In our first lesson, you'll find out the answers to four very important questions that impact the success of your relationships with others. The answers to these questions will help you identify your preferred communication styles. By the time you finish this lesson, your skills for achieving successful relationships will markedly increase.

In this lesson, you'll learn and practice appropriate options for dealing effectively with aggressive subcategories of Intuitors whom you'll learn to recognize because of their fashionable and stylish appearances, as well as their stimulating, cluttered, and friendly workplaces. You've probably experienced what happens when Intuitors aren't getting their needs met. They become neglectors, empire builders, and prima donnas. And by the time you finish this lesson, you'll know how to deal with each one.

Today, we'll take another look at Relaters and see how they differ from Intuitors, who are also people-focused. Plus, you'll learn ways to effectively handle the difficult subcategories of Relaters. You'll see from examples that Relaters are more passive than Intuitors, they concentrate more on pleasing others than Intuitors do, they're very attentive to the needs of others, and they set high value on friendships and being accepted by others. But if their needs aren't met, they may become approval-seeking to the extreme. We'll go over how to deal with them in today's lesson.

Some of your difficult people probably also feel that you're their difficult person, but you may be totally unaware of this. Do you feel that ignorance is really bliss? You wouldn't if you value relationships with others as well as personal and professional success. If so, you need to know whose difficult person you may be. We'll go through some exercises in this lesson that should help you figure it out. The greater your versatility, the more likely you are to experience win-win relationships—those in which the needs of everyone in a relationship are met.

In this lesson, you'll work toward improving your own flexibility skills: Confidence, tolerance, empathy, positivity, and respect. To help, you'll answer a few questions about each of your own skill sets as you move through the lesson's materials. You'll also select and use techniques and processes to increase or improve your flexibility skills, and then you'll review your success or results achieved.

In today's lesson, you'll learn that a certain set of characteristics is essential if you want to relate well with others. As you'll find out today, you must first improve your versatility skills to maintain a positive attitude, and then learn to view obstacles and problems as "opportunities." You'll also learn that versatility is based on your levels of resilience, vision, attentiveness, competence, and self-correction. Plus, you'll review techniques and processes by which you may increase or improve your versatility skills, and then apply the skills to your own situations and relationships and analyze their effectiveness.

After we finish today's lesson, you'll understand what assertiveness is and what it isn't. You'll begin to see why assertive behavior is so important to your success in getting along well with others, and you'll carefully examine your own level of assertiveness, know which of your skills need fine-tuning, and have access to the tools needed to accomplish your tune up. You'll learn that assertiveness involves taking responsibility for getting your own needs met in a way that also preserves the dignity and rights of others. Plus, you'll learn how to both show and tell others through assertive actions and language what you mean and what you need or want.

You're going to be amazed by the results you'll be able to accomplish after you complete this lesson! The assertive-communication techniques you'll practice are simple, yet powerful. You'll learn to use self-disclosure appropriately to share information about yourself—your thoughts, feelings, and opinions—to build relationship trust and common ground. Then you'll find out how to use persistence, or the broken record technique, to get results from someone who's not listening to your wants or needs. Next, you'll find out how to effectively use your voice and language assertively to improve your relationships. Added to the many other techniques you've already explored in this course, you'll now have all the tools you need to improve and maintain even your most difficult relationships.

Today in our final lesson, you may be surprised to discover that your listening skills need improvement because listening well is a complex process in which your own selective filtering often keeps you from real understanding. Even more astounding, we spend more time listening every day than we do in other types of communication, yet a majority of us have never learned how to listen effectively. When paired with assertive speaking skills and other nonverbal skills, assertive listening skills will give you a lot more personal control over difficult situations—including living and working with difficult people.