Hello and welcome to Captain and the Clown podcast.
In this episode we discuss how to become assertive.
It does go for a little longer than 20 minutes. Enjoy.
Why do it count backwards? I know that we're now recording.
What? Hello Captain.
Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away.
What are we going to talk about?
I don't know, so leadership, life and everything else.
Yeah.
And we're live. No, we're recording.
Recording and but we're live, you and me.
Yes, yes, here we are.
And welcome aboard.
You really don't like that start. Well, I'm going to keep doing it just to annoy you.
Yeah, we're going to talk about assertiveness today.
We are, we're up in the Northern Territory again in Darwin here for you.
You have a few clients you're teaching this week and one of them you're teaching how
to develop assertiveness. Yeah, yeah, I ran that course the other day and I love that course.
It's an eye-opener for a lot of people because it certainly was an eye-opener for me.
So Guy, I consider you very assertive. He ave you always been assertive?
Absolutely not. It's something I have actively worked on for a long, long time.
I know I've joked with you in the past that I grew up a shy, sensitive, insecure little sook.
I'm still a sook, I cry in movies, but I'm not shy or sensitive anymore.
And I worked on my confidence and I noticed that as my confidence was growing,
that so was my assertiveness. They're related but they're not the same thing.
Yeah. But it's something I know I've actively worked on myself.
What about you? You're quite assertive now. Have you always been assertive?
Oh, definitely not. I was tall and shy and awkward and definitely not assertive.
I would let things go. I would step back. I would try and hide.
Blend in? Blend in, definitely.
Yes, not assertive, no. Yeah, no, that was the same as me.
I tried to blend in rather than be seen and no, I certainly had to work on my assertiveness.
Guy, how would you define assertiveness then?
I think it's always useful to define what it's not first rather than what it is.
Yeah. A lot of people see assertiveness as pushy or forceful, but it's absolutely not.
Is that more aggressive? It is more aggressive.
So I'll take you back to childhood, actually, now you're a parent.
So I'll take you back to your kids' childhoods. Do you remember when your babies were born?
If all of their worldly needs were met, so they'd been fed, they were warm, they were content,
they'd just sit there drooling on themselves, wouldn't they?
Yeah. I describe that as a very passive state.
They're just passively accepting what's going on, right?
Yes. But when they were hungry or they're cold or scared, they change, wouldn't they?
Yeah. You'd hear it from them. They'd react.
Absolutely. They'd react quite
aloud. And now I wouldn't call that aggression, but it's almost like they're fighting for something.
Well, they're communicating. They're communicating in the only way they can.
That's right. Yeah, through a reaction.
So passive is where you don't stick up for your rights, you sit back and you just allow the world
to happen the way it's happening. So it's very much you're not sticking up for yourself.
So passive people sit back and just let the world happen to them. That was very much me growing up.
Aggressive people stick up for themselves. They fight for their right to party.
Yeah, so they're very much, no, I'm going to get what I want and they're going to do it with force.
And so assertiveness is different to that. Whereas assertive people stick up for themselves,
but they do it whilst respecting the rights of others.
It's respecting your own rights, it's sticking up for your own rights whilst respecting the
rights of others. So that's what assertiveness is. And then we've got the combination of the
bottom two, and I call them the bottom two because they're just reactions. To be assertive,
you've actually got to think before you act. So passive is a reaction, assertive is a reaction.
And then you've got passive aggressive. Oh, sorry, hold on. I said, yeah, aggression is a reaction.
But then you've got passive aggressive. Yeah. What's your experience with passive aggressive?
Oh, there's been some relationships, professional and personal, where there's the passive aggressive
sort of behaviour where you are, something is asked of you, but the tone is not.
There's a hidden meaning. Oh, absolutely. It's not pleasant.
No, it's not, is it? No. And I'd hate for that actually to be in the workplace as well.
That could be quite toxic, I'd imagine. Yeah, it's where people have got a tone behind
what they're communicating, so you can actually hear that there's a different message there.
Yeah. Another form of passive aggressive is excluding people.
Oh, that's almost bullying, isn't it? Yeah, isolating people from a group,
the silent treatment in relationships. Oh my goodness, yes.
Or it's indirect aggression. So I'll give you an example. I love coffee and I'd often leave a
coffee cup on the bench because I'd be using it again later to make another coffee and I always
use the same cup and I'd often hear this, are you going to be using that again? And what that
were actually saying to me is, can you put that thing in the dishwasher? Because I want my house
to look like a display home just in case somebody comes through the front door and judges me based
on my cleanliness. Or the stomping around the house after you've accidentally left a towel on the floor.
Yeah, so instead of saying, hey, you left a towel on the floor, I'm just going to stomp
with my feet and then you have to find out what I'm saying through my actions.
Yes. Yeah, that's forms of passive aggressive and we're all guilty of that.
So can I share with you my experience of moving from passive to unfortunately then aggressive,
then passive aggressive, then ultimately to assertive? So you've had a journey.
I have had a big journey. So this is something I've actively worked on. So have you ever stood
in the queue, Michelle? Yes. And someone's cut in? Yes. How did you feel?
Oh, seriously, I would be in jail for the things that go through my mind while smiling,
but I'm thinking what I'm going to do to you. And you kept it inside, didn't you? I did.
I was the same. So I would stand in a queue, somebody would cut in and I'd be fuming inside.
But being a passive person, I wouldn't say a thing. I wouldn't stick up for myself or the other
people in the queue. And how long do you think that stayed with me, Michelle? Well past, you'd
gone through the queue. Months, months. I'd be thinking about this. Oh, so much time later.
Because I used to always regret not being able to stick up for myself, not be able to say,
hey, there's a queue here. And it really annoyed me because I wasn't doing what I wanted to do.
So was this that you were still upset about someone pushing in or upset about how you reacted or
didn't react? Well, at first I sort of was maybe upset at them, but I became a little bit more
self-aware and I realized I wasn't angry at them. I was angry at myself because I didn't stick up
for myself. I didn't say what I wanted to say. So then I thought, all right, I'm not going to let
that happen anymore. And regrettably, the next thing I did is I became passive aggressive.
Normally most people turn from passive to aggressive, then passive aggressive, but no,
I went to passive aggressive. So I remember standing in a queue once and somebody cut in
and instead of talking to them, I spoke to the person standing behind me and I said,
somebody doesn't know how to use a queue. So instead of talking to the actual person
who's done the wrong thing, I spoke to somebody behind me and I thought I did it loud enough with
the other person here, but maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but it was ridiculous.
And have a guess how long that stayed with me. A long time also. A long time because again,
I wasn't sticking up for myself. And at first I thought I was angry at the person who cut in,
but no, ultimately I was angry at myself. I was disappointed in myself because I didn't stick up
for myself. And then the third time, I'm now thinking, all right, I've got to stick up for
myself. I remember this time distinctly, I was at Sydney airport and as you know, you have to line
up going through security, even though you captains seem to just walk through somehow.
I do miss that.
Which I think that's a great thing, get you on the plane first because you're flying I think.
Oh no, straight to the coffee shop.
Oh, there we go. So I was lining up getting ready to go through security and this guy
was dragging his partner, his lady.
Dragging his lady?
Yeah, he had her hand. They were laughing and giggling and they almost looked like they were
newlyweds or they were quite old. And he was dragging her underneath the bollards and they
cut in the line. They went straight to the front of the security queue in front of a whole heap of
us. And I don't know, there's something about being at the airport and I have read that your
adrenaline levels are much, much higher by the time you get to the airport, especially the
international airport. This was domestic though. And so he cut under the thing and I couldn't help
myself. It just all came out, years of holding back. I yelled out, hey, there's a queue here,
get to the back of the queue. And so I'm aggressively, this is one of the first times
in my entire life that I'm yelling out and my reaction was way bigger than what it needed to
be. Because I think this is years and years of not sticking up for myself, all coming out at once.
And I yelled out and the guy just looked at me and smirked and said, don't worry, we'll all get
on the plane. And he kept going. And then the people around me were grumbling that, you know,
because this guy is cutting the line. But have a guess how long that stayed with me.
Yeah, I can imagine.
A little more.
Oh, a long time. I was furious at him because he smirked at me. But ultimately when I sat and
thought about it, I realised that I was angry at myself because I'd had an outburst. I'd let my
emotion come out. And I'm not proud of that. And so again, I did some work on myself and that seems
to be my whole life's journey is working on myself. I was lining up, actually not lining up. I was in
a chocolate shop near my home. So near where I live, there's this beautiful chocolate shop
and there's no line. There's no queue. It's who's next? That sort of situation.
Yeah.
Now this is a Saturday and it's a very busy chocolate shop on a Saturday. And I went in there
and I'm standing at the counter and a few people got served ahead of me that came in after me. And
I didn't care. It's Saturday. I'm relaxed. I don't care about queues. I'm going to get my chocolates.
I'm going to have a coffee. Life's good. And I made a decision. When she pops her head up behind
the counter and says, who's next? I'm going to say I am because I have been there for quite some time.
And then there was a lady to my left who had been there roughly about the same amount of time and
people had got served ahead of her, but she hadn't spoken up yet. So I'm thinking to myself,
I'm going to speak up because I'm going to be next. And then I'm going to say to the lady
behind the counter that this lady next to me needs to be next because we've been here for a while.
Because these young girls behind the counter, they're not looking at who's coming in and when.
They're just putting chocolate in a bag. Anyway, I'm just, so the lady pops her head up, the girl
pops her head up and says, who's next? And just as I'm about to speak, a lady who has only just
walked into the shop, barged through the crowd, come to the front and she's gone, I am. And
everyone's kind of looked at it as if to say, you just walked in. And so I couldn't help myself.
Actually, sorry, I shouldn't say I couldn't help myself. I did help myself. I looked at the girl
behind the counter and said, oh, I'm sorry, I was actually next. I've been here for quite some time.
And I looked at the lady next to me who barged in and I said, I'm so sorry, but you've only just
come in. We've all been here for quite some time. So I'm going to go next. Anyway, I looked at the
young girl behind the counter and she's frozen. She's looking at me and I said, oh, look, I'm so
sorry. I have been here for some time and this lady's only just walked in. Can I please have,
and I start to point out my chocolates. And when I did this, the lady next to me is now starting to
bark at me and, ah, you know, what are you doing? You know, and say, how dare you sort of treat me
like that? And so I looked at her and I said, I am sorry, but I was next. You've only just come
into the shop. I'm going to order my chocolates and I'm going to leave. And I looked at the lady
behind the, the little, the, I shouldn't say the young girl behind, young lady behind the counter.
And I said, and this lady next to me on my left, she's next cause she's also been here some time.
So I'm so sorry. Can I please have two of those, two of those, two of those. And she's getting my
chocolates. Meanwhile, the lady who's barged in is still having a go at me. Anyway, so I got my
chocolates, I paid for them. And I said to the, said to the lady behind the counter, I said,
can you please serve this lady to my left? She's been here for quite some time as well. And she's
looking at me going, Oh, thank you. Thank you. Cause she couldn't speak up for herself. And so
I grabbed my chocolates and I left the store, but that lady who'd barged in followed me out onto the
pavement and started to have a go at me. And I just stood there looking at her calmly and she was
ranting and raving. Um, I can't even remember exactly what she was saying. Things like how rude,
how dare you, I can't believe all these sort of statements. And so I just looked at her and I said,
I'm not quite sure what this is about because you only just walked in and I had been there for some
time. So I'm just going to walk away now. So I walked away and her voice was following me down
the street and eventually the voice disappeared and I went home and I had my chocolates and my
coffee. How long do you think that stayed with me? Um, Oh, I don't know. It's me. I probably would
have been upset that this woman was upset at me. It was gone. It disappeared. It disappeared out of
my mind and it didn't come back up until a while back, a while later, I should say, I was writing
the assertiveness course because I was, one of my clients said, guy, do you teach assertiveness?
And I said, I will in about a week. So as I always do, I go to the bookstore and I buy every book I
can and I read and read and read and read and read and then I bring in all of the other content I
had around confidence, et cetera, et cetera. And I built this workshop and while I was there, I
built this workshop and whilst I'm building this workshop, the chocolate story came back to me and
I thought, I finally got there. And that was the day that I got there. I finally reached assertiveness
where I stuck up for myself whilst respecting the rights of others. I said what I mean, but I didn't
say it mean. Yeah. Yeah. I liked that. Yeah. Say what you mean, don't say it mean.
I can't tell you where that quote comes from either. It's embarrassing. Do you want to know?
Yeah. It comes from the Housewives of Beverly Hills. Oh my goodness. I wasn't watching it.
You said that it wasn't you that watched it. It wasn't me that watched it. Somebody that I used
to be in a relationship with watched it and she mentioned to me that quote and I thought,
oh, I love that quote. Where'd that come from? She said the Housewives of Beverly Hills. Oh,
I can't quote that joke. Anyway, anyway. So that's, so that's my journey on becoming
assertiveness. Assertiveness is where you stick up for your rights whilst respecting the rights of others.
So Michelle, have you ever had a situation where you needed to be assertive as a pilot?
I have. I was a new first officer in an airline. I'd just passed my probation
and we were flying the red eye from Perth back to Sydney. Oh, the midnight horror.
Yeah. Yeah. Horrible landing just as the sun's rising. That's right. And it was regarding fuel.
So typically the captain and the first officer each come up with their own fuel calculations.
And you do that separately? We do. And then the captain makes the ultimate decision.
And my fuel was almost double that of the captain on this particular flight. So your calculations
were double his. Yeah. But I- That's a big difference. There is a big difference, but I also
understood I was fairly green and erred on the side of caution more so. However, there, when I
put my case forward- And why were you estimating it double the fuel?
Because there was going to be in my calculation, my observation of the significant weather chart,
there was going to be fog in Sydney. Oh, okay. So you're reading the weather patterns.
Yeah. Yeah. Which he did too. Okay. So then you're determining that you probably need some extra fuel
if the fog's in. Yes. Okay. Yes. Either to get somewhere else or to hold until we could do an
instrument approach in Sydney. So a contingency of fuel.
Yes. Yep. But the flight plan that was attached to the weather, sorry, that was attached to the
flight plan did not have any indication of fog. Okay. So you're using your experience and knowledge
of the weather to predict that this is possible it might happen. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And he just
didn't want to, he said, no, there's no requirement. It's not on the weather forecast. We're just taking
my fuel. Okay. And again, I could, I really looked at it and I thought, no, this is, I'm not
comfortable at all with this. And- And you're new.
I am. I am new. And I didn't want to cause waves. However, it was a safety issue. And I thought I
have to speak up. So I said, I'm not happy to go with your flight fuel. Yep. And he rightly said,
I'm the captain. And if you're not happy with it, you can remove yourself. So a little backwards
and forwards in my head about, oh, I'm going to upset people, but I just don't feel right about
this. I shook his hand and removed myself from the flight. And he shook your hand back? He did.
Okay. Yeah. So I then had to call crewing and let them know. And they called back with their duty
pilot. And he said to me, get back on. They'll take your fuel. And I said, well, I'm actually,
well, he told me to take my fuel. I said, I'm actually removed myself from the aircraft.
He rang the captain. The captain said, okay, we'll take your fuel now. So you stood your ground.
I did. And you got some backup from- I did. Okay. Yep. Yeah. So the company's never going to
a safety issue. Yeah. Of course. So then, you know, the flight, we took off with the fuel that I
wanted and we, 200 miles out of Sydney, we get a hazard alert warning over the air traffic control
and there's fog. Yeah. So there was no, I told you so or anything. It was just, we had the fuel.
Yeah. And we came in behind Qantas aircraft and they were the first ones in that morning. So
we were the second aircraft in. It was just nice to have that reassurance that we could
bug out and go to another airport. So you had enough fuel to bug out if you couldn't land.
Yes. But we did hear other aircraft didn't have enough fuel and they had to land in Newcastle.
Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. So you stood up for yourself. Yes. You did it in a respectful way.
Yeah. You respected his rights, but you, yeah, you were assertive.
Years later, I flew with that captain and I know he respected me and my knowledge and knowing that
I would speak up if there was something that I didn't see that was wrong. And that's the thing.
That's the fear that you have that you're going to be damaging the relationship when you do speak
up for yourself. But as you've just pointed out, people will respect you if you do it in an assertive
way rather than an aggressive way. That's right. Yeah. Especially if it turns out to be true.
Yeah. Yes. Lovely story.
There were times all through the training where we were trained, encouraged, almost mandated
to be assertive. So communication is a big thing in aviation, whether you're single crew. So you're
flying by yourself. You've got passengers you need to talk to, talking to air traffic control,
talking to everybody, the refueler, et cetera, everyone.
So if, because it is very much a safety issue, if there's anything that is outside of the parameters
of safety or outside your parameters that you require, you must speak up. And unfortunately,
we've seen on shows like Air Crash Investigations and it used to be Black Box series on the ABC,
where a lot of accidents and incidents in aircraft were because one or both didn't speak up.
So communication issues between the pilot and the first officer.
Absolutely. And it's so important. So I think I remember reading this in a book called Freakonomics.
Have you heard of that book? I have. You've spoken of it.
Yeah. Sorry, I have to. It's basically where the co-pilot, do they call them co-pilots and first
officers or is that interchangeable? Interchangeable. Anyway, so the first officer
or the co-pilot didn't have assertiveness, so therefore was quite passive culturally.
Yes. They were quite passive and so they didn't speak up when things were going wrong and that
led to a lot of crashes. Oh, look, culture is a big issue as far as assertiveness goes. I was training
some students, international students, I remember when I was coming through the ranks building hours
and I was a flight instructor. There were some students who could fly very well if you told them
exactly what to do, but if anything outside of that came in, they were unable to process it.
So I remember, recall one time I'd sent this student for solo and I was sitting in the
scare chair, which is the chair down next to the runway and looking at my student thinking,
okay, just doing one circuit, so a takeoff, upwind, crosswind, downwind, base and final to land and
then pick me up. That was the instruction. He knew what to do, except every time he came,
turned onto final, he then went around, so he didn't land. He continued upwind, climbed up again.
Are you in communication with him? I'm not. I didn't have a radio with me, but every time,
so he did this three times and I'm starting to get a bit worried here. I'm proud of him for
feeling that he wasn't in a good place to land, so rather than, the safe thing is to stay in the air,
but I'm now thinking, okay, something's happening here. So I rang on my mobile,
the control tower and asked, what's happening with that aircraft, my student's first solo,
which they knew and they said, we're asking him to follow the Cherokee, which is a Piper aircraft,
a nickname for a Piper aircraft, a Cherokee and he said that he couldn't see it. Now, actually,
sorry, he didn't say he couldn't see it. He just didn't answer and then his next
communication would be going around. So that was all that he was saying, going around,
going around, which is when he'd climb up again, upwind and continue back in the circuit.
I did ask the tower, can you please make him land, give him clearance to land and so,
and keep other traffic away from him. He did land on that circuit and pick me up,
we went back to the flying school and then we sat down and debriefed and I said to him,
what was the problem? Why did you not feel that you could land on those? And he said,
they kept asking me to follow the Cherokee. And rather than say he couldn't see it or he
didn't know what they were talking about, he just didn't say.
He didn't speak up, he didn't have the assertiveness to speak up.
That's right. So yeah, rather than, and he was trying to say face and he didn't feel confident
in speaking up. So that was great. That was a good lesson for me as well. So as far as the cultural
differences, language also, and yeah, just how to deal with training or developing assertiveness
in my students when I was training. We are very lucky in Australia that our culture
allows us to speak up and become assertive and do it within guidelines. So whereas other cultures,
as we've discussed, do not. Yeah. On culture, I've had an experience as a trainer that I often get
asked to go overseas and train large corporates around the world. And I've been to some cultures
where education is very different from an assertive perspective. So in Australia, if I say something
and one of my students doesn't understand what I'm saying, they'll just say, so can you explain
that? Can you go a bit deeper? I'll ask a question, does that make sense? And if it doesn't, they'll
go, no, not really. And I'll explain it again. And I ask a lot of questions. And so in Australia,
when I'm training, I'm very interactive with the audience because that's the best way for people
to learn. You ask questions, they answer them, they're engaged, their hippocampus is stimulated,
which is the librarian of the brain. But I go to some countries to train and they sit there.
And they do not interact with me because that's their culture. Their culture is
the opposite of being assertive. So if they don't know the answer to something,
they won't ask me for more information. So I often have to spend a lot of time saying, hey,
this is the way I train, I'm going to ask questions, and I'm going to ask you to guess at the answers
because this is the way your brain will actually remember things. But quite often they'll sit there,
they'll nod their head as if they're getting it, but they don't get it. And they don't have
the culture. And I've found out what it is. They're actually being very respectful, probably too
respectful. But if I ask a question and they don't know the answer, the reason why they won't say,
I don't know, is because I guess saving face. But the other reason why they won't answer is if they
don't know the answer, it's the same as them saying to me that I'm a bad trainer. So it's
disrespectful to me, which I found lovely, respectful, but from a learning perspective,
it's too respectful. I think some cultures can go too far.
I've seen your courses, I've sat in some of your courses, and I see that the feedback and the
interaction actually fuels you as well. Oh, it does. Yeah. If I'm not getting anything
back from the audience, it's, well, it's a big energy drain out of me. It's like,
I don't like just pushing information at people. I like asking questions, getting them to think,
bring in their knowledge, bring in their context. And then when you deliver the new information,
that's how our brain learns. Our brain doesn't learn through rote learning. It's not designed
to just learn through rote learning because you're not learning how to think. And so
So our times tables when we were young. Oh, no, that was bad. Repeat that a thousand
times and you will have it. Yeah. So culturally assertiveness is different.
So guys, circling back to passiveness and aggression and passive aggressiveness,
how does that relate to confidence? So as we spoke about in our other podcast on confidence,
confidence is when you stop fearing the judgment of other people. So they're all very closely
related to confidence. So when you're passive, like I was as a young man, it's because I feared
other people's judgment. I didn't speak up for myself because I was fearing other people.
And so passiveness is very closely related to insecurity. You don't speak up for yourself,
because you're fearing whatever the consequences are in that situation.
Aggressiveness. I guess you could say an aggressive person has started to be a bit
more confident because they're confident enough to speak up for themselves. But
there's also an insecurity there. It's like they can't control their emotions. They're getting
angry. They're letting their anger come out. And they're also devoid of empathy and compassion for
other people, because we all have a right to not be yelled at, not to have somebody unleashing
their emotional tirades at us. And so a person who is being aggressive, it might appear as
more confident, but really they're not as confident as what they could be, because
they don't need to suppress and emotionally abuse other people. And then
moving to passive aggressive. Now passive aggressive kind of appears a little bit more
respectful, I guess, because you're holding the aggression back. But again, it's somebody who is
indirectly aggressive, and therefore that's related to insecurity as well. They don't have
confidence. And so ultimately, assertive people are confident. They don't fear the judgment of
other people when they're speaking up for themselves, but they've also got a healthy dose of
respect and empathy for others, which means that they can say what they want to say,
and respect the other person at the same time. And that comes from a deep seated level of confidence
and empathy. Because when you're a confident person, you will also start to develop empathy
for others because it moves away from arrogance. There's also a lot of people who are more
confident. There's also, I'd imagine that there needs to be a feeling of psychological safety,
because if somebody is being assertive, the whilst you said there's confidence, and it's not fearing
the judgment of others, there's also if it's in a career or a work situation, that there is no
recourse. So by speaking up, and potentially what you were talking about with some of these other
carriers that you read in that book that you were talking about, the fact that
if they spoke up and were assertive about something that was wrong, that potentially they would lose
their job. Yeah. And you see that a lot in workplaces where people don't speak up because
they fear the consequences. They might have a manager who's a bit of a tyrant and has an ego,
and is also very insecure. So they tend to micromanage. They tend to not give people a
voice, which then, like you said before, would lead to a lack of psychological safety in that
sort of situation. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess ultimately we should all be aiming for assertiveness.
We should all be aiming to be able to stick up for ourselves whilst to respect the rights of others.
And it's a conscious thing. It takes time. It took me years to develop assertiveness. It took
practice. It took overcoming fears. And I coined a term many years ago called life university. I think
life is, I think we're going to have a whole podcast on this topic, but life is going to
throw challenges at you. And at the end of every day, I like to sit down and think about who I was
on that day, how I behaved and how I reacted. So did I behave in an assertive way? Did I behave
in an aggressive way? Was I passive aggressive? Was I passive? Did I sit back? And not every
situation is going to require assertiveness. We had a meal the other day. Do you recall the
the steak meal that we had the other day? Oh yes. Yeah. It wasn't the best. It wasn't as yours.
Mine was perfect. You had this steak and it was absolutely sensational. I think my steak
have even cost more. And it came out and it was the toughest, leatheriest, most awful steak I've
ever had. But we both sat there and looked at each other and decided, no, we're not going to say
anything during the meal. And can you remember why we said that? Because we were scared of what the
chef would do to the meal. Yeah. Because we could have been assertive in that. I could have been
assertive in that moment. I could have said to the young waitress, I could have said, hey, I'm really
sorry, this steak, it's beyond well done. I like medium rare steak and it's beyond well done.
And it's almost impossible to cut through. I could have said that politely to her. But the problem is
when she goes back into the kitchen, we don't know what her translation is going to be to the chef,
who then from our experiences and knowledge about the some people who work in the food industry,
not all, but they tend to, they can be a little bit, I guess, what's the word, hurt?
Yeah, I worked in a restaurant when I was at uni and yeah, anyone who dared to send anything back,
what the chefs did, it was disgusting. Okay, yeah. So there are times to be assertive,
there are times to be passive. Sometimes you need to let life just
pick your battles. I think it's pick your battles. Yeah, pick your time. But ultimately,
it's something we should all be aiming for, to be assertive so that we can stick up for ourselves,
we can stick up for our rights whilst respecting the rights of others.
Fantastic. So what you are saying as a tip for anybody who's wanting to become more assertive or
develop their assertiveness is to do that life university. So to, at the end of the day, rehash
and then maybe rewrite how you did it? Yeah, rewrite. That's a great term. So you look at
how you behaved during the day, identify the areas where you possibly weren't assertive,
you didn't stick up for yourself, or maybe you were aggressive, maybe you were passive aggressive,
whatever it was, and rewrite it in your head so that next time you're in that same situation,
you improve. So back when I was in that queue and people were jumping in and I became aggressive,
then passive aggressive, that wasn't based on me planning, that was based on me being angry, angry
that I didn't stick up for myself. But over time, I developed this little, I guess, routine that at
the end of every day, I look through the day, how did I go today? Was I the sort of person I want to
be? Was I assertive? Was I respectful? And I plan for what I will do in the same situation,
if that same situation happens again in the future.
Probably about 10 years ago, there was an incident into an Asian port and it was an Asian carrier.
The first officer was this tiny girl and the captain was a very senior, well-respected pilot
and she was flying with him and on final approach to land, he had a heart attack and his hands were
clasped on the throttles and they were going below glide slope and she did the calls,
but he was not responding and he couldn't let go of the thrust levers and control column.
And she wouldn't have known that, I guess.
Well, she was looking at him and the only way, and kudos to her, she's amazing, this girl,
and I hope she's still flying. She got her pen out of her pocket and stabbed the back of his hand
and just the natural reaction was for him to unclasp and then she was able to take control.
Oh, wow.
I know.
So he's having a heart attack, he's gripping the control.
Yes.
I guess she's recognised that something's wrong.
Yeah, well, he just wouldn't listen or respond.
He wouldn't respond. So she stabs him with her pen.
That's right.
And saves everyone on the plane.
That's right, but imagine how much it would have gone against her whole upbringing to do that.
Not only imply that there was disrespect that he didn't know what he was doing,
but to harm him in order to save everyone.
Oh, kudos to her. Could you imagine? Yeah, wow, wow.
Being on that plane and not knowing that up the front there's a
Was she an experienced pilot?
No, she was only
So a young female pilot in a culture where you need to respect people with experience.
She's grabbed a pen, stabbed him in the back of his hand so that he'd release the column
and then she could take over.
Yes.
What a wonderful story about assertiveness to finish this podcast.
Yes.
Thank you for sharing, Michelle.
Fantastic.
Awesome. I enjoyed that podcast.
That was good. It's a little longer than our normal ones.
Yes.
But as you were reminded, people can just pause.
Yes. Okay, so how do we finish these off again?
We think the world will be a better place when there's more dogs.
That's it and great coffee.
And great coffee.
And Bollinger still hasn't contacted us for that.
Bollinger, look, we're waiting. We need a sponsor and we chose you.
Okay, take care, everyone. See you next time.
Bye.
Well, that was fun.
That was fun.
You're such a clown.
The clown.
Lady cat.
And who's going to listen to this?
Maybe our mums.
Thanks, mom.