How to Avoid Being Submissive – a Management Skills Training Course

What you'll take away from this course on how to avoid being submissive

You'll be able to stand up to people successfully without being aggressive.  You’ll be more assertive, which is a way of making people take you seriously without being either aggressive or submissive.  Of course, being assertive calls for courage as well as skill, but we'll help you find the honest words you can use, and that will help you find the courage. 

How the skills you'll practise on this course will enable you to avoid being submissive

You'll be able to avoid being submissive when you've learned how to give honest voice to your own feelings, even if this isn't what you're in the habit of doing. On the course you'll get plenty of practice and coaching at saying things like:-

• “I feel bad about not supporting you, and I mean you no disrespect, but I'm not at all comfortable with what you’re asking me to. I believe it risks damaging our relationship with this customer”.

Usually if you stand up to people in a frank and assertive but not disrespectful way they'll take you seriously. But let's suppose they don't. Suppose they say:-

• “I don’t care how you feel – you're going to do what I want anyway”.

Once again we encourage you to trust you feelings and put them frankly into words:-

• “Now I'm even more worried because you don't seem to be taking the risk to the business seriously”.

Of course this approach doesn't work every time, but nine times out of ten it brings them to their senses.

Points to notice about this way of avoiding being submissive

The key to it lies in being able to put your feelings into words. The words we'll teach you to use will be very precise and honest. They'll include three elements:-

1. First, describe simply and accurately what feeling you are experiencing (e.g., "I feel bad", "I'm not at all comfortable").
2. Second, say precisely what the feeling is about (e.g., "about not supporting you", "about what you're asking me to do").
3. Third, give the reason why you feel like this, in other words, what really matters to you (e.g., "because I believe it'll damage our relationship with the customer", "because I can see we're taking a big risk if I do this").

Feelings are facts, and you're the world's top authority on the subject of how you feel. No one can contradict you. So one of the results and benefits of speaking in this way is that it makes argument extremely unlikely. You can speak like this with honest conviction and people will take you seriously. 

As you practise this approach to avoiding being submissive and to standing firm on your beliefs and convictions, your confidence and assertiveness will increase.

What's difficult about this way of avoiding being submissive?

The big difficulty most people encounter in being assertive and avoiding being submissive is that they're not used to putting their feelings into words. It's not that you can't do it, but that you've been brought up or conditioned to avoid doing it. You may have an unconscious fear of doing it. You may have carried with you all your life some wrong assumptions about the best way to handle feelings, for example, that expressing feelings is a sign of weakness, or that people will take advantage of you if you do. If so, the Skills with People course will develop your emotional intelligence, and help you lay aside old mental habits that are getting in the way.

What you'll discover on the course is that far from being a sign of weakness, your feelings are the source of your personal power, authority and integrity, that you are perfectly able to express them, and that when you do people will take you seriously. Once you've mastered this idea there'll be no more need to be submissive when what someone else wants you to do goes against what matters to you.

More reasons why you might benefit from this training in how to avoid being submissive

• You'd love to be able to stand up to people instead of caving in.
• There are times when you need to take a stand, but you don't know what words to use.
• People have told you you should speak up more at meetings, but you find it very difficult.
• You need to find a way to stop being submissive.
• Sometimes you have very strong feelings about what's going on at work, but you don't think people will take any notice of your feelings.