Hello,

I was wondering about advice on becoming more assertive. I am not a confrontational person by nature. I will not fight something and just go with the flow and I am starting to see that this is making me loose the respect of my coworkers. They seem to give me the crappiest assignments because they "know I won't complain" and assume I'll stay late to cover, which Yes I have no problem doing it, but how does this make me appear weak? I need to be able to be more assertive without hitting the disrespect and cattiness back with the same attitude. Background: I have been at my job for almost two years, first job out of nursing school. Thanks in advance.

Alas, Sadie, I wish I had an easy answer. All I can do is speak from my own experience. Maybe that will help.

I've never quite had your problem, perhaps that's where being a guy in a nursing setting helps. When I worked at one of our country's top children's hospital, the nurses I worked with treated me well. Why, I'm not exactly sure. One reason is that I worked nights and knew my job well. Because nights was staffed almost exclusively with recent graduates, I quickly became the most experienced person on the unit. After about six months, I had more experience than the three nurses I was working with combined. Having more experience plus not making mistakes can win you respect, particularly if your attitude communicates confidence.

When I shifted to days on the teen unit, there was a different dynamic at play. The nurses I worked with were young, but still more experienced than I, particularly in caring for teens. Still, I did my best and was respected for that. With my teen patients, particularly the teen girls, I had the opposite problem. I had to be careful what I said because they treated what I said as if I were their doctor. I could understand why. I was a guy with a beard in his early thirties. I looked like a senior resident. Still, it was weird.

That illustrates that age and appearance are factors, so in some sense your troubles could fade over time. A friend once complained to me that her patients treated her like a nurse, which she was, but treated a guy she worked with like a doctor even though he was a nurse too. Her complaint was that her mostly elderly patients were being sexist. I was tempted to tell her, "Maybe, but maybe it also has something to do with how you come across and how you communicate competence. You can't change your sex, but you can change that."

As patients they can figure out, in advance, if that young-seeming resident knows what he or she is doing or if you're going face a horrid teach-the-resident experience. People who know a procedure well, I stress, move quickly. They don't need to think about what to do next, they just do it. And if you ask them a question, they can answer well even as they continue their preparation. That, I wrote, is a sign the person who's about to do something to you knows his or her stuff. If he or she doesn't, don't hesitate to ask for someone more competent. You don't have to endure the indignity of repeated spinal taps that all come up dry. That happened, by the way, when a resident I was working with was so clueless he was trying to use on a teen girl a needle that came in a kit clearly marked as being for neo-natal use.

Do the same in your work. Master working smoothly and confidently, not in hesitant stops and starts. That'll not only impress your patients, it'll impress your fellow nurses. Take care what you say too. Sound mature and in charge and they will begin to treat you that way. Build confidence in areas where you control and then extend it to areas where others are involved.

You can learn to be different. More recently, I took evening work for a art museum, providing crowd control for exhibitions where the line could be as long as 100 yards and at private events (drunk lawyers). To do that, I needed to learn to politely project that I was in control. Doing it for untold hours—our Picasso exhibition had over 400,000 visitors, that confidence I needed to project became ingrained into my personality. I'd always considered myself an introvert. I discovered that I could work all day asserting my will over a crowd and not get tired. It was even fun. Maybe that will happen to you.

What surprised me even more was that they did what I said. My behavior had changed to the point where I spoke with confidence, expecting people to do what I said. When you've got that attitude, they do. When I stopped one lovely young lady to tell her she couldn't pass out with her glass of wine, she teased me with "Who are you to tell me what to do?" I merely pointed out to her that the issue was settled. She was doing what I was telling her.

Since working at that job, i've felt weird. If I don't like a situation. I've found that all I need do is take charge and people follow. If I were to describe reasons, they'd be:

1. Quickly knowing what to say, what to do, and how to say it. Fumble around, and people will pick up on that. Learn to say just the right thing in any situations and do so quickly.

2. Having the confidence that what you say will be obeyed. When you tell many tens of thousands of people what to do and they do it, you get confident. Work at it, and you're confidence will grow too.

I'm not sure how all that applies to your situation. I will say that there are ways you can improve your skills. One of the first people I worked with also worked at funeral homes. There, you must be very careful how you speak. From her, I learned to choose my words with care. For instance, don't say, "You can't come in here." Say, "The family has requested that you...." Give them reasons that they can't deny. No one attending a funeral is going to go against the wishes of the family. Nursing has similarly pervasive arguments.

I don't work with you, so I don't know the specifics, but wrestle with how you can be assertive in persuasive ways. One technique is to offer reasons. Even a modest reason can work amazingly well. If you've gotten the rotten assignment repeatedly, simply speak up at precisely the right moment and say, "I've done INSERT ROTTEN ASSIGNMENT for the last three days. I certainly hope I'm not going to get it again." Work on saying that politely but with confidence. You are being treated unfairly, so you're right to point it out. Simply make that clear and, except for the jerks, they'll make adjustments. Soon, you won't even need to speak up.

Your unit really should work on how those disliked assignments are handed out. At my hospital, most of the nursing staff didn't like to float, since it moved them outside their comfort zone. The shift supervisors solved that problem by having a rotating list. When you reached the top of a list you floated. You then moved to the bottom of that list. That made it bearable. Rotten assignments should be handled that way.

Coming in early or staying late were typically handled the same. On day shift, I was occasionally asked to come in at 3 a.m. to cover a staffing gap that was also being covered by having someone from evenings stay over for four hours. Needless to say, I hated that, but knowing that doing it moved me to the bottom of a list made it bearable. That's what your unit should be doing. It shouldn't be a question of "Who do we pick on for this." Picking should be done is some fair and equitable way.

You cannot be a doormat unless you lie down. Perhaps you should stop agreeing to work overtime all the time. Don't apologize,just say that you can't stay late today.