Assertiveness & Influencing Skills Course for Doctors and Healthcare Professionals

The course explores both the psychology behind assertiveness and influence and the practical techniques you can use in everyday clinical and professional situations. The aim is not to give you a collection of phrases to memorise, but to help you understand why you respond in particular ways and become more deliberate and adaptable in the way you communicate.

Understand where your influence comes from

You may have more influence than you realise. Formal authority is only one source of personal power.

The course explores four important sources of influence: formal authority, expertise, control of resources and interpersonal skills. In many healthcare situations, particularly when working across professional or organisational boundaries, you may have little formal authority over the person you need to influence.

You will therefore consider how credibility, relationships, communication and the way you approach another person can increase your ability to achieve a constructive outcome.

Recognise assertive, aggressive and non-assertive behaviour

Assertiveness is sometimes confused with confidence, seniority or simply being willing to speak. The course draws a clearer distinction between assertive, aggressive and non-assertive behaviour.

An assertive approach involves asking clearly for what you want without putting yourself or the other person down. Aggressive behaviour prioritises your own position with insufficient regard for the other person, while non-assertive behaviour can involve avoiding expressing what you actually need or think.

You will consider the thoughts, emotions, language and behaviours associated with each style and reflect on situations in which you may move from one approach to another.

Understand the beliefs behind your behaviour

People are rarely passive or aggressive in every situation. A healthcare professional who is confident with colleagues may become reluctant to challenge somebody senior. Someone who is normally collaborative may become much more forceful when challenged by a patient or when working under pressure.

The course explores how beliefs about ourselves, other people and particular situations influence the way we behave. You will consider the short-term attractions of passive or aggressive behaviour and why these approaches can create longer-term problems.

Recognising these beliefs gives you more opportunity to challenge them and choose a more appropriate response.

Balance rights and responsibilities

A central principle of assertiveness is that you have rights, but so does the person you are dealing with.

You will consider rights such as expressing an opinion, stating a need, asking for something, refusing a request, seeking clarification, making mistakes and changing your mind.

Assertiveness involves exercising these rights while accepting the corresponding responsibility to recognise the rights of patients, colleagues, managers and others.

This provides a much more useful foundation for assertiveness than simply trying to become more confident or forceful.

Become more assertive with senior colleagues

Many people who are confident in most situations find it much harder to be assertive with somebody more senior.

You may worry that challenging a consultant, manager, clinical director or other senior figure will make you appear difficult, disrespectful or disloyal. These assumptions can prevent important concerns or alternative views from being expressed.

The course explores these limiting beliefs and helps you replace them with more constructive ways of thinking. The objective is not to challenge authority for its own sake, but to become more comfortable contributing your knowledge and perspective when it matters.

Ask for what you need clearly

Assertiveness often becomes relevant when you need another person to do something.

You will explore practical approaches to making a clear request, explaining why you are asking, listening to the other person's response, exploring alternatives where necessary and agreeing what happens next.

This can be applied to delegation, asking for support, negotiating workload, requesting action from another team or addressing something that has not been done.

Say no without becoming defensive or aggressive

Saying no is difficult for many people because refusal can feel selfish, confrontational or damaging to the relationship.

Yet repeatedly agreeing to requests you cannot realistically accommodate can lead to resentment, excessive workload, missed commitments and poor boundaries.

The course helps you examine the beliefs that can make refusal difficult and develop ways of saying no clearly and respectfully, including explaining your position, acknowledging the other person's needs and considering alternatives where appropriate.

Use assertive language more effectively

The language we use can either strengthen or weaken an assertive message.

You will consider how vague, apologetic or excessively tentative language can undermine what you are trying to communicate, while accusatory or judgemental language can quickly move an interaction towards aggression.

The course explores clearer ways of expressing what you think, feel, need or want while keeping responsibility for your own position rather than unnecessarily attacking the other person.

Give feedback more constructively

Giving feedback often requires assertiveness, particularly when the message may be uncomfortable to hear.

The course includes the BOOST approach to feedback: making feedback balanced, based on observed behaviour, objective, specific and timely.

This helps keep the discussion focused on what actually happened and what can be changed, rather than turning feedback into a judgement about the other person's personality, values or intentions.

Understand Transactional Analysis

Some interactions become difficult because the people involved fall into patterns of communication that reinforce one another.

Transactional Analysis provides one way of understanding these dynamics through Parent, Adult and Child ego states. The course uses these ideas to help you recognise when an interaction has become unproductive and consider how changing your own response may help return the conversation to a more constructive level.

Build rapport before trying to influence

Influence is easier when the other person feels understood and when there is sufficient trust within the interaction.

You will explore how rapport can be developed and why trying to persuade somebody before understanding their perspective can make resistance more likely.

This does not mean agreeing with the other person. It means creating enough connection for a meaningful conversation to take place.

Understand different social styles

People differ in the way they communicate, make decisions, process information and relate to others.

The course explores the Social Styles model and four broad styles: Driver, Analytical, Amiable and Expressive. You will consider your own natural style and how people with different styles may experience you.

These differences can be particularly noticeable under pressure. Someone who values speed and decisiveness may become frustrated by somebody who wants more detail, while somebody who values relationships and consensus may find a highly task-focused approach unnecessarily abrupt.

The purpose is not to categorise people. It is to become more observant about differences and use that information to communicate more effectively.

Become more versatile when influencing others

Effective influencing does not mean expecting everybody else to adapt to you.

Versatility is the ability to recognise what another person may need from an interaction and modify your own approach where appropriate. That might mean becoming more concise, providing more evidence, allowing more time for discussion or paying greater attention to the relationship.

The course helps you identify where greater flexibility in your own behaviour could improve relationships and make you more effective when influencing people whose style differs from yours.

The overall aim is to help you communicate your position clearly while becoming better at understanding and responding to the people you are trying to influence.