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How Aggressive/Assertive Are You?

A typical questionnaire being used for recruitment:

Your boss wants you to work with a new team which has a few people you dislike. Understanding that this might affect your working relationship with the team, would you:


a.
Immediately agree as it is a part of the job and not everything can be perfect.
b. Tell the boss you won't like to be on that team due to personal reasons but if the boss wants you would oblige.
c. Refuse the assignment.
d.
Talk to the boss about your apprehensions and suggest plausible solutions to work around the problem. 

You have made an excellent report that is perhaps the best effort that you have put in for a long time which is outrightly rejected by your superiors. Do you:

a. Tell everybody how angry you are with the boss.
b. Feel bad about it the whole day and sit by yourself.
c. Try breaking something to release your anger.
d. Make people aware of your state by making noises or with your body language. 

Your secretary or your assistant has been late to office for the past few days and it is affecting your schedule. Would you:

a. Call him/her in the office and give him/her a piece of your mind.
b.Reschedule your own agenda and not bother about it.
c. Speak to the person explaining how his/her coming late is affecting your schedule and work out a way on which both of you agree.
d. Fire the person and hire a new one. 

You have made a major mistake while doing a particular job. The boss would be extremely annoyed and you could be in a lot of trouble because of it. Would you:

a.
Keep quiet about it and wait for the boss to find out and then give an excuse or an explanation.
b. Take an appointment and explain to the boss the circumstances, giving the impression that you have learned from this mistake. You make it sound positive and then wait for him to give his decision.
c. Try to find a scapegoat who can be with you.
d. Get angry about the mistake and fret and fume over it. 

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You have just submitted a project which you believe will work. Others in the organisation are offering stiff resistance and it seems difficult that it will be accepted against such odds. Do you:

a.Regardless of the opposition push ahead with the project.
b. Give up on the project as it will be a waste of time to push something that might not be accepted.
c.
Talk to the opinion leaders and try to understand the opposition and their fears. Then suggest a revised project with the main idea being more acceptable.
d. Adopt an aggressive attitude against the opposition.

Add all the scores you have given options which are marked with blue squares to get your Aggressiveness (AG) score. Adding the scores for the green ones will give you Assertiveness (AS), the red ones Manipulativeness (MA), and the brown ones Submissiveness (SU). If the total score is more than 15 for any of these, that is your dominant trait. If it is AS or MA, these are positive behaviour patterns, and you should improve on them. If it is AG or SU, which are negative patterns, you should reduce them. And if your AG+SU score is more than your AS+MA score, you should seriously do something about it.

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Source: The Learning Curve

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