How Ivna Curi Transforms Fear into Assertive Confidence

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Ibna, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you, Kwame. I am excited that we get to talk.

Yes, I'm excited. We're going to do it this time. Yeah, really going to do it. Listeners, even as the most patient guest ever, we had this amazing conversation that was not recorded. It didn't record. I felt so bad we didn't get it done. And then we said we're going to reschedule. We rescheduled a number of times, and then I got sick and all of these things. So it took us what is like eight months, ten months?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Almost a year. That's right.

Jeez. Well, I'm glad. Well, we're bigger than ever now, so we're getting you out to as many people as we can. So can you Let the listeners know about yourself and what you do.

I help organizations be able and companies empower their professionals and their women to speak up assertively. I know very well that this can help the professionals and the women to feel heard, understood and respected. But it helps the organization as well to leverage the human capital that they have, bringing the best to the table, contributing to their maximum capacity, which in effect improves productivity, performance and all that good stuff. And also my new passion, which is it helps leaders create a culture of open communication which really allows the team to collaborate, problem solve and to be well and drives employee engagement at the same time. I find it very powerful.

I do too. And that's why you're here. This is great. And listeners, this is another exciting opportunity for us to dig deeply into assertiveness. And we've had a number of episodes that touched on it. And what I'm excited about in this episode is that we're not just going to talk about what it means to be assertive and how to be assertive. We're also going to talk about some of the myths associated, associated with assertiveness. Mistakes that can make you come off as aggressive or rude when you're trying to be assertive. And some practical tips on how to be assertive and warm. So blending that assertiveness and warmth, maximum persuasion and rapport building and everything that we want to have in these tough conversations. Let's actually start off with a definition. When you think about assertiveness, what does that word mean to you?

That's a great start. Assertiveness is, has four parts to it and most people only think of the first part. And that's why people are terrified to speak up. Assertiveness involves speaking up, expressing ourselves or thoughts or needs or wants or desires or likes or dislikes or boundaries, our perspectives, our disagreements, our wants, our desires. There's so many things, our feelings, essentially expressing anything that we want to express, which is a lot of people think that sort of ness is not authentic. I mean, that is as authentic as it can get. But it also includes three other parts to it, which is respect, being respectful towards other people. And that's harder than it seems. This is another area that I'm really intrigued by because let me give an example. I lived in Singapore and in Singapore, the first thing we did, we had this class cultural norms. And one of the things that we learned is if you receive a business card from someone, you gotta get it with your two fingers or two hands. You can't do it like this. You can't just Take it with one hand like we do in the US and put that business card straight into our back pockets. That's considered very disrespectful. So there are many little things that are respectful to one individual but not to another. I've Talked to some 80 year old people and when you disagree with them, they find incredibly disrespectful because they feel like you have to listen to the elderly. But for a 20 year old that's very different. You know, the respect for, for a woman versus a man can be very different. So it's very personal thing. And respect and assertiveness ideally is respect towards the other person in their respect language, not ours. So of course there's like universal views of what respect is, but we also want to make sure that we, we consider the other person's perspective on what respect is and try to adapt to that. So that's another element. Then there's calm. And calm is critical because if we're not calm, it's really hard to stay grounded. It's really hard to think on our feet. It's really hard to be present and listen to the other person truly to empathize, to be present. And if we're not present, then we're monologuing and we're not dialoguing. So that doesn't help. The third part, which is effectiveness, what's the point of speaking up if it's not effective? That is a third part, the fourth part of assertiveness. It needs to be effective because most people think that assertiveness is venting off their frustrations and just saying whatever and it's not. It requires a lot of self control, understanding, planning, just like negotiation, to be able to do it. Effective because at the end of the day when you are assertive, your intention is to either communicate something, have someone understand your perspective, it's to influence, it's to change someone's behavior. And it's not a command, it's not trying to control someone, it's an invitation. And that requires us to think about what we're saying and how we're saying it. So the how is very important in assertive communication.

This is so good. Evena. This is a strong start. Now you got me all thrown off because we have all those other three things that we want that we're going to go to. I promise we will. But this is really interesting. I've never heard assertiveness described in this in these ways with the four points. Because you're right, most people think about point number one, which is just speaking up. I love the other three, three points. Respect. It's calm and it's effective. And think about respect. That's always something that's really. It's difficult to find an answer for. I love the conceptualization of thinking about it in terms of a respect language. Beautiful way to articulate that. Because if I'm talking to you and I'm talking a language you don't understand, I could be really, really nice. But it doesn't mean that you get it. And so if I'm trying really, really hard to be respectful in the way that's respectful for me, then you still might not get and appreciate that. The respect I'm giving, because it's not communicating, you're not communicating that in a way that resonates with me. I can't understand it. When you think about that respect language, what is it about that concept that's so hard for people to get? Hello, my friends.

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So the hardest thing about respect and understanding, respect and practicing respect with others is that we don't really understand the other person's perspective. It's really hard. We talk about empathy all the time. We talk about understanding, we talk about consideration for others. But most of us are not really good at investigating and asking the right questions to understand the other person's perspective, at really capturing their response. In the moment when you're speaking assertively, you're also at the same time observing the other individual and seeing how they respond. And that will give you cues as to if you're pushing too hard. Let me give an example. You're super funny and engaged and you're playful. Once I was in a podcast and the person that I was talking to interpreted my giggles as disrespectful and I had no idea. And sometimes it's my tone or the way I do it. I was clueless. I had no idea that was happening. So I think there's a lot of context as well. And even getting that feedback helps. Asking people, I love asking people, what makes you feel respected at work? What makes you feel disrespected at work? Those are my favorite questions.

That's a great question. And I love that example as well, because first with that question, a lot of times you'll be surprised at the answers. Because for me, one of the things I had to get used to is a lot of the members of my team, they don't want public recognition. Don't post about me. Don't say nice things publicly. You just send me a message. You don't even. It makes me uncomfortable to hear it from you. Just send me a message. Okay, I can do that. Other people like to be liked out loud, for example. So asking that question just in general within your relationships of any kind, work or personal, I think that's really powerful. The example that you gave is great because for you, you were being playful, establishing rapport. Laughter is a form of connection. And then sometimes, especially depending on the circumstances, people don't feel that comfortable and you have to kind of read the room. And I think there's a little bit of confirmation bias where we might say it's like, hey, everybody likes to laugh and joke. Who doesn't like to laugh and joke? And so sometimes we might get that biofeedback from the person in terms of body language, but we overlook it. Or we just say, see, that person's a stick in the mud. They're not fun. That's their problem. And we just continue disrespecting them. I really like that point of pausing and reading the room and recognizing when there's a deviation from the baseline. Does their tone change? Does their body language change? Okay, maybe it's time for a little check in. Hey, I just want to pause, see how you're feeling about how this is going. I think that's a great way because it shows that you can. We're not always going to be respectful and oftentimes our disrespect is unintentional. And so a great thing you can do in the moment is recognize those deviations when somebody, it seems like, doesn't seem like what I said or how I said it was really landing with them. Let me pause, let me check in, let me get that feedback and then let me have the humility to apologize and adjust. I think that's a really, really important element of this.

Very well said, very well said. The check ins.

Yeah, I think that's. That's powerful. So let's get Back to the three points. I got distracted. I got distracted. So even I stopped being so brilliant. And I would stay. Stay on topic here. So we're talking about the top assertive communication myths. Can you tell us what those are?

Yes. Right. Before I tell you what those are, I just want to share a study that I loved seeing. It was a study done by MIT, one of the divisions of Microsoft, with 6,000 employees around speaking up. Have you seen this study, Kwame? No. Brilliant study. And it shows how people are not speaking up. You would think, oh, Microsoft, really brilliant employees, they would speak up. But they're not. The study shows that two out of 10 employees never spoke up about anything. They had 15 different items on what people could speak up on. Two out of 10 people spoke up about nothing. They just didn't do it at all. Two thirds of employees of those 6,000 employees at Microsoft occasionally spoke up or never spoke up. So they would speak up on five out of those 15 topics. So one third of those speaking up topics and usually related to things that affected their work directly, things that they needed to get their job done or things that were necessary for their own wellness. And that's what I was talking to you about earlier, which is that sense of employee voice, very basic things. Only a third of employees were speaking up about a third or more of different things that they could talk about, they could speak up about. That shows how difficult it is to speak up. The problem is a lot of these misconceptions that people have which comes to our assertiveness communication myths. And let me just share this. The connecting factor for all of them is based on cognitive dissonance. On one end, people feel like they should speak up, they want to speak up. It's the right thing to do, to speak up. But on the other end, it's going to cause stress to their social life. It'll remove their social kind of preservation area. They're not going to be liked anymore. People are going to ostracize them, and they're going to feel alone and solitary and hated by other people. So if they have to choose between speaking up and having social peace and preservation, they're going to choose social peace because we're social animals. So the problem is they don't believe that they can do the two things at the same time. And that's where the myths come in. And the first myth, we were talking about this earlier as well, the most common myth around assertive communication is that when we're assertive, we are aggressive, or when we're Assertive, we are perceived as difficult, abrasive, rude, and aggressive, which is not the case. The second one, I'll tell you all of them, and then we'll go through them to debunk them. But the second one is that assertive communication causes backlash, retaliation, negative consequences. And the third one is that assertive communication creates conflict and is confrontational. There's many more, but I think those three are the most common ones.

I agree. Those are the ones I hear all the time. And when I heard you describe the first one, when we are assertive, we're perceived as aggressive. And it seemed like there is emphasis on the term perceived. Let's dissect this first one.

Yes. So perceived is important because if we are perceived as aggressive, then bad things can happen to us, right? That social peace gets shaken. So that is also important to manage people, manage expectations, manage perception, manage our personal brand. Now, the problem is, and you've probably heard it, when someone in a company, they're giving feedback to their employee and they say, especially a woman, you're too assertive, you're too assertive, or you're being aggressive, you're being difficult. And that doesn't mean much because they don't really know what they're saying. But the problem is they're confusing when we talked about the definition, so they don't quite understand the definition and the difference between being assertive and aggressive. And that caused a huge problem. But the second part is that often a lot of people speak up aggressively or there's an element of aggression, and they think they're being assertive and then things go wrong and they're perceived as aggressive. And they just said, oh, I just woke up. I want to give you an example. So recently a friend of mine had, and she knows I'm all for assertiveness. I'm all about assertiveness. So she wants to be assertive. And she had a little issue with her co worker and she felt hurt. And before we met, she already wanted to resolve the issue. She says, I'm going to be assertive and I'm going to deal with this thing before I talk to. Even at the end of the week. So she could say, hey, I was assertive. So she scheduled a meeting with this person. She was really afraid to speak up, but she did it anyways. And she told him, you hurt my feelings. And it was great. She did get closure. The individual apologized and she felt good after that. And she came to me and said, even I spoke up and I was assertive. I said that's wonderful that you spoke up. Most people don't speak up. You showed courage and you were bold. Wonderful. You got the outcome. Outcome you wanted. Great. But you weren't assertive. And that's the problem. Most people, you know, that's violation of number one law of assertiveness. You don't. You do. You. Statements which sound accusatory. And in blaming the other person, people shut down. It would have been more effective to say, I felt hurt in that situation. So often people speak up in a way they think they're being assertive, but they're not. There's actual some level of aggression or some level of fear, threatening or creating an unsafe environment for the other person to respond and hear what you're saying. And so now, you know, we want safety to speak up, but we're not creating safety for the other person to hear us speaking up.

That's powerful. That is powerful. Okay, I'm excited. Here, let me offer you something. Feel free to say no if you don't feel comfortable. Would you be interested in doing a little role play? We role play that conversation, but how it should have been done?

All right.

Yeah.

Okay, perfect. So let's say the meeting starting. I hurt your feelings. How would you start that meeting? Let's even start from hello. I just know that there was something that you wanted to talk about. Hey, Evna, thanks for calling this meeting. I'm not sure what it's about. Can you tell me what's on your mind?

Yeah. Kwame, thank you so much for making the time to talk to me. I really appreciate. Earlier this week, over the weekend, actually, we were working on a presentation together, and I had my slides there at night, and I was going to present to the CEO on Monday. I was the first one to present, and I noticed that you deleted my first three slides. And I felt hurt. I felt disrespected because I put a lot of work into those slides and I didn't have a backup. And I was already nervous because I had to be the CEO next day and didn't have a lot of time to recreate those slides. Luckily, everything went well, but, yeah, it affected me. I wanted to let you know about that.

Okay. I didn't even realize that was a problem. I. When I went in, I saw that there were. I would have done the slides a little bit differently. And so I thought I was helping you out by making those tweaks. I had no idea that would cause a problem. I'm so sorry.

Oh, all right. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I'D like to know a little bit more about from you. Why did you change the slides in the last minute? Why did you delete my slides?

Yeah, because I remember about two years ago, when I was making a presentation, I was presenting to somebody in the C suite, and I had some slides in there that were. Let's just say, they were a little bit problematic for reasons I didn't know. And so the presentation was horrible. And afterwards, I was telling my buddy Steve about it, and Steve's like, yeah, I saw those slides, and I knew you were going to be presenting to that person, and I knew those were going to be terrible. But I didn't have any time, so I didn't want to, like, I didn't want to mess it up. I didn't have any time to talk to you before, so I just wanted to have, like, talk to you afterwards. But I didn't feel comfortable going in and deleting the slides. And I was like, listen, dude, next time delete the slides, just delete them for me. And so I thought I was helping you out by doing that. I'm really sorry. And I can see how that could have a negative impact, and I really should have had a conversation with you. I apologize for that.

Thank you. And I appreciate your perspective and understanding what prompted you to delete those slides. And I think what could work going forward is if you have my. My cell phone number and you text me if something comes up and you feel like there's a quick decision that needs to be made around the slide, you could contact me, and then we could make that quick decision and avoid any of these misunderstandings. What do you think about that?

I think that's great. And again, I appreciate you bringing this up to my attention because, yeah, I definitely didn't think it would be taken that way, but now that you've taken the time to explain it, it makes complete sense. So I think that's a really great way going forward.

Wonderful. So let's do that. Let's do that. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about this and your willingness to collaborate to make sure that going forward, we're aligned and we're not wasting time or making sure that we're effective in these joint presentations.

Awesome. Now let's do the other one. The way that your friend did it, where they said, you hurt my feelings, let's role play that.

All right.

Hey, thanks for calling the meeting. I'm not sure what this is about. Tell me what's on your mind.

Yeah. Kwame, you Know, the other day with the presentation, you deleted my slides. You really hurt my feelings.

I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings. I'm not sure what I. What I did. What happened? How did I hurt your feelings?

Yeah, you hurt my feelings because you deleted my slides. Why would you delete my. I don't even understand why you would delete my slides. Nobody would do that. Nobody should do that. Delete other person's slides. That's not respectful.

How is it disrespectful by deleting the slides? I was trying to help you. I was trying to be a good teammate. This is. Are you. Are you being serious? Like, this is. You're mad about that?

Yeah. You totally stressed me out, and it was very unprofessional, and you totally hurt my feelings. And a lot of people, if they were in my shoes, they thought they would have hurt their feelings as well. And I don't think it's. It's reasonable.

Unprofessional, never. And unreasonable. You know, it's funny, Evena, as I'm going through this, I can feel my heart rate elevating. And, like, I didn't even want to let you finish. I was, like, unreasonable. You come on my podcast to call me unreasonable?

Exactly.

Yes. It's so interesting, even in these role plays, how you can feel it. Like, I couldn't even. I couldn't even listen to what you were saying. I'm like, I'm being attacked. I'm not going to allow you to undermine my professionalism. Call me disrespectful and call me unreasonable. What? I felt obligated to fight back instead of, like, meaningfully having a conversation.

That's exactly it. You get into defense. Your safety just got removed by me. And often I'm the one trying to get safety. I feel, you know, hurt even when I role play. Just like you. When I role play the second scenario, I get nervous just by having to role play the angry woman. Although my friend was not. I'm exaggerating. She didn't. She's very nice. That was not her tone at all. I exaggerated here for the purposes of learning here.

Oh, yeah, definitely. I understand, and I appreciate you exaggerating. I would have said, even if that's too reasonable, please scare my audience. Okay, so this is good. This is perfect. And a lot of times we focus so much on, like, how the other person is going to respond to what we're saying and things like that, but we don't realize that even though we are not in control of somebody else's emotions. The way that we approach these conversations will have an impact on how people respond to what it is that you're saying. And the approach was completely different. You made it easy for me to lean in and accept everything you said. In the first scenario, there was no reason to fight back because there was no attack. And I think that's really one of the critical distinctions there between assertiveness and aggression. And I think also we have to recognize that different people perceive things differently. It was. It's funny, I was having a conversation with Steph, and I think we'll. We'll have a. Like, a larger conversation on this, too, because I was saying, yeah, I don't feel like people bully me. I've never. I can't look back in my professional life and say that I've been bullied. And Steph's like, kwame, what are you talking about? I've been in some of those negotiations with you. People definitely try to bully you. It just doesn't register to you as a threat. And so a lot of times when people are, like, aggressive, to me, it takes a lot of aggression for it to register as this is a threat. Sometimes other people, they. They might be more. More attuned and acutely aware to signals of aggression, perhaps because of things that have happened in their past. So they have to be on high alert because people have trained to take advantage of them in the past. Right. And so we have to recognize that different people are going to receive our approach differently. So what's interesting, kind of going back to what we're talking about with respect, what is assertive and respectful for one person might be perceived as aggressive to another person. And so how do people balance that when they're trying to be assertive but not cross the line into aggressive?

Well, the first thing is to understand what can be seen or what can usually come across as aggressive. Most people can't get even that part right. The basics.

That's a good point.

We can get through the basics. Then we can hone our skills to really understand, you know, like, the cultural nuances, like the. The racial differences, the gender differences, all that stuff. And like, your. Your book talks about the conversations with people who look different than. Than us. But essentially, understanding the skill is the very first step. Understanding what we're doing wrong. When I told my friend that she wasn't assertive, I gave her an example of what a sort of would look like. She said, holy crap, no, I can't believe I said that. She was so upset, because in that Instance, she realized, why didn't I talk to you earlier? Why didn't I read this earlier? Why did. And she knew the technique already. So all we need to do is start implementing like negotiation. There's a skill set, there are techniques. Let's understand what they are so that we can implement those and know what to use when. And the hardest part is to, to use these techniques and skills in the heated moment when we're emotionally, you know, really, you know, triggered. That's the first step.

That's hard. That's the hardest step in a lot of cases, managing your own emotions, going into it. Because in assertiveness, if you're using your assertiveness, that means something is at stake, something important has occurred or is occurring and that needs to be addressed. And just naturally as humans, we're going to feel that and we're going to respond emotionally to that. So finding ways to manage your own emotions before going into that conversation is going to be critical. And I want to talk to you about one of the concerns that people have had about backlash. That's one that I hear a lot. Well, if I'm assertive, if I stand up for myself, then people aren't going to like it. So what do you say to that?

That is a very common one. And there are a couple of reasons for that. So the first one is backlash happens when we are aggressive, when we make the other person not feel safe, when, like this role play that we just did. Right. You felt like you were ready to attack me for your own protection. People are not evil. They're not trying to hurt us. Most people, all they're doing is trying to protect themselves from the source of threat. And the source of threat in that moment was me to you. And the easiest way for people to protect themselves from the source of threat in that moment is often is backlash and retaliation. So if we understand that we're creating that backlash and retaliation, we're able to remove that backlash and retaliation at the same time. So that's the first thing. The second thing is what you do very well and a lot of people just don't do. I, for a long time I suppressed this because I thought it made me look unprofessional, is we keep our assertiveness and we add warmth and we build a relationship and we create the know like trust factor that will automatically make people assume the best, be more patient, be willing to listen, be willing to cooperate more with us so we can afford little mistakes in our speaking up moments and still have a very positive outcome. And avoid backlash and retaliation. So it really comes from the misconception around what people are actually saying. They think they're being assertive, they're actually being aggressive, and then they blame the retaliation on assertiveness when in fact they were never assertive.

It makes so much sense. And I love the fact that you're focusing on keeping that same foundation of assertiveness. The fact that you need to be assertive doesn't change. What you need to do is layer on some warmth, some likability, some rapport building, those type of things. You still maintain that core foundation of assertiveness. You just make it a little bit more palatable for the other side. And just by improving your skills, you decrease the likelihood of that backlash that you're afraid of.

Exactly, exactly. Because if you take the time to examine. I personally, I have never experienced backlash or retaliation for speaking up. And have you?

No. That's so funny. No, I have not.

Wow.

Definitely not in the professional sense. Listen, Whitney has a long memory sometimes, you know, so that can.

That's different. That's different.

Marriage. Marriage is a different thing. We're still at it, though. We still got, what, 13 years going strong. But. But yeah, that's. That's a. I'm really glad you said that, because I'm a human, too. And so there are going to be times where I'm afraid of being assertive and saying what I need to say. I don't want people to think that I. This stuff doesn't apply to me. Still does. And so that's a really great mental exercise even for me to realize. That's. That's wild. Never. Not one time. I can't think of one time.

Now, let me ask you this question. Have you ever experienced retaliation or backlash because you didn't speak up?

Yeah, that one. Absolutely. Yeah, no doubt.

All the time. And so people get overly worried about speaking up assertively when they should be worried about not speaking up, because that's where the retaliation and backlash tends to happen.

That's such a great point. And so let's keep flowing. Let's keep flowing, because even I could talk to you forever on this. So when we're talking about. And we touched on this a little bit, let's go deeper onto some of the communication mistakes that we can make to come off as aggressive or rude when we're trying to be assertive.

So some things are obvious. Right. We know. We don't. We can't, you know, yell at people, call them bad names and interrupt them in a very abrupt way when they're speaking. We know that. That's obvious. I want to share things that are maybe less obvious. And I created a little acronym called CARE Aggressors. The comments for aggressors. C A R E Right for care. Because if you want to care, don't do these aggressors. And the first one that a lot of people that consider themselves very nice and agreeable and collaborators they do is to complain. We love complaining. Some people I know, that's all they do. All they do is complain. And there's two levels of complaining. One is complaining behind one's back. That's bad. So if you're complaining in front of someone directly to them, that's already a level that's better. We're getting there. But it still can be seen as being aggressive. It's similar to blaming others. That's how it's perceived. We often do it because we're venting off our frustrations and anger. And it's a bonding exercise. Complaining about third party. People love to do that. The problem is that it's highly ineffective when it comes to a sort of communication because it eliminates safety in that conversation. So instead we need to replace. We need to replace that complaining with a ask. In the little exercise we did, you know, you made me, you know, feel upset or disrespected or whatever it is. Let's replace that with, hey, next time this situation happens, could you do this? Because then there is no blaming. There's no focus on that. Let me ask you something, Kwame. Don't think about a pink elephant. You've heard about this, right? This experiment?

Yeah, yeah. Great experience.

You're thinking about the pink elephant because people focus their attention on what you say. And so we need to use that to our advantage and assertiveness and focus people on what we want them to do. Communication is already hard enough. We don't want to make it harder by focusing them on what we don't like. Don't do this, Kwame. Don't hurt my feelings. You're going to hurt my feelings. That's what you're hearing. Hurt my feelings. Let's say no. Kwame, could you please make sure that I am included in all meetings regarding this topic going forward? Now I got you focused on what I really want. So it comes back to us knowing what we want from the other person and focusing on the request, not the complaints. That's the number one thing.

This is great. I love that because so many people complain. I mean, we just. It's Just a very human thing to do. But we don't take the time to consider the ramifications of perpetual complaining. And especially as it relates to negotiation, persuasion, difficult conversations. We don't recognize that complaining is incredibly unpersuasive. And we might say, well, Kwame, I'm not trying to persuade anybody in this moment. I'm just complaining, I'm just venting. That's great. But recognize if you get into that pattern and you're seen as somebody who is constantly complaining, then that is going to carry over into those difficult conversations when you are trying to be persuasive. So this is, this is really helpful. I like that. And when you go to the rest of the acronym, what are the other letters?

So the second one is A for assuming. We've talked about this one. Assumptions. It's a terrible thing that we do, we love doing. We make assumptions, we tell ourselves stories. Now there's two kind of assumptions that I like to talk about. The first one is around the other person. What their intentions are with us, what their expectations are of us, what they want from us, what they need from us, what their thoughts are, what their feelings are, what their boundaries are, what their likes and dislikes are, what their dreams are. All those things that if in, if we're in an interaction and there's something there that, that could impact us or we could impact them. If we don't clarify those assumptions generally we tend to make negative assumptions about them or they're bad and we're good. The second kind of assumption that's less common and affects people who don't speak up that much is that especially passive aggressive types as well is that we assume people know what we're thinking, what we're feeling, what we want from them, what our expectations are that we want a promotion, that we need to leave early to pick up our child, that we want this opportunity, that we want dinner at this time. We assume that people know our world and what are thinking and our feelings. And the worst part is when we, we assume, we don't even assume, we expect them to know. You should know what I need that I want this promotion. What are you thinking? You should know that I did this thing for you so you could do this thing for me. You should know that I want this, this opportunity. Come on. No, they shouldn't. They shouldn't. And, and that's a big problem. So when we assume our, we get frustrated, it causes misunderstanding and then that infects our non verbals and our body language and our micro expressions and Then suddenly there's. That's the message they're getting, by the way. The non verbal communication is way stronger than the verbal. So they're not hearing anything from us. But all, all of our non verbals, we're being vague and doing the look and doing all these weird things. And now there's inconsistency between verbal, non verbal, which causes distrust. And all of that is going to cause more issues. It's going to be seen as aggressor. People are going to feel unsafe around you and it's not going to collaborate. It's not going to contribute to open, safe collaboration, communication, problem solving and all the good stuff that can come from a sort of communication.

This is, this is very good. Because assumptions, that's something that I am prone to doing. When you have kids, they teach you about yourself in the most annoying ways. Sometimes Kai would get mad at me. He's like, why would you do this? You know, I want to do this. I was like, kai, how would I know that? How would I know you're mad at me for something I can't know? And then Whitney's just sitting there smirking, saying, kwame, you realize you do that to me all the time. Oh my gosh. So, yes, I think this is really powerful. And thus far, we're through C and A and everything's within our control. That's the beauty of this all.

Yes.

Oh man, this is great. Okay, so what's R and E?

R is resenting in silence, staying quiet. And it goes back to that problem where there's something we don't like and we just don't say anything. We don't talk about it, we don't bring it up. And again, all that does is come through in other ways in our behaviors and our actions and causes a lot of issues. I'm that person. I know all of this because I've gone through all of these experiences. I tend to. I tend to be quiet and resent and I tend to be passive aggressive. And so just by learning my own behaviors and realize I can, like you said, control them and change them. And the benefit of actually speaking up and saying, hey, now I know how to say that something's, I feel not feeling disrespected or something's disturbing me so I can talk about it versus before I didn't. And so now that I know how to do it, it's not so scary. And it eliminates this resentment problem because often when we resent in silence, we also explode. And I've exploded those Gigantic explosions. You just can't hold yourself anymore. How do you think that's going to be perceived? Aggressive? Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not good.

It's not good. It's not good. And I think we've all been there. We've all been there. And it's one of our other guests. I forget exactly the way that she described it. But essentially it's like people who are. Who struggle with assertiveness or they might be people pleasers or afraid of conflict. What they do is for. In their mind, for the sake of the relationship. I'm just going to let it go. It's really fear. But they try to valorize it by saying, I'm doing this for you. Evena. You don't know it, but you are annoying me to an incredible length. But I'm not even going to say anything. That's how much I love and care about you. And then seven months later, it's like, I've had it. Even though I've had it. And you're like, what's wrong? I thought everything was fine.

That.

That happens. That has happened to everybody.

Yeah. I mean, we're withdrawing information that is important for the other person to have a good relationship with us. We're. We're holding back from, from important facts. That's not being very considerate.

One of. One of my friends said setting boundaries is an act of love. You're teaching people how they can treat you. And you're absolutely right. We try to say holding back. We're doing it for other people. We're doing this for the peace, whatever. But really, it's withholding information that people need in order to perform at a higher level. You know, it's an. It's, it's selfish when it gets down to it, unfortunately. But again, all of these things are within our control. We can improve. They are.

They are. Yeah. And if it helps the audience to know as well, this is super common. I broke up with a friend because I was unable to set those boundaries. And there was a point of those so fed up that I didn't even want to see the face of her existence on my life anywhere else forever. And it's. It's terrible. It's all my fault. The person, she's not a bad person. She's a wonderful person. I just created that situation. So the fourth and the last one I want to share today around these aggressors is e for exposing others instead of saving face. I love this concept of saving face. It's really Asian in its origins and it's about helping people preserve their dignity and their self respect with regards to others. So you're preserving their social piece, you're preserving their dignity and their brand publicly facing. So you're still going to give them the negative feedback, you're still going to disagree with them, you're still going to fire them if you need to, you're still going to pass them over, you know, for the promotion or not give them that opportunity if you don't feel like they're the right person. But you're going to help them preserve their dignity in that process. That's the difference. And when we don't and we're not intentional, I've seen it so many times where a leader would highlight all of the deficiencies and problems with their team in front of his boss. That's a terrible time to do that. It felt like you have no emotional intelligence, no leadership capability. This is horrendous. And yet his boss didn't say anything about it. And it, you know, that cycle perpetuated. It's ugly. But that happens a lot. And often in some cultures that are very negative and aggressive. And so helping others intentionally think, okay, how can I help preserve this person if I'm going to disagree with them instead of saying, I disagree with you or you're wrong. Have you considered this? Okay, I'm concerned about this. What about this? There are other ways to bring things up without making other people look bad.

Absolutely. And I think our culture, and especially the media perpetuates this because we like to name shame and blame people. And that's the cool thing to do, you know. So for instance, you might have somebody who did something wrong. It's like we exposed this person. Look, shame him. Shame, right. That's what we do. Think about times. I can think about times where my friends just kind of relish the opportunity to say, ha, I got these receipts. I did. I did this little research here and I found them in this line. I'm going to call them out. It's like, well, what's your goal? Are you just trying to hurt people? Well, kudos. You're on the right track. But if you actually want to solve the problem and maintain the relationship, there has to be some kind of safe off ramp. If somebody figures out that they've done something wrong or they need to make an adjustment, that it takes a lot of humility to be able to own that, accept it and move on. It's still, it doesn't feel great when you know, you, you have to adjust or there are ways that you can improve. It doesn't feel good all the time, but we don't need to exacerbate the emotional distress that they're in in order to win this interaction.

Right.

And it's so powerful. And when you think about the saving face, we're recognizing that you don't need to strip somebody of their dignity and self respect in order to change their behavior. That's really what it comes down to.

That's what it is. Yes.

And let's wrap with a couple quick tips on how to be assertive and warm because we are close to the longest episode ever.

Oh, my gosh. I'll be brief. I'll be brief. All right. So do the detoxing of those threats from the care. Right? So instead of complaining, asking for what you want, instead of exposing saving face, instead of resenting in silence, make sure that you talk about things in the right way. And then instead of assumptions, clarifying things for people, explaining your side, your perspective, and then help people share their side as well before making any assumptions or telling ourselves any stories. Then comes conviction. And leaders love conviction. This is one of the top things that I get. The feedback that I get from senior leaders is like, I wish my team spoke to me with more conviction. And there are three elements to conviction. And conviction is very different from confidence. Confidence is overrated. You don't need confidence to be assertive. You don't need confidence to have conviction. Forget the confidence that comes with time. Let's bring in conviction and what you have to say. That comes with three elements. The first one is being definitive. Leaders love definitive statements. Definitive people. And this is about removing hesitation from our verbal and non verbal language so that we come across as credible and having authority even if we're not 100% sure about our statement. Still be definitive. Very important if you want people to be heard. If people, if the listener wants to be heard and understood, we have to be definitive. And that's something that I'm still working on to this day. I don't tend to be definitive. I tend to hesitate. I have a quick example that I want to share with your audience, Kwame, around the definitiveness.

Yeah.

Oh, let me share it here. Let me know if you could capture some of the hesitation in what I'm going to say. You know, I'm sorry to bother you at this late time, so I just wanted to. I wanted to come earlier and talk to you, but my dog got sick and my kids are going nuts all around the house today because the teacher didn't show up, and I had to deal with entertaining the kids all day long. And by the way, here's some freshly baked cookies I made this weekend. They're chocolate fudge cookies. They're delicious. Try one. All right. So is it okay if I share my view on this, on this project's goals? I just wanted to say that I have a different perspective on it, and it may be wrong, but I just. It's just an idea, and I thought I might as well get it out there. I think that we could prioritize this project. You know, let's go ahead with the project because it will help her brand grow. This makes sense, doesn't it?

Oh, my God.

How does that sound? Kwame, would you hire me?

Listen, whatever it is you're asking for. No, but I'll take the cookies.

Those sound delicious. Lots of problems.

Lots of problems. I tried to take as many notes as I could, but, I mean, the whole thing was just a problem. I mean, you started off with three words, slash sounds that did nothing. Like there were nothing, you know, was the start. The entire thing sounded like an apology, like you were apologizing for, like, being there, like, existing in my presence, you know, and that's. And you came with a peace offering. Like, I'm so sorry for being here. Here's a sacrifice in your honor for my existence. It was bad. And I think the thing that's so powerful about this is that even though it's really funny, we can see elements of this. They're going to be threads that people can focus in on here. Let me tell you, if this is a negotiation situation and you are up against an expert negotiator, in my mind, everything you're saying, I'm saying the opposite. If you're saying, oh, I don't think we can go any higher, no, let me say it the right way. It's going to be hard for me to go higher. Yeah, you're going higher. That's what I'm thinking in my head. It's like, yeah, we probably shouldn't. Yeah, we're going to do this. You know, it's you. You can sense that weakness. And just the tone of how you bring yourself into the conversation is going to be really, really persuasive. So even the uptalk. Is it okay if we do this? Even the things that were, like, a definitive. Like, should have been a definitive statement. They were formed as questions, like, is it okay if I proceed? It was almost as if you were asking for permission with every sentence that you were making. Making and it just. It doesn't. Like, the substance that comes next doesn't even matter anymore.

Exactly, exactly. And I love how you put it. The whole thing was a huge apology, and it showed that I was incredibly uncomfortable. And by the way, I used to be like this. So I can relate to that, own that example. Because nowadays, if someone has that attitude with me, I actually tend to my natural self is to almost exploit it a little bit. And I have to control myself because there's just a side of us, there's a powerful person, a less powerful person in a conversation, and that plays out. It's so instinctive.

100%. The only options, really, if we're just thinking almost like a visceral human response, it's either pity or exploitation. Right. Oh, my gosh, I am so sorry. Okay. I'll say. That's not the kind of nurturing response you're typically going to get in the business world. So it's going to be exploitation, Right. Like you said, you have to catch yourself. If somebody comes to you like that limbic response, that animalistic, primal response within us, like, yeah, I'm going to take those cookies. Right? You have to turn that off. And I think this is something that's not said enough. The way that we approach some of these conversations can actually invite aggression from other people.

Yes. Hesitation, overly apologetic, oh, I don't belong here. Invites aggression from other people. Very true.

Yeah.

All right.

And number two, two is I call.

This the three Ds of conviction. Being definitive. Being direct is the second one. Saying what you mean and meaning what you say. Being direct leaders love us. To be direct. And in assertiveness is very easy. It was a very easy script. I used that script on you, Kwame, on our little example that we did earlier, which is the desk script, most common script. In assertive communication, you describe the situation factually in a way that the other person would agree with you. There's no emotions involved. Then you express how that impacted you, maybe hurt my reputation, my team's reputation, or, you know, it made me feel this way. Third is you make your request, right? So you ask for what you want, and that's the S part. That's the specify your request. And this is the opposite of complaining. This makes sure that you actually ask for something or communicate something, what you want the other person to do differently or think differently. And finally, you conclude with the consequences. If that person chooses to invite, to accept your invitation to change, then what's the consequence? What's the positive or negative consequence? Usually we go with positive, you know, that's going to help us be more productive, help her collaborate better, have good working relationship going forward, whatever that is. If you're a manager, the employee is not doing well. You already gave them a few feedback loops. You can say, hey, this, this is going to affect your performance evaluation. That's a negative consequence.

Close.

Be grateful, thankful and all that good stuff.

This is so good. Even if you see all of these notes that I've taken just this whole time, my hand is going to start hurting. I'm going to be injured for the next podcast. This is great. I really appreciate you taking the time and this episode was exceptional. And thanks for doing the role play on the fly unscripted. That was a lot of fun. And so before you go, remind the listeners about you how they can get in touch with you and your new B2B opportunities too. I think that's big.

Yes. So all my trainings and a B2B work, but also free trainings for the audience are available on my website, Assertive Way dot com. There's a freebie pages, there's the service page. I also have a podcast, Speak youk Mind unapologetically, with over 200 episodes. And yeah, I did. I did a TED Talk recently as well about psychological safety. So how to create our own psychological safety. So that's also available on the website.

Oh, I love that. Everybody, we're going to link to everything in the description of this episode and make sure you check out Evna's podcast. Really, really great. All right, so Evna, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming on the pod. It was really great having you. Can't wait to have you back on.

Thank you so much. Kwame.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

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