Assertive Behavior

The way we respond to honest, sincere, feedback is very important to ones’ self-growth, development and success in life. In addition, the more healthy we are in the areas of self-growth, the more we will seek additional honest, sincere, feedback from trusted friends, relatives and co-workers. That is the beautiful part of responding properly to feedback given to us in the second quadrant of the Johari Window. However, if we are not comfortable with honest, sincere, feedback and we avoid it and/or shun it completely, we will shut down our ability to improve our self-growth and be resentful, even revengeful to those who gave us the honest, sincere, feedback in the first place.

Therefore, we must first recognize the improper reactions and responses to honest, sincere, feedback. Next, we need to learn the steps of proper reactions and responses to this feedback and practice them again and again until we are comfortable with them and do them naturally. Again, we are talking about honest, sincere feedback from people we trust. If we do not trust the person giving us the feedback, then we need to go to someone we do trust to get verification and validation to the feedback we received. That is one step most of us will not do (or we do it in such a way as to pressure our trusted friend into sugar coating their response or negating the feedback altogether). Therefore, true feedback may be stifled because we do not want it exposed any further or validated beyond the person who gave it to us in the first place.

Feedback Reaction and Response Alternatives

Improper Reaction/Response.................................... Proper Reaction/Response

1. Resistance and Anger *......................................... 1. Resistance and Anger *
2. Resentment............................................................ 2. Reassessment of the Feedback
3. Rejection.................................................................. 3. Reconstruction
4. Repression............................................................... 4. Self Growth
5. Revenge.................................................................... 5. We become healthy and well rounded
6. Retaliation either with Active or Passive Aggression
7. Self Growth is stymied and shut down
8. Further Feedback is avoided altogether

It is interesting to note that the first step on both the Improper and Proper Reaction/Response is the same (i.e. Resistance and Anger). That’s because none of us really like to hear these kind of things because we just do not want to admit them and/or, once we hear it, we refuse to do anything about it.

However, as we learn the Proper Reaction/Response steps and practice them religiously, something fascinating begins to happen, this step begins to diminish and eventually disappear altogether.