I’ve been a communication skills coach for over five years now and heard some scary stories of conflict management trainers opting for the flight response in conflict and assertive skills trainers unable to assert themselves.

Think about it. If you cannot teach yourself assertiveness, how can you expect another person to learn from you?

So the first lesson is to make yourself assertive in communication and behavior.

The Best Model to Speed Up Learning

The next step is to provide the passive, assertive, and aggressive model. Draw three columns with “Passive”, “Assertive”, and “Aggressive” headings.

Under each heading, write down elements that describe each type of communication and behavior. I also encourage you to provide examples.

Under the “Passive” heading, you could have:
- A flight response (withdraw and run away)
- Avoid eye contact
- Often a loss for you and win for them as you avoid having your needs met
- Say nothing