What is Assertiveness?
The ability to express your thoughts without sacrificing your rights sounds simple, but in practice lies at the heart of many communication and interpersonal struggles in the workplace. Assertiveness awareness and training was once at the forefront of organisational psychology research and despite falling out of vogue still offers itself as a valuable tool for any employee.
You’ve probably heard of emotional regulation or self-regulation – the ability to exert control over one’s own emotional state. Self-regulation might involve rethinking or reappraising challenging situations to reduce anger or anxiety, masking disappointment or sadness, or focusing on reasons to feel happy or calm. Adults are expected to behave in a manner that is socially acceptable, so the ability to manage one’s own emotions is very important. People with poor emotional regulation may find themselves saying or doing things they later regret, which can have a negative impact on both personal wellbeing and social relationships. While regulating your own emotions appropriately is essential for healthy functioning, regulating the emotions of others can be just as important in building strong, positive relationships.
You have a complex people problem in your workplace that you do not know what to do about. You are sure you do not have all the facts. You just know that unacceptable behaviours are occurring beyond the measurement of your existing systems checks and balances. You decide to get in an organisational psychologist to conduct a workplace investigation so you can understand the problem, and get guidance on what to do with the present situation, and how to ensure you can fix tour culture and systems to prevent it occurring again..
You would choose an organisational psychologist for a workplace investigation because you want someone who will work sensitively and ethically with your organisation (and budget) to investigate and develop an industrially robust report. And someone who will ask intelligent questions, and not make the problem worse.
An organisational psychologist will design a process that will engage staff in the investigation process and deliver a quality report that includes recommendations for workplace change, and not simply the finding of innocence or guilt.
Again and again, teachers, professors and anyone else in the teaching professions will tell you that IQ is not the only difference between their best and worst students. Increasingly, psychologists are finding that the one characteristic that is emerging as a significant predictor of success is not social intelligence, or good looks, or physical health, or IQ. It’s grit. It’s been said that grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint. But what is grit? And how can it be nurtured?
“Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals,” says American psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth, who currently spearheads some important studies into the role grit plays in success. “Grit is having stamina,” she continues. “Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality.”
Duckworth herself is the first to say that the essence of grit remains elusive. But the five common characteristics of grit listed below can make things clearer. How do you measure up?
Change management is a systematic approach for managing the transition or transformation of an organisation’s goals, processes, or technologies. The purpose of change management is to implement strategies to carry out, control, and help people adapt to change. Change management models provide a framework for changing attitudes and behaviours alongside processes and equipment.
There are several models that help us think about change. Two popular models are:
For some people anxiety is a daily experience, whereas for others it can be situational or occasional. Whatever your experience of anxiety, it helps to have a toolkit of skills and behaviours that you use to moderate your experience of anxiety.
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