbal and nonverbal clues and various methods you can use to handle the resistance you may encounter.
Lesson 7 - Assertiveness with Your Family. Most people find it extremely challenging to be assertive with close family members. Today, you'll learn about a variety of statements family members use to manipulate you, and you'll discover the most effective ways to respond to each of them. You'll learn how to act assertively with your parents, siblings, and children to build more positive relationships.
Lesson 8 - Assertiveness with Your Mate. In this lesson, you'll discover the four different emotional types of people and how they come together as mates. We'll explore the relationships these types have with each other, what problems tend to arise, and how the partners can treat each other differently in order to resolve any problems they may have. You'll also learn guidelines for working out issues with your partner in an assertive but loving manner.
Lesson 9 - Assertiveness with Friends and in Social Situations. Do you find it difficult to say no to a friend who asks a favor that you don't really want to do? Do you have difficulty having conversations in social situations? If so, you'll really learn a lot from this lesson. I'll show you how to use the assertiveness techniques you've been learning to deal with your friends in a calm but strong manner. Next, you'll learn techniques you can use to open up to other people and carry on interesting conversations.
Lesson 10 - Assertiveness in the Workplace. You may approach the thought of being assertive at work with trepidation. However, when supervisors and employees treat each other with respect and act assertively with each other, both happiness on the job and productivity increase. In this lesson, you'll learn how to be assertive during job interviews as well as with your boss and subordinates, what to look for to see if your workplace encourages or discourages assertiveness, and how to advance assertiveness where you work.
Lesson 11 - Being an Assertive Consumer and Dealing with Everyday Situations. Often, you encounter situations in which you deal with people as a consumer. Today, you'll learn how to be assertive with waiters, salespeople, government clerks, doctors, hospital employees, lawyers, and IRS agents. We'll also discuss how to be assertive in everyday situations, such as when a restaurant or movie theater is unbearably cold.
Lesson 12 - Final Steps in Becoming Assertive. So far in this course, you've gained a wealth of knowledge about how to be assertive. You've learned skills and techniques to use with family and friends, as a consumer, and in the workplace and everyday situations. In this closing lesson, you'll learn some situations in which it's better to not be assertive, how to give and receive compliments, and how to be assertive in all parts of your life.