Many people are very poor at judging how assertive they
should be in business negotiations, a new study finds, which may make them look
like pushovers.
The research, which is published in the Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, examined one of the basic challenges of
assertiveness at work and in life.
Lead author explains:
“Finding the middle ground between being pushy and being a
pushover is a basic challenge in social life and the workplace.
We’ve now found that the challenge is compounded by the fact
that people often don’t know how others see their assertiveness.”
In one of four studies they carried out, MBA students
engaged in mock business negotiations. Afterwards, each rated their own and the other person’s
assertiveness.
They were also asked to guess what the other person in the
negotiation had said about them. It turned out that participants’ self-awareness was
remarkably low:
57% of people seen by others as under-assertive thought
they’d been appropriately assertive or even over-assertive.
56% of people who were seen as over-assertive actually
thought they’d been appropriately assertive or even under-assertive.
A study concluded:
“Most people can think of someone who is a pushover and
largely clueless about how they’re seen. Sadly, our results suggest that, often enough, that clueless
pushover is us.”
Line
crossing illusion
There was another nice finding from the study for those who
did actually get their level of assertiveness right.
A research looked at the people who were rated by others as
having the ideal level of assertiveness, these people were convinced they’d
been pushing too hard!
This was a pattern that emerged across multiple studies:
many people thought they’d crossed the line in negotiation, when in fact they
hadn’t, it was an illusion.
Feeling they’d crossed the line was particularly dangerous
for negotiators because then they started trying to repair the damage they
thought they had done.
This tended to lead to worse deals for both parties
involved.
As so often in life, we frequently operate in the dark,
without a good read on how we are perceived by others.
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