Assertiveness is being able to express your opinions and feelings in a way that also respects the rights of others. Assertiveness skills help to communicate more clearly, achieve what you need to, build positive, productive relationships and ensure you are not taken advantage of. Without being either aggressive to the other person or passive with regard to their own interests. It includes the ability to say no, to ask for favours and make requests, and to express positive and negative feelings. Assertiveness skills are vital in social work due to a need to express feelings and concerns about issues and dilemmas in practice.
Social workers need to develop assertiveness for confident practice with service users and within multidisciplinary team. There are various potential stresses for social worker to practice competently this requires assertiveness. Social workers can face issues in engagement with service users which requires clarity of our role and what we do. It is important that we express our and ensure service users are aware. Assertiveness is useful in this position due to its nature of not being aggressive but being clear in confident expression of the role. It is also for this reason that assertiveness is essential for social work practice within multidisciplinary teams were it is possible that there can be conflict with social work practice values.
Having assertiveness skills can help social workers explain and advance their own conception of problem solutions. This is an essential element and should be viewed as a resource within multidisciplinary teams the effective spotting of possible issue and highlighting that there may be issues. Also assertiveness is about identifying these issues and how they can also be possibly resolved. The clear benefit of this should be valued within multidisciplinary teams. Assertiveness is simply essential for social work practice to achieve social change both internal process within a multidisciplinary team but also in wider society.
