Confidence is not about telling people what to do.
I don't know why you're coming at this as if being confident or assertive conflicts with being dominant. But some of these words are wildly taken out of context in this community.
Assertiveness means being self assured without being aggressive. It's a quality derived from confidence because you obviously can't be self assured if you're not confident.
You don't 'assert yourself'. Doing that implies you have to convince people you're self-assured. And if you have to convince them, then you're not.
And dominance usually implies a sexual context. A vast majority of women will want a man to take charge in the bedroom, shockingly as that may sound. They want to be manhandled and they are not fragile little flowers as most men are led to believe.
And as you can tell that's not something they come across very often, since most men seem incapable of making even the simplest of decisions. Like picking a place to eat without asking her where she wants to go for 30 minutes straight prior to that.
If you want to win people over in a cooperative way, start being a leader and stop being a boss. And this should go without saying but if you want to be a good leader you need to be good at what you're about to lead in the first place.
