Coaching Yourself to Leadership: Five Key Strategies for Becoming an Integrated Leader

Managing “No”

Being assertive also means that you don’t get negatively influenced by the word “no.” Assertive communicators don’t get frightened when people say “no,” nor are they afraid of saying “no” to others.

There’s a great story that I tell over and over in my workshops about a Texas Instruments vice president who didn’t take “no” for an answer. Earlier in her career with the company, her business unit started to decline sharply. She saw the writing on the wall and began asking senior management to move her out of the unit and into a division that would not only benefit from her talents and skills, but that would also keep her career alive within the company. Senior managers in her division, however, were more focused on what was happening ...