20 Best Books to Improve Assertiveness

Confidence. We want it. We need it. But it can be maddeningly enigmatic and out of reach. The authors of the New York Times bestseller Womenomics deconstruct this essential, elusive, and misunderstood quality and offer a blueprint for bringing more of it into our lives.

Is confidence hardwired into the DNA of a lucky few, or can anyone learn it? Is it best expressed by bravado, or is there another way to show confidence? Which is more important: confidence or competence? Why do so many women, even the most successful, struggle with feelings of self-doubt? Is there a secret to channeling our inner confidence?

In The Confidence Code, journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman travel to the frontiers of neuroscience on a hunt for the confidence gene and reveal surprising new research on its roots in our brains. They visit the world’s leading psychologists who explain how we can all choose to become more confident simply by taking action and courting risk, and how those actions change our physical wiring. They interview women leaders from the worlds of politics, sports, the military, and the arts to learn how they have tapped into this elemental resource. They examine how a lack of confidence impacts our leadership, success, and fulfillment.

Ultimately, they argue, while confidence is partly influenced by genetics, it is not a fixed psychological state. That’s the good news. You won’t discover it by thinking positive thoughts or by telling yourself (or your children) that you are perfect as you are. You also won’t find it by simply squaring your shoulders and faking it. But it does require a choice: less people-pleasing and perfectionism and more action, risk-taking, and fast failure.

Inspiring, insightful, and persuasive, The Confidence Code shows that by acting on our best instincts and by daring to be authentic, women can feel the transformative power of a life on confidence.

Too many people believe that if they keep their heads down and work hard, they’ll be recognized as experts on the merits of their work. But that’s simply not true anymore. To make a name for yourself, you have to capitalize on your unique perspective and knowledge and inspire others to listen and take action. But becoming a “thought leader” is a mysterious and opaque process. Where do the ideas come from, and how do they get noticed?

Dorie Clark explains how to identify the ideas that set you apart and promote them successfully. The key is to recognize your own value, cultivate your expertise, and put yourself out there.

Featuring vivid examples and drawing on interviews with Seth Godin, Dan Pink, David Allen, Robert Cialdini, and other thought leaders, Clark teaches readers how to develop a big idea, leverage existing affiliations, and build a community of followers. She offers not mere self-promotion, but an opportunity to change the world for the better while giving you the ultimate career insurance.

In the twenty-first-century workplace, women are encouraged to step up, lean in, take charge, go for it . . . yet how much has actually changed regarding the makeup of leadership when it comes to adding women’s voices? While it’s easy to still blame a corporate culture that favors men, seasoned executive Grace Killelea identifies another culprit: a surprising disparity in confidence–with men typically prone to overestimate their abilities, and women too often selling themselves short. For real change to take place within the workforce when it comes to adding more women’s voices within leadership, we must get beyond knowing that we simply have the ability as women to speak out, take risks, and fill leadership positions; we must become more confident that we can do those things with excellence! The Confidence Effect moves beyond research, statistics, and cheerleading, and focuses on what’s really important: how women can become more confident, one step at a time. While developing the four Rs of Success–relationships, reputation, results, and resilience–women will learn how best to:• Build circles of influence• Seize opportunities they normally avoid• Leverage and promote their skills• Cultivate executive presence• Bounce back from setbacks• And more you’ve been encouraged to get in the game your entire life, yet you remain on the sidelines. Why? Become more confident in who you are and what you can do, and claim the success you deserve!

In Pushback, top leadership consultant Selena Rezvani argues that self-advocacy is critical to success. Yet women initiate negotiations four times less often than men, resulting in getting less of what they want―promotion opportunities, plum assignments, and higher pay. This book shines a light on the real rules of holding your own and pushing back for what is rightfully yours. Drawing on interviews with high-level leaders, Rezvani offers readers in the first half of their career the unedited truth about how women have asked their way to the top and triumphed―and how you can too.

• Includes interviews with top business leaders such as Marie Chandoha, CEO of Charles Schwab Investment Management; Cindi Bigelow, President of Bigelow Tea Company; Fizzah Jafri, COO at Morgan Stanley; Rosemary Turner, President at UPS; and Irene Chang Britt, Chief Strategy Officer at Campbell’s Soup
• Offers a reliable and methodic approach to negotiating and navigating tough conversations
• Highlights compelling facts and research from the world of psychology and leadership

Insightful and accessible, Pushback is a timely resource for savvy women who want to leverage their skills, promote themselves effectively, and fast-track their careers.

In the years since the publication of First, Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths, millions have come to the simple but powerful realization that to get the most out of people, you must build on their strengths. And yet, as Marcus Buckingham astutely points out, though the strengths-based approach is now conventional wisdom, the tools and systems inside organizations—performance appraisals, training programs, and succession planning systems—remain stubbornly remedial and exclusively focused on measuring skills, finding gaps, and attempting to plug them. It’s a crisis for individuals and organizations, with management ideas and everyday practice utterly out of sync.

That’s about to change. StandOut 2.0 is a revolutionary book and tool that enables you to identify your strengths, and those of your team, and act on them. The original edition of StandOut provided top-notch insights from one of the world’s foremost authorities on strengths, as well as access to a powerful, cutting-edge online assessment tool. StandOut 2.0 also includes the assessment and a robust report on your most dominant strengths. The report is easily exported so you can use it to present the very best of yourself to your team and your company.

From one of the most trusted and bestselling brands in business training and throughout the world, The 5 Essential People Skills shows how to deliver a message to others with power and clarity, how to build loyalty and inspire creativity by demonstrating assertiveness, and how to be assertive.

Put these five essential skills to work and begin your transformation!

Have you ever walked away from a conversation full of doubts and insecurities? Do you feel as if you’ve lost a little ground after every staff meeting? Most of us are either too passive or too aggressive in our business life, and we end up never getting the support, recognition, or respect we desire.

The business leaders and trainers from Dale Carnegie Training have discovered that applying appropriate assertiveness to all your interactions is the most effective approach to creating a successful career. The 5 Essential People Skills will help you be the most positively commanding, prosperous, and inspired professional you can be. You will learn how to:

· Relate to the seven major personality types
· Live up to your fullest potential while achieving personal success
· Create a cutting-edge business environment that delivers innovation and results
· Use Carnegie’s powerhouse five-part template for articulate communications that grow business
· Resolve any conflict or misunderstanding by applying a handful of proven principles

Once you master these powerful skills, you will be well on your way to a new level of professional and personal achievement.

A definitive code for personal success.

‘The Rules of Work is an eye-opener for all those who would like to rise to the top, but don’t seem to be able to find the map.’

Sir Antony Jay, author of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, and founder of Video Arts

For some people, work is a breeze. They glide effortlessly onwards and upwards, always saying and doing the right thing, getting paid more, getting promotions, getting results.

Is there something successful people know that we don’t? You bet there is. They know the Rules of work.

These Rules are the guiding principles that will improve what you do and how you do it. They will give you the unmistakable air of confidence that will win you admiration, respect, and help you towards your next promotion. In this new edition of the international bestseller, Richard Templar has added 10 new Rules to help you get heard, noticed, acknowledged, and followed.

To get ahead and stay on top, you need The Rules of Work.

Have you ever been led by someone who cared for you like family, and dared you to achieve more than you ever thought possible for yourself, your organization, and even society?

Award-winning author of Hostage at the Table, George Kohlrieser, along with his co-authors Susan Goldsworthy and Duncan Coombe, explain how becoming a secure base leader releases extraordinary potential in others.

Part of the Warren Bennis leadership series Care to Dare shows you how to become a Secure Base Leader so that you release your followers from the fears that get in the way of their performance. It shows you how you can unleash astonishing potential by building trust, delivering the change, and inspiring the focus that underpins sustainable high performance.

From extensive interviews with executives from all over the world, as well as from surveys with more than a thousand executives, the book reveals the nine characteristics that Secure Base Leaders display on a daily basis. The research shows that a primary difference between a successful leader and a failed leader is the presence or absence of secure bases in his or her life.

Care to Dare will take you on a journey where you will discover your own secure bases, past and present, and determine how you can be a secure base for other people in your life at work and at home.

All too often, the challenges we face seem overwhelming. Where do we start? What if we fail? But bestselling author John Izzo argues that almost every problem, from personal difficulties and business challenges to social issues, can be solved if all of us look to ourselves to create change rather than looking to others. And with the research to prove it, Izzo shows that by seeing ourselves as the locus of control rather than the victims of change, we are happier, less stressed, and more powerful.

Izzo shows how taking responsibility changes our careers, our companies, our lives, and our communities. This book is filled with stories that illustrate the incredible power of stepping up: a homeless man who started a recycling revolution, a middle-aged Italian shopkeeper who fought back against the Mafia, two teenagers who ignited an anti-bullying movement, an executive who turned a dying division into a profit center, and a few employees who created a multibillion-dollar product for Starbucks, and many more. This second edition includes a new chapter on the Stepping Up Continuum, a model that looks at six ways to know if you are stepping up or stepping back, as well as fresh stories and a self-assessment tool for helping leaders create a culture for stepping up in their organizations. We have the power within ourselves to move mountains–we just have to decide that we are the ones to do it.

A stimulating, thought-provoking book that lets you know how to break free of negative behavior, take control of office politics, and prevent difficult, repetitive, and avoidable situations. Reardon—a frequent HuffingtonPost contributor and professor at the Marshall School of Business—arms readers with the tools they need to take control of conversations in the workplace. Comebacks at Work combines the best qualities of Deborah Tannen’s Talking from 9 to 5, Kerry Patterson’s Crucial Conversations, and Douglas Stone’s Difficult Conversations, a perfect workplace guide to getting what you deserve.

The best-seller that helps you say: “I just said ‘no’ and I don’t feel guilty!”  Are you letting your kids get away with murder?  Are you allowing your mother-in-law to impose her will on you?  Are you embarrassed by praise or crushed by criticism?  Are you having trouble coping with people?  Learn the answers in When I Say No, I Feel Guilty,  the best-seller with revolutionary new techniques for getting your own way.

No is perhaps the most important and certainly the most powerful word in the language. Every day we find ourselves in situations where we need to say No–to people at work, at home, and in our communities–because No is the word we must use to protect ourselves and to stand up for everything and everyone that matters to us.

But as we all know, the wrong No can also destroy what we most value by alienating and angering people. That’s why saying No the right way is crucial. The secret to saying No without destroying relationships lies in the art of the Positive No, a proven technique that anyone can learn.

This indispensable book gives you a simple three-step method for saying a Positive No. It will show you how to assert and defend your key interests; how to make your No firm and strong; how to resist the other side’s aggression and manipulation; and how to do all this while still getting to Yes. In the end, the Positive No will help you get not just to any Yes but to the right Yes, the one that truly serves your interests.

Based on William Ury’s celebrated Harvard University course for managers and professionals, The Power of a Positive No offers concrete advice and practical examples for saying No in virtually any situation. Whether you need to say No to your customer or your coworker, your employee or your CEO, your child or your spouse, you will find in this book the secret to saying No clearly, respectfully, and effectively.

In today’s world of high stress and limitless choices, the pressure to give in and say Yes grows greater every day, producing overload and overwork, expanding e-mail and eroding ethics. Never has No been more needed. A Positive No has the power to profoundly transform our lives by enabling us to say Yes to what counts–our own needs, values, and priorities.

Understood this way, No is the new Yes. And the Positive No may be the most valuable life skill you’ll ever learn!

“Whether you’re training a junior account executive in presentation skills or media training a CEO in the middle of a PR crisis, Karen Berg delivers, helping find a winning bottom line message no matter the need.” –John Frazier, executive vice president, Quinn & Co. Loud & Clear is essential for everyone who needs to know how to get what he or she wants from anyone. Whether you need to get a message through to an employer, team, committee, your staff, your neighbor, teacher, student, or spouse, this book will show you how to get their attention by: — Using your head. Before you even think about opening your mouth, you need to think long and hard about the person you want to influence and how to say what you want. — Connecting with your listener(s). Berg will show you how to establish chemistry and intimacy with your listeners–from an individual to a stadium-sized audience–to make them want to listen to you. — Keeping their interest. Why “soft” communication, such as story-telling and picture-painting, are important devices and how to use them effectively. Plus, how to avoid the dreaded “drone factor.” — Saying it right. Speech and body language techniques make a lasting impression. — Anticipating and overcoming the negatives. How to recognize disaster before it strikes, and handle it when it does. Each chapter also features a topic-specific “plan of attack,” plus plenty of client stories, checklists, worksheets, and quizzes. For an employee trying to get a raise, a committee leader who needs to motivate a team, a traveler trying to book a better flight, or a student trying to clinch a better grade, Berg’s proven methods will help you say what you mean to get what you want.

A guide to effective self-promotion offers tips on how to communicate one’s successes without being labeled an opportunist or egotistical, sharing practical examples of people in various work-life stages.

It is well-documented that working hard isn’t enough to keep your professional star rising: Self-promotion is recognized as one of the most important attributes for getting ahead.

According to the Shyness Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., half of all American adults consider themselves shy! If you’re one of them, don’t worry! There are skills and techniques you can learn which will allow you to grow out of your shell and become a friendly, assertive person. Learn these simple strategies and you will get along better with colleagues, be seen as a strong, team player, get the promotions you deserve or the clients you want, and, ultimately–and naturally–succeed in business.

You can conquer your shyness and learn to present yourself confidently in a wide variety of business situations, from speaking up at a meeting, to taking credit for a project, to asking a busy boss for a deserved raise.

Develop Your Assertiveness offers simple techniques that will help you become more aware of your strengths and weaknesses so that you can learn how best to modify your behaviour in social and business interactions. Being more confident and learning how best to communicate with your colleagues will enable you to create win-win situations, thus improving your career prospects and enhancing your social life. Packed with examples and exercises, this essential guide covers topics such as the importance of the choice of behavior; tension control; self-awareness and self-esteem; relationships; making and refusing requests; dealing with problem people; tricky situations; assertiveness online.
Exercises and activities in Develop your Assertiveness enable you to measure your progress and reach your goals.

Do you (or does someone you know)…

–Apologize frequently or for things you are not responsible for?
–Get preoccupied with what other people think of you?
–Become unhappy when your partner isn’t happy?
–Feel worried or fretful so often it seems normal?
–Often not know what you want?
–Constantly second-guess yourself?

Chronic Niceness affects multitudes, causing severe anxiety and depression, crippling self-esteem, and undermining and destroying relationships

Anxious to Please reveals the primary psychological cause of Chronic Niceness–Anxious Attachment. Anxious Attachment drives the Nice Person to accommodate, acquiesce and avoid conflict. Nice People take what they’re given rather than asking for what they want, often sacrificing relationship, careers, and their own integrity.

Anxious to Please presents seven powerful practices designed to bring about: resilient self-esteem; a happier and calmer emotional life; a reality-based optimism for the future; fulfilling sex; and satisfying relationships.

People pleasers are not just nice people who go overboard trying to make everyone happy. Those who suffer from the Disease to Please are people who say “Yes” when they really want to say “No.” For them, the uncontrollable need for the elusive approval of others is an addiction. Their debilitating fears of anger and confrontation force them to use “niceness” and “people-pleasing” as self-defense camouflage.

Featured on NBC’s “Today,” The Disease to Please explodes the dangerous myth that “people-pleasing” is a benign problem. Best-selling author and frequent “Oprah” guest Dr. Harriet Braiker offer clear, positive, practical, and easily do-able steps toward recovery.

Begin with a simple but revealing quiz to discover what type of people-pleaser you are. Then learn how making even small changes to any single portion of the Disease to Please Triangle – involving your thoughts, feelings, and behavior – will cause a dramatic, positive, and long-lasting change to the overall syndrome.

As a recovered people pleaser, you will finally see that a balanced way of living that takes others into consideration but puts the emphasis first on pleasing yourself and gaining your own approval is the clearest path to health and happiness.