How To Be Assertive and Speak Powerfully (Don't Be too Polite)

hi everybody in this video I'm going to tell you how to speak powerfully and assertively I'm Bruce Lambert from how communication works calm thanks for joining us let's get started in the last video I talked about politeness specifically I talked about the relationship between power and politeness and social distance and politeness and ranking and politeness but I just want to focus on power today so the general rule in politeness is the more powerful the speaker is in relation to the listener the less politeness they have to use and there's an inverse version of that rule

that is the less polite someone is with you the more powerfully you'll perceive them because we can read back through these expectations about power and politeness so if someone has uses a lot of politeness to us they're being very deferential and we can tell that they're they're bowing down to us with their words they are deferring to us so the example I often use is that in Japanese culture for example people actually bow people actually bow to one another as a show of ritual politeness ritual deference so in the United States we don't bow to

one another we show deference in other ways we show deference verbally by saying please by hedging by beating around the bush by being indirect and doing all sorts of this other verbal deference but nevertheless we are showing deference this was driven home to me in a study I did of pharmacist trying to talk to physicians I gave pharmacists a task where they had to recommend a drug to a physician who had made a medication error and they had to recommend an alternative and most of the pharmacists simply wouldn't do it they were to use to

deferring to physicians so instead of saying I recommend drug X they said would you maybe think about trying drug X so they say drug Y might not be such a good choice so they would do all these play all these games deference games to show their deference to the physician in effect they were bowing to the physician but bowing verbally not bowing physically like the Japanese might bow to show deference so the key to speaking powerfully ironically don't be too polite politeness is perceived as deference politeness is a form of verbal ritual deference so assertiveness

is the opposite of that and power is the opposite of that one of the ways we show powers by not showing verbal deference not being too polite so when you have a request to make or an offer to make or anything we have to say something if you want to be perceived as assertive and powerful the situation don't use too much politeness be direct say this directly as you possibly can that means no hedging no indirectness no beating around the bush no apologies as direct as you possibly can think about the thing you have to

say and think about saying it as directly the most unvarnished unadorned way that you can that is the most powerful way you can say it because the less politeness you use the more powerful more powerful you'll be perceived because people know the rule about power and politeness so when you refuse to use politeness people will assume you must be a powerful person who doesn't need to use politeness now the only caveat I'll make about this is if you're with someone who's genuinely much more powerful than you who is institutionally much more powerfully than you like

if you're in the military I don't recommend doing this to your superiors if you're in another situation where the other person is is institutionally and officially much more powerful than you more powerful than you you have to be careful about not showing them proffered proper deference but in situations where it's not clear who has the official power you want to assert your power then do not use verbal deference that means don't be too polite doesn't mean be rude or profane or obscene or inappropriate it just means no hedging no indirectness no beating around the bush

no apologies so try it politeness is the opposite of deference politeness in some ways it's the opposite of power so if you want to be verbally assertive and verbally powerful don't be too polite okay you heard it here first like subscribe come on over to how communication works comment sign up for the mailing list leave me a comment below try being direct and see if people perceive you as being more powerful give me a comment tell me how it works talk to you soon next time