What do you do if your assertiveness is causing tension with colleagues in the IT field?

Rather than opting for an assertive approach, one should be have an negotiating approach depending on the situation and always be open to a two way door decision. Being assertive does not mean that one has to take a rigid stance but need to understand the current scenario and the purpose.

Assertiveness is a good trait in a leader but it is important to understand when and how to use it. Also, few people will mistake assertiveness as a demand or force and soft nature for non assertiveness which is not true. You can be assertive in implementing a strategy and at the same time if you understand how to convey that strategy to a wider audience and buy in their acceptance, assertiveness will not look as a force but as a decision taken for good

I think that aside from your DISC model assessment above all it is important to see if your Style matches the people you serve as well. At the end of it all Servant leadership is not only about what you know and how you improve but also how this affects the people around you... I recognize that I am quite assertive and direct and that gets you only so far...so I have worked hard to establish during my engagements pertaining strategy that during Discovery I should not be leading/asserting more than 30% of the time (I call it guiding) During Alignment I bump it up to about 40% (Call it Scoping) And During Improvement I go to 60% , after all you were called to lead/drive the strategic/resolve the issues...

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For someone to improve it is important to ask and give feedback. Starting with negative feedback shuts off most of them and it is human. Hence it is apt to start with a positive feedback or the person's strength and then share the constructive feedback without sugar coating and with instances. Sugar coating will lead to not passing the right feedback if the person in front does not understand it. At the end you have to make sure the message has reached correctly and the person can self reflect and come up with an improvement plan for themselves.

Feedback from others is key, and I suggest using the SBI (situation, behaviour, impact) feedback model. Just-in-time feedback is key here, so you can still feel the emotion and detail of the situation. You should be used to using this model with people you manage when giving them feedback, so learn how to drive the process in reverse.

While you are assertive it is important to guage the emotions of the person in front of you and convey the message in the appropriate tone and body language so that it does not look like a decision forced upon.

Being a change agent always will invoke emotional responses (good or bad) when discussing the information and making decisions even in the best of cases do not feel 'offended' 'angry' or 'disappointed' on the emotional reactions you invoke and above all make it clear that you do not take anything personal (you can still be emotional tbh) and thus you are able to showcase emotions productively, when the worst of you threatens to come out...pause...walk away or simply find a spot of inner peace ...sometimes even if it is evident you are emotional staying silent is 10x better than expressing (verbal or written)...if in such a state apply the 24 Hr rule (if possible) before you react.

It is important to assess any situation objectively. What maybe being assertive to you could be aggressive to someone else. There will always be subjectivity and different perspectives in human communication. However, it is important to communicate with numbers rather than adjectives. A key takeaway is to recognise that all team members and stakeholders likely have same or similar goal - we all probably want to deliver the project faster, efificiently, sustainably and so on. But different stakeholders may have different priorities and routes on how to achieve these goals. Once you recognise that we are all in the same team, it is just a matter of prioritising the right metric - which can be objectively done with numbers.