Fiabilidad de la escala. Estimación Alpha de Cronbach

If you are under-assertive, you may well find it difficult to say no to people who ask you favours, especially your boss. There’s the worry you might make them angry, or that they will dislike you or be disappointed in you. In fact, if you think about it, we all know plenty of people who are able to say no without losing popularity or respect, and without causing conflict.

If you avoid saying no, you find your workload slowly increasing, and you often take on tasks you’re not happy to be doing. Some of us find a middle ground by saying no and lying about the reason – ‘I can’t do that, I’m afraid, I have an important meeting to go to.’ This may get you off the hook, but it generally leaves you feeling uncomfortable, not to say worried that the other person will find out you’ve lied to them.

So the assertive answer is simply to say no when you want to. And again, this is actually fairer on the person you’re dealing with. If they know you’ll say no if you want to, they won’t feel uncomfortable asking you to do things for them. If you start saying no to people, you may put yourself through agony the first couple of times trying to pluck up the courage, but once you’ve said it you usually find the other person thinks it’s no big deal. ‘OK, fair enough,’ they reply, and cheerfully wander off to find another solution.

Here are a few tips for saying no:

● Remind yourself that you are quite entitled to say no, and there is no reason to feel guilty.

If you are under-assertive, you may well find it difficult to say no to people who ask you favours, especially your boss.

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● It may help you to feel better to give a brief explanation of why you’re saying no. You don’t have to do this, but it can feel more co-operative. So rather than say, ‘I don’t have time to do that,’ you may feel happier saying, ‘I don’t have time to do that – I’m already cover-ing for Sandy this week.’

● You may also feel more helpful if you offer a different solution to their problem. For example, ‘I don’t have time to find the answer for you, but I can tell you where to find it yourself,’ or ‘I can’t do it for you now, but if you can wait until Monday I’ll be able to do it then.’

● If your boss is persistent, use the stuck record technique. Suppose your boss wants you to stay late: there’s nothing in your contract that says you have to and on this occasion it would be really incon-venient, too. Just keep saying no until they get the message: ‘I’m afraid I can’t work late on Friday.’ If your boss reiterates the request, reply, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t work late on Friday. I have to take my mother to the hospital.’ (You’re not obliged to give a reason, but if you’re happy to it often helps.) If they ask again, just keep telling them, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do Friday.’ Don’t raise your voice or get upset – just be clear and assertive.

It’s not easy to change personality overnight. If you’re usually assertive, these guidelines will help you to become assertive more of the time. If, however, you are more often either submissive or aggressive, it will take Practice makes perfect

If you have a repeated situation where you find it hard to be assertive, think through the assertive response and then rehearse it until you feel ready to put it into practice. Perhaps your boss persistently puts you down in meet-ings, or is always making unreasonable requests. Decide how you will handle it and run through the words until you feel comfortable with them.

You could get a colleague or someone at home to roleplay it with you.

you a little while to perfect the new, assertive you. And it will also take a while for people to notice the change. So don’t expect other people’s attitude towards you to change instantly. But give it time, and keep being assertive, and before long people will stop trying to walk all over you once they learn it doesn’t work, or stop being defensive once they realise you are no longer aggressive.

The idea of learning how to listen probably seems either unnecessary or patronising. Surely we’ve all been doing it since we were babies?

Well, yes, we’ve all been listening superficially – that is to say, hearing.

But really listening carefully is a different skill, and one which we can still learn after we’ve grown up. So what’s the point of learning to listen properly? Well, it has several benefits:

● It prevents mistakes caused by crossed lines and poor communica-tion.

● It helps you understand what is going on.

● It enables you to read between the lines when someone is speaking to you.

● It makes the other person feel more positively towards you.

So it’s worth learning. Few of us are dreadful listeners (though we probably know one or two people who are), but most of us could listen better if we just learnt some of the basic techniques. Like so many other basic people skills, becoming a good listener is not only useful when you’re dealing with your boss, but also when you’re dealing with other people, from colleagues and subordinates to family and friends.

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C H A P T E R

How to listen…and be