The Passive aggressive Communication Style
Over the years, I have helped countless individuals build confidence and improve their communication through my work with clients in the NHS, private practice, and the University sector.
Extensive research has found four distinct communication styles that can either help or hinder you in your career. Research shows that expressing yourself effectively can improve wellbeing and self-esteem plus further your career prospects.
And that led me down the path of creating this course, so you can get instant clarity about your principal workplace communication style as the first step in optimising and improving your ability to speak confidently in any situation.
Kim Revell
Health and Care Professions Registered Practitioner Psychologist
The Passive - Combative Communication Style
A passive combative ’ is what you might see described as a passive-aggressive communicator if you were to search for ‘communication styles’ on the internet.
Now, I don’t like the term ‘passive-aggressive’ as I feel it can be misinterpreted as if the individual has deliberately malicious intentions or is sly and tricky to deal with. It may feel painful to accept that this is your primary style of communicating at work.
However, I believe that it is crucial to understand how this style develops so that we can adopt a compassionate stance to ourselves and find ways to move beyond it. I prefer to call this type of communicator the pretender. You may present one face, passive to the world but underneath you have more combative thoughts and intentions.
In my experience, this communication style often originates from difficulties in asserting yourself or being truly open and honest about how you feel in interactions with other people. This leads to a build-up of unmanageable feelings that tend to accumulate as a consequence of not expressing yourself.
You may then end up employing indirectly aggressive behaviours rather than directly aggressive behaviours. Pretenders therefore try and get what they want or need through indirect means. For example, you may find yourself resisting requests or demands by behaving stubbornly, sulking or deliberately procrastinating and dragging your feet.
Alternatively, you may continually make excuses and avoid certain people as a way of expressing your anger or dislike of them. When you are angry, you may repeatedly claim that you are fine even when it is obvious that you are furious and not okay at all.
How might this style originate?
You may have developed or learned this style of communication in your family of origin as a child or young person. Likely, your family dynamics, the parenting style of your significant caregivers (e.g., parents) and other childhood experiences may have contributed to developing this style of communication.
In the home environment, you may have been discouraged from directly expressing your emotions – it may not have felt safe to speak up and you may not have been allowed to do so at all. Consequently, you will have missed the opportunity to learn how to express yourself honestly or be open and genuine about your feelings. You may have even been punished for expressing emotions, trying to be heard, or acting assertively.
As a result, you may have instead found or developed ways to passively channel your anger or resentment. This may have left you with a compulsion to control situations and you may experience frustration when this is not possible, while simultaneously feeling fearful of the consequences of expressing yourself directly to get your needs met.
This sets up a double bind where you may notice feeling powerless and infuriated but afraid to assertively express your needs directly or stand up for yourself. You may also notice that you often feel a desire to be ‘rescued’ and this generally tends to result in passive behaviour.
You may be able to identify that significant figures in your life growing up (e.g., your parents) were either passive (what we call ‘the placater style’) or aggressive (what we call ‘the combat veteran style’) or communicated as a pretender themselves. Furthermore, it may well be that you grew up in a family culture that tended to communicate in a pretender manner.
Nonetheless, we can all fall prey to communicating like a pretender in certain situations where we might believe that it would be risky to express ourselves honestly or that we may be ridiculed or dismissed for doing so. It may be painful and uncomfortable to accept that this is your predominant style of communicating.
Still, the good news is that you can change it if you want to, as assertive and more balanced communication is a skill that can be learned and developed over time.
What are the features of this communication style?
As a pretender, you may come across as generally non-confrontational and laid-back or reserved in your interactions with others. You will tend to express your opinions in ways that do not involve discord, opposition or create interpersonal conflict. You may appear happy to go with the flow and you may feel very reluctant to express strong opinions, disagree or come across as in any way controversial.
You are highly likely to express yourself in ways that are like the placater (passive style) and may find it incredibly difficult to communicate honestly and express yourself openly when you feel upset, annoyed, irritated, or disappointed. Instead, you are likely to bottle up your feelings, squashing them down and shutting off verbally.
Of course, negative feelings then build up and fester. What we might see is you giving people dirty looks (‘the evils’) and observable changes in your behaviour such as avoiding people, acting sulky, being obstructive or stonewalling and refusing to continue with a conversation, all the while insisting that nothing is wrong.
The problem with this pattern of communication is that denying what you are feeling, shutting down further communication, withdrawing and refusing to discuss the issue can have grave consequences in all types of relationships, in the workplace and outside.
You may also indirectly resist requests from others by avoiding them, evading the request, or creating confusion around the issue. For example, you might insist that you did not understand the instruction/request and cite this as the reason for why you have not complied.
You may refuse to go along with things, either covertly (concealed and hidden/secretly/surreptitiously) by giving an excuse or crying off sick or overtly (blatant and obvious/openly) by digging your heels in and refusing to cooperate for some reason or another. So, you may often appear to agree and respond in a polite, and well-meaning manner, but your external demeanour does not match the way you feel underneath or your observable actions or behaviour.
When confronted or called out about your conduct, you will most likely find it impossible to accept responsibility for your demeanour or behaviour and will deny any negative intentions. This tendency is strongly related to your fears around being open and honest about what is going on for you and may even enable you to attack others without ever having to take responsibility for your behaviour.
What are the payoffs with this communication style, and how do these keep it going?
Adopting a pretender approach does have some payoffs, although it may be difficult to see what these are. As with the placater style, by avoiding direct conflict, pretenders also avoid anxiety and discomfort in the short term.
This, of course, makes a lot of sense as these emotions are uncomfortable and postponing or avoiding anxiety feels good and reduce feelings of stress in the moment.
However, while this works temporarily, it does not prevent the build-up of negative emotions which go on to trigger indirectly aggressive behaviour. Avoidance is therefore not a useful solution and in fact, tends to be the root cause of pretenders’ problems in communication.
What are the emotional consequences of adopting this as your principal style?
Being assertive and emotionally open is not always easy, especially if we have never had the opportunity to learn the skills to do this effectively. When standing up for yourself is difficult or even scary, adopting a pretender style of communication might seem like an easier way to deal with your emotions without having to confront or address the source of your anger.
For example, say someone proposes a plan at work. As a pretender, you may oppose the plan, but instead of voicing your opinion, you go along with it or say that you agree with it. However, underneath you are against the plan and you may then resist following it in overt or covert ways. This is then displayed in your behaviour and you may purposely miss deadlines, turn up late to meetings, or undermine the plan in other ways.
The pretender may well feel bad about themselves deep down and unhappy with their approach to managing interpersonal interactions without knowing how to change. This may lead to feelings of guilt and shame in the long term which may, in turn, further decrease your self-confidence.
Thus, while this type of behaviour may feel rewarding in the short term as it avoids the anxiety and stress of expressing yourself directly, the consequences can be very damaging in the long term. The lack of congruence and authenticity in your dealings with colleagues can lead to resentment, can make it hard to maintain healthy relationships leading to anxiety, low mood and even depression.
As a pretender, you likely believe that others will reject you if you assert yourself or reveal how you are feeling and what you are thinking.
You may have trouble accepting responsibility for your actions as it is too painful and difficult to admit to your failings. This can lead you to defend against the reality of your actions which may even give rise to a paradoxical sense of entitlement.
You may well have noticed that you often experience anger about situations and may become disappointed and frustrated with yourself regularly – I am willing to bet that this is a direct result of your intense fear of the imagined negative consequences of stating your point of view directly.
You may feel subject to a self-imposed need for either absolute acceptance by others, or a dependence on others’ total positive regard, or an overriding need to avoid arguments or conflict. This is what traps you in the shapeshifter’s typical strategy of indirect communication, interfering with your ability to be transparent and preventing genuine and candid connection with others.
Common "Pretender" Pitfalls
Adopting a pretender communication pattern can be quite destructive to relationships, particularly in a workplace, as it gradually erodes trust between people and can lead to resentment. For example, you may find yourself agreeing to tasks and then sabotaging the outcome in some way.
Colleagues may notice that you say one thing and then do another, intentionally procrastinating, delaying, or behaving inefficiently when performing activities or dealing with other peoples’ requests.
You may even be forgetful or make mistakes as a subtle form of protest or put off doing things as a punishment. You may frequently complain or protest that you feel unappreciated or deceived, blaming others.
You may notice that you sulk when you are unhappy with someone or stop talking to or avoid them when you are angry or upset with them.
You may have a habit of using sarcasm to avoid engaging in meaningful conversations and you may display bitterness, irritability, resentment, and hostility toward other peoples’ requests either overtly or covertly (e.g., muttering under your breath after someone has made a request or tutting).
You may have noticed that these behavioural patterns can lead to negative energy between team members, who may even feel angry and disappointed at your behaviour.
In addition to this, a pretender will often experience negative and self-critical thinking which, over time, chips away at your self-confidence and can lead to feeling isolated and lonely at work. The worst-case scenario is that you may even lose people that you care about or respect as you fail to recognise how your behaviour is contributing to the breakdown of relationships. This can make life at work feel difficult.
The ultimate impact of this communication style can make it hard to maintain good working relationships and for either party to achieve a good outcome from an interaction. Of course, this is a real disadvantage in the workplace and, left unchecked, can negatively impact your job prospects, lead to lower job satisfaction and demotivation along with feeling lonely and isolated in the office environment.
A further consequence could be an increase in anxiety and a loss of confidence in yourself which may even impact your career progression if it influences your ability to put yourself forward for opportunities or improve your visibility.
Does this sound familiar?
It is important to note that the four communication styles that have been identified tend to operate across a spectrum of sorts. I have noticed that clients demonstrating many features of the pretender are not always operating in this way across all situations or all relationships.
Often, a pretender does have some assertive skills and can generally benefit from further skills acquisition and practice to improve their communication skills and effectiveness. For example, I have found that assessing communication skills across situations can identify problem areas that can then be addressed systematically.
Thankfully, there are some practical and achievable steps that you can take to overcome the limitations of your natural pretender style and move beyond it to develop more of an ‘All-Rounder’ assertive style.
Here's What You Can Do About It
Thankfully, there are some practical and achievable steps that you can take to overcome the limitations of your natural pretender style and move beyond it to develop more of an assertive style.
It all begins with Learning to become more assertive
Firstly, you will need to achieve a deeper understanding of the psychology of your unique communication style.
It is important to remember that communicating in a balanced and assertive way across all situations and relationships does not come naturally for many people and most of us (myself included!) need to learn how to be consistently assertive communicators.
Your Next Steps
Now you might be wondering:
And how do I achieve this without the specialist knowledge and instruction that it undoubtedly requires?
Well, you are in luck, as this is what I do as a psychologist all day every day. I teach women How to Become More Assertive in the workplace (and in fact in all areas of their life) through tailored training.
I have put together this FREE How To Be More Assertive Starter Kit to help you begin this journey. By the end of the course, you will be able to:
DO THE FOLLOWING:
- Recognise and classify the 4 different communication styles and their characteristics
- Determine your dominant communication style
- Identify specific situations where a lack of assertiveness may be holding you back.
- Build self-esteem and self-worth by communicating your needs and preferences effectively.
KNOW THE FOLLOWING:
- How to ask for your needs to be met
- The 7 steps to creating and delivering an assertive statement
- The negative consequences of not being assertive
- How assertiveness can improve your self-esteem
- The 3 Myths of assertiveness
- 6 ways that saying NO can improve your life
FEEL/NOT FEEL THE FOLLOWING:
- Less anxious in situations where disagreement may occur
- Less resentful
- More confident
