In Search of the Right Touch: Interpersonal Assertiveness in Organizational Life

Recent evidence suggests that many organizational members and leaders are seen as underor overassertive by colleagues, suggesting that having the ‘‘right touch’’ with interpersonal assertiveness is a meaningful and widespread challenge. In this article, I review emerging work on the curvilinear relation between assertiveness and effectiveness, including evidence from both qualitative descriptions of coworkers and ratings of colleagues and leaders. I discuss mediators and context effects and also explore why unhelpfully low and high levels of interpersonal assertiveness may emerge and persist. I draw implications for interventions as well as future research. KEYWORDS—assertiveness; leadership; organizational; individual differences What is it that good organizational leaders and effective work colleagues get right? And what do terrible bosses and dysfunctional coworkers get wrong? Over a century of scholarship, the number of empirically grounded answers to these questions has steadily multiplied (see, e.g., Hogan & Kaiser, 2005; Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002; Peterson, Smith, Martorana, & Owens, 2003; Zaccaro, 2007). The odds of succeeding in organizational life and leadership are higher for someone who is motivated, organized, and competent enough to get relevant tasks done. In addition, the odds are higher for someone who is socially and emotionally intelligent enough to read others, identify and leverage social networks, form and maintain relationships, and influence stakeholders (cf. Goleman, 2006). One factor that has been largely missing, or perhaps miscast, in this scholarly picture is the role of interpersonal assertiveness. In recent work, the place of assertiveness has been coming into focus: For various reasons, some managers and colleagues seem to push too hard whereas others do not push hard enough. Having the ‘‘right touch’’ with assertiveness may be more important— and elusive—than has been previously understood. This article reviews emerging work on interpersonal assertiveness, including new evidence on its prevalence as a challenge for managers and workers. I describe mediators and situational effects as well as recent research tracing individual differences in assertiveness to interpersonal expectancies, a link that enriches our causal models and also points toward potential practical interventions. INTERPERSONAL ASSERTIVENESS A Central Challenge My definition of assertiveness reflects everyday usage of the term, especially work colleagues’ descriptions of one another and their behavior. I take assertiveness to imply a spectrum of interpersonal behavior that emerges when two or more parties’ interests or positions are in, or seem to be in, conflict—ranging from avoidance or passivity to accommodation and yielding to firm pursuit of personal objectives to aggression and combativeness. Thus, assertiveness reflects how much a person is seen as speaking up for, defending, and pursuing her personal interests. Recent work has highlighted how common the challenge of interpersonal assertiveness is in organizational life, as well as how this challenge has been easy to miss in organizational research (for a integrative review, see Ames, 2008a). Ames and Flynn (2007) studied nearly a thousand comments made about MBA students by their former coworkers, who answered separate open-ended questions about the students’ strengths and weaknesses as colleagues. Strength comments were filled with references to much-studied topics, such as conscientiousness (54% of cases) and intelligence (38%); fewer cases (34%) highlighted assertiveness. However, in comments about weaknesses, assertiveness was by far the dominant theme, clearly featured in some 52% of reports—more than conscientiousness (18%) and intelligence (1%) combined. A similar pattern emerged in a subsequent study of subordinates’ perceptions of more senior managers: Although assertiveness rarely appeared as a theme in comments about manager strengths, it was the most prevalent theme in comments about shortcomings (Ames & Flynn, 2007). Another recent study asked over 270 professionals to describe Address correspondence to Daniel Ames, Columbia Business School, 707 Uris Hall, 3022 Broadway, New York, NY 10027; e-mail: [email protected]. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume 17—Number 6 381 Copyright r 2008 Association for Psychological Science the worst and best leaders for whom they had ever worked (Ames, 2007). Parallel to the results based on weakness comments, assertiveness was a clear theme in nearly half the descriptions of worst leaders (more prevalent than other dimensions, including supportiveness, communication, and integrity), though it appeared in only a quarter of best-leader descriptions (far less often than supportiveness, communication, and integrity). Had these studies focused on the strengths of colleagues and descriptions of great leaders, assertiveness would have been easy to dismiss. One reason for this asymmetry—with assertiveness a major theme in ineffective but not effective management—may be the fact that, unlike many other leadership qualities, assertiveness was seen as a shortcoming in both directions: too much and too little. Indeed, in the first study noted above, comments about assertiveness as a weakness were split almost equally between overassertiveness (48%) and underassertiveness (52%). Moderate assertiveness may be like a causal background condition or a necessary but insufficient cause: When in place, it is unremarkable, and onlookers’ attention is drawn to other vivid and seemingly sufficient factors, including linear predictors of effectiveness such as conscientiousness. However, when assertiveness registers as too low or high, it may dominate attention, eclipsing other qualities and interrupting effectiveness. A Curvilinear Link with Multiple Mediators These results suggest that assertiveness has an inverted-Ushaped relationship with effectiveness. Research using continuous measures of assertiveness and outcomes yields results consistent with this (Ames, 2007). In a study contrasting reports on the worst and best leaders with whom informants had worked, the distribution of assertiveness differed markedly: Few best leaders appear to possess extreme levels of assertiveness, whereas worst leaders were more common at both the low and high ends of the assertiveness spectrum (see Fig. 1). Other evidence comes from reports across a wide range of managers, attempting to predict their effectiveness. Here, ratings of assertiveness have shown a curvilinear relation with various dependent measures, including leadership effectiveness and expected future success (e.g., Ames & Flynn, 2007). Both leaders comparatively low in assertiveness and those comparatively high in assertiveness were rated worse than those in the middle range (Fig. 1). How are low and high levels of assertiveness harmful? The impact of assertiveness can be decomposed into two domains: instrumental and relational outcomes. Prior work suggests that increasing interpersonal assertiveness has a positive effect on instrumental outcomes (e.g., completing tasks, securing resources) but a negative effect on social outcomes (e.g., cultivating rapport, sustaining trust). This pair of effects may imply that, as assertiveness increases, gains in the instrumental domain could offset losses in the social domain, and overall effectiveness would somehow remain constant rather than show a curvilinear effect. However, work on negativity effects (e.g., Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001) suggests that onlookers weigh losses more heavily than gains. At low levels of assertiveness, coworkers may focus on a colleague’s ‘‘instrumental impotence’’ more than on her social achievements. At high levels of assertiveness, coworkers may attend more to a colleague’s ‘‘social insufferability’’ than to her instrumental success. This prediction was borne out in a study of subordinate ratings of leaders (Ames & Flynn, 2007). Mediation analyses showed that, at low levels of assertiveness, instrumental outcomes (‘‘able to get his/her way and accomplish work goals’’) but not social ones (‘‘able to build positive relationships and trust’’) accounted for the link between assertiveness and effectiveness. At high levels of assertiveness, social outcomes Interpersonal Assertiveness Interpersonal Assertiveness R at ed E ffe ct iv en es s as C ol le ag ue o r Le ad er Assertiveness Predicting Effectiveness S ha re o f C as es Distribution of Assertiveness Among Worst and Best Leaders Best leaders Worst leaders Fig. 1. Distribution of assertiveness among leaders rated worst and best by coworkers (left graph; based on Ames, 2007) and assertiveness as a predictor of effectiveness (right graph; based on Ames & Flynn, 2007). Ineffective leaders are more likely to display extreme low or high levels of assertiveness; moderate interpersonal assertiveness is associated with higher levels of effectiveness and more effective leadership. 382 Volume 17—Number 6 Interpersonal Assertiveness