Healthy Assertion: A Paradigm Shift

The feedback I most get from teams when I deliver this course is that it creates clearer communication, stronger team cohesion and improved decision making. So if your team members are willing to integrate and practice, you’ll generate effective collaboration and a smoother workflow, strengthen relationships, improve team dynamics and greater clarity will lead to a healthier workplace.  When you hit bumps, you’ll be better at navigating through them with efficiency and heart.

Teams and Team Leaders learn how to use assertiveness (rather than fear it or wield it like a sword) to build trust, reduce ambiguity, and that in itself boosts team morale. A team that’s high in morale is more engaged and motivated, they are healthier and better able to navigate challenges that I like to say are worthy of their life. Challenges that stretch and grow them in super healthy ways.

I was working with a team and had this sense that everyone was “walking on eggshells” with each other, when we unpacked it together we uncovered leaky boundaries, deep narratives and past experiences that had some of the more influential members of the team unable to assert themselves. Instead they avoided difficult topics altogether. The team learned it wasn’t safe to speak up amongst other things. Acting on a hunch I explored their definition of healthy assertion. It was a great session, when I left I sat down and wrote out the course based on the steps we took to get where we got – a team who built trust through their disclosure and redefined their own relationship to assertion.