Too Nice or Too Rude? How to Be Assertive Without Coming Across as Aggressive.

Articulating your thoughts with enough confidence and directness to be effective, but not so much that you sound aggressive, is one of the biggest challenges for international professionals working in English.

One of my clients — let’s call her Claudia — is an accomplished executive in the high-tech industry. English isn’t her native tongue, but after working in the US for many years, her speech is fluent and accurate. So why would she need communication coaching? In our first call, she described some of her challenges to me: “I feel I’m not being heard in meetings. When I speak, I get interrupted by my colleagues. I know that I’m not concise enough. I need to learn to speak with more authority and precision so people listen and I can make an impact.”

At first glance, it sounds like Claudia has a lot of different communication issues — but it actually all comes down to one thing: Like many non-native speakers in business, tech, or academia she has an assertiveness problem.

The implications are real: not being heard in meetings, getting interrupted or talked over, not being able to influence decisions and trajectories, and not moving up when it should be your turn.

What Is Assertiveness?

Assertiveness has three main components: confidence, directness, and respect.

1. You trust in your own abilities and viewpoints — that’s the confidence part. It’s a prerequisite for assertiveness.

2. You speak up clearly and unambiguously — that’s the directness part.

3. You share your thoughts without aggression or hostility — that’s the respect part.

If one of these components is missing, your assertiveness suffers.

• If you don't have confidence, you're likely to remain passive. You may not speak up at all. If you speak, you sound hesitant and timid. As a result, people around you think you have no opinion of your own, you are indecisive, and you lack leadership quality.

• Without directness, your messaging is vague and imprecise, leaving others unsure about what you want and need.

• Without respect, you’ll come across as unpleasant and aggressive. People won’t like you and they may not want to work with you.

All three components can be learned, even in a foreign language.

How Can I Become More Confident?

Confidence is about believing that your ideas have value and that your voice matters. For non-native speakers, there’s an extra layer: it’s also about trusting your ability to express those ideas effectively in English and hold your ground when others push back.

If you're afraid of speaking up, try this: Before a meeting, identify the one or two points you most want to make. Write them down in English and say them out loud a few times. Having “tested” the words in advance will make you feel and sound more certain.

In the meeting, don’t wait too long before you join in. Meeting participants who speak up early are perceived as more self-assured. Avoid talking too fast without pauses. Rushed speaking projects a lack of confidence.

I’m Direct, so Why Am I Not More Effective?

Directness is one of the most misunderstood concepts in communication.

Many people think that it simply means saying what’s on your mind. As a result, they sound blunt and dismissive, which makes them ineffective.

In the professional environment, directness is about making your point concisely and clearly, while still considering what’s appropriate in the situation (see next section on respect). The goal is to reduce ambiguity.

In English, you can greatly enhance clarity by using active-voice sentences, reducing fancy words, and eliminating unnecessary phrases that weaken your argument. For example, instead of saying, “I’m not sure how you all feel about this idea and if you think it makes sense, but we could maybe try Z,” say, “I recommend we try Z,” or even shorter “I recommend Z.”

How Can I Be Direct and Respectful at the Same Time?

English has various ways to soften messages that are too blunt. I wrote an article about verbal hedging a little while back that goes into more detail. Hedging is useful when you want to make sure that you don’t hurt the other person’s feelings. It's an important tool to learn for people from very direct cultures, such as Germany or the Netherlands. Over-hedging, however, makes you less assertive, so I recommend using this technique deliberately.

Another way to show respect is using “I-language”. For example, instead of saying “You keep on interrupting me,” you say, “I’d like to finish my point.”

Respecting the room does not involve unnecessary apologizing. Instead of “I’m sorry, but I’d like to add some thoughts here,” simply say, “I’d like to add something here.”

Assertiveness Is Within Reach

Claudia didn’t have an English problem. She had an assertiveness problem. Understanding that distinction was an important first step. From thereon, we were able to work on mindset techniques and communication frameworks to make her a stronger communicator.

There's no doubt that you need solid language competence to express your thoughts in a professional English-speaking environment, but you don’t need to sound like a native speaker. The goal is to sound like someone who knows what they think, says it clearly, and respects the people in the room. That combination is available to anyone, regardless of where they grew up and what language they speak at home.

If you’d like to work on this directly, I offer coaching programs that combine communication and confidence techniques you can apply right away in your next meeting. Reach out.

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