Chapter 3
 Where and When to Assert Yourself

You’re standing in a bank line waiting to take care of some routine matters when the customer ahead of you gets into a spat with the teller. It seems that this customer’s checks will be put on hold for a few days before he’ll be able to receive cash for them. He’s not happy about it and makes his opinion known. Meanwhile, you’re waiting and starting to feel irritated. Do you speak up? After all, you’ve got other things to do today.

You’re meeting your fiancée’s parents for the first time at a dinner they’re holding in your honor at their home. You’re seated at the table when you notice a dead fly in the potato salad. No one has been served. No one else seems to notice. Should you sound the alert?

Your co-worker is making a presentation to your team. He’s doing a good job and everyone is impressed. After about five minutes, however, you detect a major problem. You know for certain that one of the assumptions upon which he heavily relies is wrong. Therefore, he needs to redirect most of his presentation. Do you say something? If so, when, and to whom?

In this chapter you’ll learn to recognize when it’s important to assert yourself, and when it’s better not to.

What’s Worth Fighting for and What’s Best Left Alone

In the first scenario I described, when you’re standing in the bank line, there are some compelling reasons for you to say nothing:

• You know when you enter a bank that there is a good chance you will wait in a line. No surprises here.
  
• Although you may be irritated, feeling that the customer in front of you is causing an unnecessary delay, chances are that even if you decide to say something, you won’t finish up any more quickly than without speaking up.
  
• The unpleasant feelings that you may experience as a result of your speaking may not be worth speaking up in the first place.

Soon it will be your turn. Then you’ll be out of the bank, and the delay will be forgotten. Maybe another teller will come on duty, or you’ll put your time to better use by focusing on what you want to accomplish that afternoon or how you want to feel in general.

In the second scenario, when you’re at dinner and you spot the fly, you have a variety of options.

• You could say something diplomatic and slightly amusing, such as, “Oh my, it looks like we have an unwelcome visitor in the potato salad.” Since you’re new at the table, you want to keep things light. Undoubtedly, your fiancée’s parents will feel a bit embarrassed. Think of it as an opportunity for you to play the diplomatic, charming, future son-in-law.
  
• You could nudge or make eye contact with your fiancée, directing her to the tainted plate. Undoubtedly, your fiancée will take over, and your job is largely done. After everyone joins in the discovery and expresses their embarrassment, you could say something such as, “Oh yes, that happened to us once,” or “Well, it’s a good thing we found out now, rather than later.”

There are two more options, neither of which is recommended:

• You could not say anything and hope that someone else makes the discovery. But, you run the risk that no one else makes the discovery, and someone ends up ingesting a dead fly.
  
• You could wait until the potato salad is parceled out, wait to see who receives the ill-fated portion, and hope that he or she notices.

In the third scenario, when a co-worker is about to lead your team down the wrong path, the need to assert yourself seems pretty clear. It’s simply a question of how. The most tactful way would be to get your co-worker’s attention and ask if you could speak to him for a minute. You can do this by using a look, a nod, a whisper, or a note. If you have a break coming up, then that is your best opportunity.

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 Handle with Care
It’s never a good idea to just say something if you might humiliate someone.

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Your goal is to stop the presentation as politely and unobtrusively as possible for the sake of your co-worker, if not for the sake of the entire team. Once he has the same information that you do, he’ll want to postpone the meeting for now, or if he’s quick on his feet, perhaps redirect the remaining portion of the presentation.

It behooves you to make a move. Otherwise, you’re wasting everyone else’s time and setting up your co-worker for embarrassment later.

The $64,000 Question

In the three earlier scenarios, I advised saying nothing in the first instance and speaking up in the latter two. None of these situations is necessarily crucial to your long-term health or well-being or to the other parties involved, although the co-worker making the presentation based on a wrong assumption could potentially suffer some repercussions.

So, what’s a nice reader like you to make of this? Here are guidelines for asserting yourself when the issues confronting you are not earth-shattering:

1. Respect the position and feelings of the other parties involved.
   

   The man ahead of you in the bank line is already flustered because the teller won’t cash his checks. His actions are relatively understandable. After all, hasn’t this ever happened to you? By speaking up, you will not improve his situation. You might give moral support to the teller, but you could always do that after the first customer leaves.

   In the dinner scenario, your immediate goal is to make sure that no one ingests a dead fly and that any embarrassment anyone might feel is minimized.

   Likewise, with the co-worker making the presentation, you wish to unobtrusively get his attention, so he can make a decision as to what to do, given the information you have to impart.

   
   
2. Remain in balance.
   

   In the bank line, you’re better off waiting the extra minute or two, even if you are a little flustered, than to let your emotions get the best of you and speak out when it’s the teller’s responsibility to handle the situation.

   At dinner, obviously you wouldn’t want to say, “Oh my God, look at the dead fly in the potato salad. How disgusting!” Even if this is what you really feel, expressing yourself in this way would come across as too strong. You’d disrupt the atmosphere at the dinner and put the onus on the others to restore it.

   In the case of the co-worker’s presentation, it’s easy to understand how you might feel excited once you hear him going down the wrong path. However, blurting out what you feel and potentially disrupting the meeting, especially in the case where you have respect for your co-workers, would create a undesirable situation. Keeping your emotions in check is related to the third element: with malice toward none.

   
   
3. Proceed with malice toward none.
   

   Certainly in the latter two cases, there’s no reason for you to act with anything less than concern for the others. In the first instance, the bank line, you may have no concern for the customer in front of you, but unless this customer is blatantly abusive and the teller ostensibly lacks the skills to handle the situation, you’re better off saying nothing. Even if the situation turns out to be horrendous, you’re still better off saying nothing. After all, there are other tellers, the bank manager, and who knows who else who could step in if the situation merited it. It’s simply not your place either to say something or display malice.

   
   
4. Make a time check.
   

   Ask yourself, “How will I feel about the situation tomorrow, in one hour, or in even five minutes?” Chances are, five minutes after departing the bank, you won’t even think about the delay. So, your decision to say nothing is well advised. At dinner, since you’re the only one who can see the fly in the potato salad, a day, hour, or five minutes later you’d still feel bad if it was served to someone. Your decision to speak up is clearer. The same is true with your co-worker making a presentation based on a false assumption.

   The common denominator to these three scenarios is that they all represent minor situations that are likely to pass quickly. Now to a larger concern: You might be good at both holding your tongue and speaking up as the situation merits under such scenarios, but how are you when pursuing larger, more important issues?

Before You Can Assert Yourself, You Have to Know What You Want

By establishing priorities in your life, you more readily know when to speak up and when to let things ride, what’s worth fighting for, and what’s best to walk away from. Let’s focus on clarifying what’s important to you, and how prioritizing helps you in your decision-making, which, in turn, helps you stand up for yourself, your family, your organization, and your community.

Too Many Priorities Equals No Priorities

When asked to list their priorities, most people end up listing too many. Suppose you compose a list of 19 areas in your life that are most important to you. By definition, they can’t all be priorities. Why? How can you, or anyone for that matter, closely pay homage to 19 different aspects of life? I’m not saying how many priorities you need to have to be realistic, but for most people the number is somewhere between four and nine.

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 Make It So
Whatever you do when selecting priorities, remember to keep the number manageable. The fewer the priorities, the more energy and effort you lend to each of them.

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When assessing what’s important to you in life, here are some potential category headings. Later you can modify these or pick entirely new ones. For example, your priorities might come from one or more of these basic areas:

• Personal: health, welfare, finances, intellect, interests, recreation, love, sexual fulfillment
  
• Family: health, welfare, lifestyle, children’s education, recreation, enrichment, reverence
  
• Friends, relatives: health, welfare
  
• Community, region: appearance, prosperity, schools, institutions
  
• Country, fellow citizens: security, quality of life, freedoms, pursuit of happiness, opportunity, justice

To further clarify, the things most meaningful to you in life are, by definition, your priorities. Priorities are broad elements of life, so broad that they often become misplaced somewhere within your daily high-wire balancing act. Remember, if you have too many priorities, you’re not likely to respect each of them. Now then:

• List everything that is important or that you wish to accomplish.
  
• Hours and even days later, go back and assess your list. Drop the nice, but on second inspection, not-so-important items.
  
• Combine any items that are similar in nature. Having too many priorities leads to frustration and despair.
  
• Rewrite, redefine, or restructure any of your choices. If you’re not sure of an item, feel free to delete it.
  
• Put your list away for another day, then review it again.
  
• Delete, combine, or rethink any of the items remaining. If something seems less important, drop it. You cannot afford to have more priorities than you can support.
  
• Complete your list, for now—priorities can change.

Here are some examples of priorities you might choose:

Your priorities may change radically as the years pass. They are always based on deeply felt needs or desires, usually representing challenging but ultimately rewarding choices.

It helps to boil everything down to what I call Your Priority Card. For maximum benefit, I suggest that you write or print out your priorities on small business-size cards. Keep one in your wallet, one in your appointment book, and one in your car.

Read your priorities list as often as you can. As you’ll see, reading this list frequently contributes to your sense of staying in control—it’s invigorating when you’re actively supporting what you’ve chosen as important.

It isn’t overkill to review a list of your life’s priorities EVERY DAY. Now, armed with a concise list or card of those things you identified as important in your life, it’s easier for you to proceed through your day, week, and year, knowing when to assert yourself and when not to. The criterion becomes this: Is the situation confronting you directly related to one of your priorities? If so, you have a good indication to speak up in this situation. If not and you choose to say nothing, it’s likely that “This too shall pass.”

A Short Course on Decision-Making

Even if you’re totally clear about your priorities, one issue after another, big and not so big, will arise to challenge you. My friend has a poster on his wall that reads, “Not to decide is to decide.” If you haven’t made a decision, that alone is a form of decision—a choice not to take action.

Decisions worth making are not always apparent. Is it important to decide the color of the next toothbrush you buy? The next movie you see? It may seem important at the time, but of all the movies you’ve seen, how many have had a profound impact on you? What about attending the next PTA meeting? If your children are doing well, or the school system is strong, it may not be necessary to go. While the big, important decisions to make in your life may be readily identifiable, there will be a host of decisions of varying degrees of importance that will only be important for a fleeting amount of time.

Most decisions you make are of no long-term importance—in many instances, they’re not even of short-term importance. It may be hard to grasp, but even with career decisions, you can sometimes go back and change something. Even if you make a fundamentally bad decision to assert yourself over something at work, it won’t be so bad if you’re generally producing good work and doing a good job. Most decisions have no significant impact.

You Make the Call

Here are some situations that you might encounter. In each instance, would you assert yourself or not?

1. You make an appointment with a doctor. You specifically make it for early in the morning because you’re told that at that time there will be the shortest delay, if any. You’re kept waiting for more than 15 minutes. When you finally get to see the doctor, should you say anything? Should you say anything to the office staff?
   

   Personally, I would comment to the office staff after about 20 minutes. I have a friend, however, who has a unique approach to waiting for others that you might want to employ. He says, “If a doctor keeps me waiting for more than 15 minutes, I send him an invoice for my time, usually based on $75 an hour. My invoices don’t get paid, but I never have to wait again.”

   
   
2. The coach of your son’s little league team doesn’t seem to have his act together. For one thing, he doesn’t let your son play often enough, even though your son objectively is a better player than some of the others. Do you speak up about this?
   

   This is a tough call, but my advice is to not interfere. Your son may feel disappointed, and the coach’s decision not to play him often enough could be detrimental to the success of the team. There are, however, overriding factors. You can’t fight your son’s battles, at least not all of them. Also, parents, in general, do too much meddling when it comes to their kids’ affairs, particularly in regard to the little league. In some cases, it’s outright embarrassing to everyone concerned.

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    Handle with Care
   Helping your child emotionally will better prepare him for different coaches, teachers, bosses, and others in life who may not always give him a fair shake. In perspective, this is just one coach and one season in your son’s baseball “career.” There will be other coaches, other sports, and other seasons.

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   You can work with your son both on his baseball game and his emotional development. Helping him to become an even better player will increase the odds that the coach will notice him in practice and let him play more often.

   What if other parents are speaking up to the coach about their sons’ playing time? Now, you think, you have a perfect right to speak up as well, but don’t. Human nature being what it is, the coach may let your son play more often if other parents speak up about their sons! The coach may resent meddling by outsiders.

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    Just the Facts
   When University of South Carolina basketball coach Eddie Fogler was subjected to squabbling by the relatives of players on his team, he took the only route a coach could take. Mired with a 5-5 record, including some losses to traditionally weak teams, Fogler told the relatives point blank to butt out. He then reshuffled his lineup in accordance with what he felt was best. The team went on to win 18 out of the next 19 games and captured their first-ever Southeastern Conference Championship, beating the highly ranked Kentucky Wildcats.

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3. You’re good friends with the couple that lives down the block. You conclusively discover that one spouse is cheating on the other. What do you do?
   

   By now you’re thinking, here’s a time when I’m going to speak up. I need to let the spouse who’s being cheated on know what’s happening.

   I recommend you say nothing. Spouses have a way of knowing when all is not right between them. It’s not your place to step in, even to send an anonymous note.

   
   
4. You’re playing in a pickup basketball game with some regulars when two of them collide going for a rebound. They get into a heated exchange that may escalate. Should you step in?
   

   Keep watching. You’ll know in seconds whether the incident will conclude or turn in a nasty direction. If it’s getting worse, assert yourself. You don’t want the people involved to start fighting and perhaps get thrown out of the gym. Also, since you’re part of the game and what’s taking place is disrupting the game, you have an “athlete’s right” of sorts to get the game back on track. (By stepping in, however, you do run the risk of getting slugged yourself!)

   As a legitimate third-party observer to the spat, however, if you forcefully say something like, “C’mon, let’s get back to the game,” or “All right, let’s keep this in perspective,” your input may help to alleviate the situation. Moreover, it’s not likely that either of the participants is going to have any lingering negative feelings toward you. This kind of stuff happens, and the quicker it’s over with, the better.

   
   
5. You learn from a co-worker that the boss is going to choose someone else for a promotion you’ve had your eye on. You’re meeting with the boss this afternoon about something else. Should you speak up?
   

   Yes. Take advantage of the opportunity with your boss to present or reiterate your case. The best approach is to ease into the topic area and try to get the boss to tell you the same thing you heard from a co-worker.

   I’ll cover professional assertiveness in Chapter 21.

   
   
6. You walk into a sandwich shop and you see one counter person working with a customer. Another worker is at the drink machine, and a third is in the back slicing up something. A fourth worker is cleaning tables at the far end of the establishment. You’ve been standing there for at least two minutes now, and none of the four employees seems to notice or acknowledge your presence. Do you say, “Ahem,” or “Excuse me,” or do you simply wait like a good soldier until it’s “your turn”?

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    Make It So
   In work-related situations, particularly in relation to promotions, assertiveness is the order of the day. You don’t get ahead by sitting back and being meek and mild. This is the time to toot your own horn. You’re even expected to do this.

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   Forget speaking up; practice restraint. You want to speak up in those situations where it’s clearly called for. In this one, I would pick a time limit, say another minute or perhaps two minutes, whereby if someone didn’t tend to me, I would simply leave the establishment. Given it’s not the only sandwich shop in town and you’re not dying of hunger, vote with your feet.

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    Handle with Care
   Attempting to train employees that customers such as you keep a restaurant in business is futile. If they’re not aware of this fundamental truth of business life before you walk in, why would they understand only minutes later?

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   If enough people were to leave under the same circumstances, management might get the message. Even if others don’t do what you do, you get the opportunity to find another establishment that offers more responsive service.

Self-Confidence Is the Key to It All

In each of the situations I’ve discussed, the more self-confident you are (the subject of Part 2 of this book), the clearer it becomes whether you need to assert yourself. There’s almost an inverse relationship between self-confidence and the need to be assertive. In other words, the more self-confident you are, the less often you need to be assertive. The highly self-confident person who experiences a put-down may not feel compelled to respond in kind.

Concurrently, the highly self-confident person knows when to speak up and can do so rather easily. As you learned in Chapter 1, it’s a pleasure to be around people who are assertive, because they know how to state their case in a manner that makes other people feel good about it.

It’s painful to be around people who feel compelled to assert themselves all day long, because they don’t have a clear idea of what merits their speaking up and what doesn’t. In that respect, understanding your priorities, maintaining self-confidence and self-control, and achieving an “assertive balance” is probably the most admirable combination of traits you can have.