Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm Helen and this is the squiggly careers podcast. Every week we talk about a different topic to do with work and share some ideas and tools that we hope will help all of us navigate our squiggly careers without a bit more confidence and control. And we recently launched a new newsletter called Squiggly Careers in Action. So it's a weekly newsletter.

We put the links to the podcast. We've got your borrowed brilliance, like insights from things there,

it's been reading and watching. Helens how-to, practical tools, loads of free resources. So make

sure that you sign up for that if you want to get a weekly dose of career inspiration. And also

subscribe wherever you listen

or watch to the Scooply Crows podcast. And so today we're going to be talking about five assertiveness

watchouts and what to do instead. We know assertiveness is a topic that always feels relevant. I think

it's one of those skills that we'd perhaps all like to be a bit better at. There are usually some specific

situations I think we can spot where we think, oh, I wish I was just a bit more assertive then,

but it can feel quite hard to make happen or to know how to do that in a way that feels

like normal and natural for you. So you're not like trying to pretend or doing something

that just feels really awkward or uncomfortable.

I always think as well, it's easy to assume that assertiveness is one of those things that you're either good at or you're not, you know, versus a skill that we can all learn to do a bit better

in the moments that matter. I look at some people and I think, well, they're just naturally assertive.

They're just an assertiveness person. It's much harder for me. So I like what we're

going to talk about today. I think makes assertiveness very practical, very doable for most people at work.

So we'll briefly talk about what we think assertiveness is, so we sort of know what success looks like.

Perhaps some people that we admire that are sort of assertive and what can we what can we learn from them and then we're going to spend most the time on the five watchouts and then kind of the ideas for action so when you think about

assertiveness i think maybe a common mistake or a myth is assertiveness only shows up in what we say

so i think often the first examples that we think of is you you know, in a meeting, in a presentation,

you've got other people and you're having to talk, you're having to say something, and you think,

I want my communication in those moments to be more assertive. And that's definitely true.

...