The social nature of business organizations determines that interpersonal relationships are essential to achieve the group's objectives, and for this reason, it is unavoidable that managers develop the skills that allow them to communicate assertively and effectively with their collaborators.
However, when the perception of employees is deepened, in most cases it can be seen that they consider that communication with their boss does not meet their expectations, since they do not feel heard, they are not given credit their ideas, their suggestions are not put into practice and they are not given a greater participation in solving the organization's problems. That is, in more specialized terms, there is an assertive and effective communication between them.
Achieving assertive and effective communication is a permanent challenge for managers who seek to have a team of collaborators fully committed to the purposes of the organization, now how to achieve effective communication? The results of research carried out in different types of companies reveal that the greatest difficulties in achieving this objective lie in more than 80.0% of cases in the managers themselves, due to their lack of knowledge about the communication process, its components and interactive dynamics. thereof.
Ignorance of the elements of the communication process and the synergies that exist between them, inexorably leads to the appearance of so-called "noises" in communication, which make it less effective in transmitting the information that you want to send, and on the other hand, most of the time, it generates discomfort in the interlocutor, not feeling heard and being excluded from the dynamics of the process, reducing it to a simple information collector.
Regardless of the context where it takes place, human communication is always an interactive process, where the roles of transmitter and listener are alternately exchanged, thus establishing a dynamic, whose fluidity and quality depend on assertiveness achieved by those who participate in the process. In interpersonal communication, a group of psychological and social competences intervene, the proper management of which gives it the necessary assertiveness and effectiveness to achieve the organization's objectives.
Assertiveness in interpersonal communication is manifested when people are able to establish their points of view and criteria, without prejudice to the points of view and criteria of their interlocutor. The concept of assertiveness is based on the fact that everyone has basic interests and rights that must be respected. In a way, the sense of assertiveness underlies the thoughts of the Benemérito de Las Américas, Benito Juárez, who says: "Respect for the rights of others is peace."
An assertive person perceives and manages his own feelings as they appear, without denying his own right to feel and express this or that emotion or not expressing them if this denies him rights or goes against the interests of the other. Consequently, the tension that is generated in any communication process remains within a normal and constructive level. Assertiveness in communication, achieves an approach through which people can stay in a dependent or interdependent position, being relaxed, making eye contact with their interlocutor and speaking in a clear and sustained tone.
The assertive manager is capable of balancing power and allows all those involved in the communication process to maintain their own rights, respecting their interests. The main objective of assertiveness is to achieve fluid, adequate and consistent communication with others, respecting their interests and rights. A manager who wants to be assertive in communication with his collaborators:
- It examines its own interests and determines to what extent they must be respected. It determines the form of behavior of its interlocutor, by observing its behavior. It controls its feelings in front of its interlocutor to avoid non-assertive or aggressive behaviors. It is capable of putting itself in the place of the other and give him an assertive treatment, even if he does not behave properly. Maintains a high level of self-esteem.
Achieving assertiveness in communication is closely related to the level of development of an extremely important emotional competence: empathy, defining itself as such, the ability of the human being to put himself in the place of another; to perceive what the other feels or experiences at a given moment, and in some cases until what he is thinking.
Empathy therefore requires developing the ability to pay attention to another person, since this ability will allow them to realize what the other person is actually transmitting through their facial and body expression and posture (extra-verbal language)., his words and even the tone of voice and his clothing. All this information makes those who have the capacity for empathy know the situation in which other people find themselves and to feel what they are going through.
The development of this ability can be unconscious. Sometimes it is easy to realize what the other person is going through, because these people have probably gone through similar experiences or in their case the same only with other situations. And in this way they quickly identify the “common characteristics” that perfectly describe this situation. Of course, everything varies and is never the same. The empathic person is able to realize that, for example, some comment that his has bothered his interlocutor, even if she feels otherwise.
Even when they don't do it consciously, most people can have an empathetic response; and in the face of physical damage to another person, she can even feel her pain and understand it. Some people may even share it, relating empathy to compassion, because it takes a certain degree of empathy to feel compassion for others. Empathy allows her to feel her pain, suffering and therefore feel sorry for someone who is suffering and want to help you.
Detail and observation are basic tools to be able to be an empathetic person; if you pay full attention, to the messages that the other person transmits, trying to put yourself in their shoes and "read" what they feel. But, if while talking to someone, you are more aware of your own words and what will be said later, what is around you or certain concerns that surround your mind, all this will greatly limit the ability to be empathetic and will significantly weigh down the effectiveness of the communication process.
The ability to be assertive will be greater when the manager has properly developed his emotional competencies, especially: self-knowledge, self-regulation and empathy. Self-knowledge will provide the leader with the ability to recognize their own emotions and their effects, the recognition of their own strengths, their competencies and their limits, and their degree of self-esteem. Developing self-regulation will provide you with tools for self-control, to maintain your standards of honesty, how to apply persuasion tactics, and being open to new ideas and novel approaches. As empathy, it will encourage you to meet others, perceive the feelings of others and help others develop and grow, both emotionally and professionally.
Finally, assertiveness in communication has a direct impact on its effectiveness, understood as such, that the message is interpreted correctly, and a response is obtained that meets the expectations of both in a reasonable measure. Communication is effective when the objectives pursued with it are achieved, expressed generally in performance standards that reveal a high level of commitment to the organization and recognition of leadership, expressed in terms of job satisfaction and the existence of an organizational climate that favors the professional growth of the collaborators and the success of the organization.
In order to achieve this purpose, assertiveness is a permanent challenge for leadership, if you intend to have a team of committed, proactive and happy collaborators. The communicating leader must achieve assertiveness through the permanent development of his emotional competences and the conscious application of these, to the achievement of an effective and complete communication, that takes into account the individual differences of his collaborators taking advantage of them, so that they apply all their professional and emotional potential, to achieve the success of the organization.
On the contrary, a study carried out with 117 Cuban executives from the province of Matanzas, reflects that there is no adequate development of the emotional competencies involved in assertiveness in the communication processes with their collaborators, as observed in the following graphic:
Assertive communication
*Source: self made
As can be seen in the previous graph, in all the emotional competencies evaluated, the majority proportion is located in the Incipient and Limited categories, so by matching them with a scale of 2 to 4, an average value of the development of the Emotional competencies of 3.0, which reveals an incipient average development of emotional competencies in the managers studied. 67.41% of the managers evaluated were located in the referred categories and only 32.49% have an adequate or high development of said competences.
All of the above reveals that, for the most part, the managers studied do not possess the basic competences to develop effective communication and use assertiveness as an effective tool for leadership, for the formation of successful work teams. It should be noted that in 100.0% of the cases the managers evaluated were graduates of university degrees, which shows that theoretical knowledge and technical skills are not sufficient to achieve the necessary skills for good interpersonal communication with their collaborators..
It is true that emotional competencies and their development are a relatively new topic in the business sphere, especially in Cuban companies, which determines that the managers evaluated have not consciously worked on their development, and in most of the cases, have not received information about it.
On the other hand, although assertiveness is a skill that largely depends on the level reached in the incorporation of the aforementioned emotional competences, there are other factors that influence assertive behavior in interpersonal relationships in the sphere of a business organization, such as as: the personality of both the manager and his interlocutor and the managerial experience of whoever exercises leadership.
According to the Blatto (2013) criterion, subjects can be typified taking into account what their dominant mental model is. According to the above, it suggests four models:
- People fundamentally oriented to action.People oriented to methods.People who are basically oriented to ideas.People whose orientation is directed to people.
This typology applies equally to managers and collaborators, and according to the criterion of the author of reference, communication would be much easier, assertive and effective, if the interlocutor were treated according to their personal model of mental orientation. This confronts us with the need that managers must know each of their collaborators in depth, which implies acquiring skills to temper their interpersonal relationships, to the orientation of each pattern of mental orientation.
To achieve this, managers must emphasize the responses that correspond to the mental pattern of their interlocutor, during the communication process; removing the effect of your personal perception; keeping in mind that each person needs their criteria to be respected and trying to understand the collaborator's ideas, so that they can build a scenario of common interest for the negotiation.
This implies the incorporation of competences such as: observation, active listening and the handling of negotiation techniques. The development of these skills will complement the effect of the emotional competencies already analyzed, achieving a substantial increase in assertiveness and effectiveness in communication.
The results of the study used as a reference also reveal insufficiencies in the training of the cadres studied in these areas of competence, as observed in the following table:
| Evaluated Competencies | Level of Development Achieved | |||
| Incipient | Limited | Suitable | Tall | |
| Observation Skills | 71 | 3. 4 | 7 | 0 |
| Active Listening Skills | 54 | 35 | 12 | eleven |
| Negotiation Skills | 42 | 2. 3 | 33 | 14 |
*Source: self made
It is evident that most of the managers evaluated have not achieved a level of incorporation of these skills, which encourages them to maintain assertive communication with their collaborators, which together with the insufficiencies in the development of the necessary emotional skills reveals the existence of difficulties in effective communication with your employees. To verify the above, the study explored the perception of workers regarding the quality of their communication with their bosses, obtaining that in cases where there was an incipient or limited development of all the competences involved in the ability to Being assertive, employees perceived communication with their bosses as poor or poor, with a standard deviation of 0.0347.
The analysis of the influence of management experience on the perception of workers about the quality of communication with their bosses revealed that managers with more years of managerial experience are able to communicate more effectively with their collaborators, such as is revealed in the following graph:
| Evaluated Aspect | Less than a year | Between 5 and 10 | Between 11 and 20 | More than 20 |
| Management experience | 10 | Four. Five | 36 | twenty-one |
| Percent of workers with a positive perception of communication | 3.92 | 6.79 | 48.12 | 41.17 |
*Source: self made
Undoubtedly, the experiential experiences of managers with a longer management time, contribute communication skills, making it more effective, such that workers perceive it as positive; But from the point of view of human resource management, it is extremely inefficient to wait for what the time spent in management tasks can contribute in this regard. It is therefore essential to foresee the training of these competencies in human capital development plans, so that a manager preferably incorporates them before assuming a management position, or at least in their first years, in such a way that are fully developed in the peak performance stage of their careers, so that they become catalysts for their personal success as a manager and,therefore, that of your organization.
In conclusion, the challenge of assertiveness and effectiveness in communication, imposes on managers more professional preparation, incorporating all the technical and emotional skills necessary to achieve assertive performance in their interaction with collaborators, thereby strengthening work in team and collective commitment to the goals of the organization. As an additional dividend, assertiveness is a universal competence for interpersonal relationships, which, once incorporated, is applicable in any social context, providing you with more lasting, pleasant relationships enriched by mutual respect and understanding.
Bibliography
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Next, the expert Lina María Pérez explains what assertive communication is, its benefits and how it can be applied in the company, a very instructive talk to complement learning on this interesting topic. (3 videos, 19 minutes)
