Title: I&#x27;m 41 years old and I find I&#x27;m not aggressive enough, neither at work nor (probably) in personal life. It was something my boxing coach (various years ago) told me quite often.<p>I&#x27;m not passive or shy; I speak up, I tell people (and managers, and girlfriends) uncomfortable truths, I&#x27;m usually confident and (quite) assertive, but I&#x27;m usually too calm and understanding when things heat up in a discussion. It&#x27;s totally OK for me to give up and think something like &quot;ok, that person is having a bad day, I shouldn&#x27;t fight fire with gasoline&quot;.<p>Now I feel that&#x27;s a problem; because, very often, those discussions are those when you &quot;win&quot; an argument (especially in the eyes of colleagues or managers) or lose it.<p>When I approach again people that treated me harshly, they usually say &quot;I thought that was already settled, wasn&#x27;t it?&quot; or something like that. I work as a software engineer, and I think this is preventing to step up in my career, despite the fact that most colleagues regard me as a really authoritative (and not authoritarian!) source and respect me a lot.<p>I know that some of you will tell me &quot;find a better company&quot;. But I&#x27;ve changed some jobs already in my life, and ultimately some things don&#x27;t change - I don&#x27;t work in an horrible politics-only corporation - and I think it&#x27;s high time to step up to what the game is.<p>Any kind of recommendation? Books, trainings, professionals that can help me?
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