Carla Miller 00:00
Have you ever sat in a meeting with a contribution that you want to make, but you've talked yourself out of it, only to hear someone else, make it later? If that's you, then this episode is going to be super useful for you. It's all about how to speak up in meetings. And we're going to be exploring what stops us from speaking up in meetings, and it will be different things for different people. And I'm going to share five steps that you can take to make it easier to speak up in meetings. Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders.

My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self doubt, become brilliant influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. And I want to become the leadership BFF that you didn't know you were missing until now. Just before we get onto that, I wanted to let you know about some changes to my main programme. So my influence and impact for female leaders programme, which for the last few years has been a 12 month programme has evolved. So it is becoming a three month cohort, starting in April this year. And there will be up to 20 women on the course. So it's the only chance this year to work with me as your coach in a small group setting. So if you are, perhaps you're looking to move up a level perhaps you're new to your role, perhaps you're in your role, but wishing that people would listen to you more than they do. And that you're able to influence more doubt yourself less get people to see you as you want to be seen, then influence and impact is the programme for you. If you would like to know more, you can head over to my website, Carla Miller training.com. Or you can just drop me a message on LinkedIn, I'm always happy to have a quick chat with anyone who's thinking it might be for them, but they're not totally sure. And we can work out if it is or not. The spaces are filling up quickly. But if it is resonating with you, if it's calling to you, then go and check that out. And of course, we are running our be bolder, open course as well.

So Be Bolder is a four week confidence and assertiveness course for women at any level. So you don't have to be a manager or leader to be on that at all. And in that we talk about believing in yourself tackling impostor feelings and self doubt changing some of the unhelpful stories that you have in your head. We also look really practically about how do you have some of those courageous conversations? How do you give and receive feedback? How do you set boundaries and say no, and learn to validate yourself rather than looking to others for validation. And the other thing that we cover in be bolder is the topic of today's podcast, which is about speaking up. So we are going to be exploring that further today. But if this topic really resonates with you, and you want to be speaking up really boldly, and go deeper on this subject, then do look at be bolder, we are running that in March. Basically, it's for a comment if it's Tuesdays or Wednesdays, but it's a session a week, then 90 minutes long throughout March. And it's 497 pounds plus fat, but there is a discount if you are working for a charity or if you're self funding. So again, head over to my website to find out more about that. I don't know when we'll be running those courses. Again. I don't guarantee that we definitely will be running them again. So if they're on your wish list, then do talk to your manager or HR and see if you can get stuff on them. Okay, so let's talk about speaking up in meetings.

Now, I'd like to make a distinction between finding it hard to speak up in meetings and finding it hard to get your voice heard in meetings. So, within influence and impact, we talk a lot about getting your voice heard because generally when people are coming to influence an impact their managers and leaders and they're fairly experienced at speaking up.

Most of the time, they still have their moments when they don't speak up, but they don't find it challenging, necessarily or need courage in order to speak up in big meetings, for example. But they do find it hard to get their voice heard sometimes, because as women, we definitely do find it hard to get our voices heard. They are not listening to us. But that is not the subject of this episode, we probably will do another one on that. But this is about when you find it hard to speak up. It's something that comes up a lot in Be Bolder. So when people join, be bolder, we often do a survey to say what do they find challenging. And that speaking up in meetings, getting over that hurdle of self doubt, that worry in order to contribute valuably to meetings is something that lots of people struggle with. So we're going to look at some of the reasons that we find it hard to speak up. Because if we want to do things differently, we need to understand why we're doing them the way we're currently doing them, because there will be a good logical reason for that. And if you try and create change, but you haven't really understood why you were doing it, the way you were doing it in the first place, it will be hard for that change to stick. So we're going to explore some reasons why we find it hard to speak up.

So the first reason that we might find it hard to speak up is because we have a vocal what coaches call inner critic, so a lot of negative mental chatter going on within your head that gets really really loud at moments when you want to speak up.

I had a lovely client, she was a relatively new manager, she'd been promoted quickly, within her fast growing startup, she was leading a team. And she had a lot of insights to share that would have been relevant to the wider organisation. And she would go to the all company meetings once a week, and sit there and have something that she really wanted to share. But whilst half of her really, really wanted to share it, the other half of her was saying, Don't be stupid, you're going to say something that people will judge, they'll think you're an idiot, who are you to speak up, she really really had some very harsh inner talk going on. And then someone else would make the point. But she wanted to make and she'd realised it was a really good point, that person would get lots of credit for it, because they made it and then she would beat herself up afterwards. And that is not an unusual story. I hear that a lot. I certainly lift that a lot in the past. So one of the things that we did together was work on her inner critic. And this is something that we will do within the beholder if you join us. But essentially, we all have an inner critic, that negative mental chatter. And at the moment, we hear that chatter in our own voices, along with all the rest of our thoughts, and we tend to believe our thoughts and think they're all true.

Spoiler alert, they are definitely not all true, they are definitely not all helpful, we do not want to be believing them all. But knowing that and putting that into practice are two really different things. And so what we did together, my clients and I was we tried to create a bit of a personality around that inner critic, and with some clients, I find it really easy to do with some clients, it's harder to do. This client could really clearly picture a nasty person that personified this voice. And I won't share the name that she used because obviously client sessions are confidential. But let's just say that we called her something like mean, Margaret. And so when she recognised that mean, Margaret was getting very vocal, and she knew this happened in all company meetings. She tried the various techniques that we use to minimise mean Margaret's voice, she found one of those techniques that worked for her. And when I checked in with her a couple of months later at a session and said, you know, how are you getting on with me and Margaret, and she said to her, I hadn't even noticed, but she hasn't been coming up in those meetings now that I've learned how to recognise her voice and to thank and dismiss her voice. She really hasn't been coming up that much at all. And actually, this client hadn't been realised how much progress she'd made because once it stopped happening, she just didn't notice. So it could be that you to have a vocal inner critic Tec might not be vocal all the time. For some people it is some people it isn't. But it might be particularly vocal, for example, in large meetings or meetings with senior stakeholders or meetings with a particular person with a particular communication style.

One of the other reasons that we can not speak up is because we have an unhelpful belief or story. So, if you've listened to the podcast, a while you're probably familiar with this idea of beliefs is it's basically a repetitive thought that you've had so many times that you believe it to be completely true. And it tends to be an assumption about yourself, or about a situation or about a person. So it's a generalised assumption. So an example of an unhelpful belief is, I'm not experienced enough to contribute to this meeting, so they won't want to hear from me, or I don't know enough. What if I therefore say something that's totally wrong, or totally obvious? Or I'm not 100%? Sure. And I need to be 100% Sure, it needs to be absolutely bulletproof, if I'm going to speak up, because I will be judged, if I'm wrong. All of those are unhelpful beliefs. They're all very common, unhelpful beliefs that stop us from speaking up. And so that's why within be bolder, for example, we work on identifying which of the beliefs that are holding you back, because we'll all have different versions of those. And I should say, we all you know, the idea is not that you never have any unhelpful beliefs, or that you never have a vocal inner critic, we're not trying to turn anyone into robots, my inner critic sometimes gets very vocal, sometimes I have unhelpful beliefs.

What I don't have are the same unhelpful beliefs that I had five years ago that were holding me back for five years ago, I've evolved to different ones, I've dealt with those ones, they don't come up as much. But I've entered new situations, I've done new things, and my brain has created new ways to try and keep me safe and small and unnoticed. And that's really what those unhelpful beliefs are trying to do. So even just starting to recognise when you've got an unhelpful belief, is a great thing to do. Because then you can question it. And there's a process that we go through to help you to question and reframe those beliefs. But just start with the first part of that process, which is, is it true?

So for example, if you're sat there thinking, I'm not experienced enough, they won't want to hear from me. Just ask yourself, Is that actually true? Do I need to be experienced to be able to add value to this meeting? Do they genuinely not want to hear from me? Would they rather I sat in this meeting and kept completely mute the whole time, if I knew something that's useful to them, would they rather I just kept that to myself. So you can start to pick holes in that beliefs and it becomes less strong for you. Now, another thing that stops us for speaking up is, sometimes the room doesn't feel safe to speak up in. So there might be a lack of psychological safety in that room, it could be that you have some very dominant people, and anyone else who tries to contribute gets shut down. It could be that it's not safe to disagree with a particular person because they will verbally attack you. I think it's really important to recognise that and if you know, we, I run these courses, I write these books, I have these podcast episodes. But the world is messy, and situations are messy. And sometimes the advice that I'm giving just doesn't apply in the situation that you're in, and I would never want you to blindly follow it or to feel like Oh, I'm, I'm somehow less than because I'm not following it. You are able to judge the psychological safety of a room for you. So if you've had previous experiences, which mean that you have been verbally attacked in some way or really clearly undermined or bullied or even discriminated against, or then you will naturally be reluctant to speak up and you might really, really carefully pick your words or your times to speak up to the times when it's important to you and when it feels safe enough. Now various studies show that if you are only in a room so if you are for example, the only woman In a room full of men, or the only women of colour, or the only person of colour, or the only person who is neurodiverse, or from a particular class, or a particular background, then studies show not only is it much harder for you to speak up, because there's those additional barriers to overcome in terms of the confidence to speak up. But those are driven by the fact that it's much harder for you to be heard, because we are all drawn to people like us. And that excludes anyone who's only in any room. And sometimes we'll be the only in the room and sometimes we'll be in a majority group in the room. And so just recognising that if you're only in a room, and you're finding it hard to speak up and finding it hard to get your voice heard, you're likely facing a form of bias and just being careful not to personalise that. I talk about this a lot in terms of gender bias applies to all kinds of bias.

Often we can experience it and not recognise it as that or not want to name it as that and therefore think that it means that there's something wrong with us. So just recognising study show it is harder to speak up when you're only in the room. And as a side note to someone who to anyone sat here who's never been an only in the room, or who is in rooms at the moment where you're not and only and other people are. Know that fact know that it's harder for anyone who's an only to speak up, make it easier for them to speak up, make sure you are being truly receptive, and hearing them. Now sometimes it's hard to speak up because we literally can't get a word in edgeways things like heap eating, where we do speak up, and someone else makes our point, makes it about five times and basically gets all the credit for it, or man interrupting where apparently women get interrupted 50% of the time, and 90% of the time, those interruptions are by men. And also sometimes there's literally no air space. Now that might be a gender thing. We know that when men really outnumber women in a room that then the average man gets 30 to 40% more airspace than the average woman. But sometimes there are just big personalities in a room that don't leave much air space for other people. And if that's the case, and you don't need to sit there and beat yourself up for not contributing, they need to create a bit of space for others to contribute. And then finally recognising that as women, we are judged more harshly for our inputs than men are. So as an example, when women interrupt with the same words, as men used to interrupt, we are judged as colder, ruder and less intelligent. So just recognising, and there's entire books on this I've referenced before, my favourite, or one of my favourites is the authority gap by Mary Ann Sieghart, and we had her on the podcast a while back, she was brilliant. But there's lots of evidence out there showing that we have to prove our competence in a way that men don't have the authority, our authority is not respected in the way that a man's is, particularly when you're in male dominated environments. So recognising sometimes, for one, or all of those many reasons, sometimes the room doesn't feel safe to speak up. And sometimes we might be reflective thinkers. So reflective thinkers, like to have time to absorb information to think through the different options to analyse things. And that time isn't always available in meetings, meetings are designed for more extroverted thinkers. And again, I think there's a really interesting future podcast episode on this as well. But sometimes we're reflective thinkers. And if we are, we're less likely to be actively contributing throughout a meeting. And that's okay.

We don't want to be regularly going to meetings and never saying anything. And so I've got some tips I can share later. But it is okay to go to a meeting. And if you don't have anything of value to say, you don't have to say anything. Now, you might have something valuable of value to say but feel like your thoughts aren't fully formulated, in which case you can allude to that and you can say something like there's something really interesting here that deserves some more analysis. So I'd like to pick up on it. In our next meeting. For example, being a reflective thinker is not a weakness in any way. It can be a massive strength and I really encourage reflective thinkers to to know that strength And to own it. And to try and get yourself the space, you need to be able to do that thinking. And just repeating a point because I think it's worth repeating. Sometimes what stops us from speaking up in meetings is we don't have anything that we think is a value to say. And that that is fine. I am not a fan of speaking for the sake of it. What a waste of time for everyone. If we all feel we have to contribute something, even though we don't feel we've got anything valuable to say. But I would just check that what you're not doing is judging what you have to say and your thoughts as not being valuable when actually they are valuable. If you're sitting there with a completely blank mind, happy to just listen. Great. Unless it's part of your role to actively contribute on that particular topic, then there's no reason why you can't just listen, you don't have to have your hand up all the time in a company meeting, for example. But just check that you're not kind of self censoring. And you actually do have something that you want to contribute. Okay, so we've explored a number of different reasons why we might sometimes stop ourselves from speaking up. What I wanted to do now is to share some simple steps, or simple things I'd like you to know, to help you in those situations.

Okay, so the first thing I want you to know is that you can stop beating yourself up for it. So if you are coming out of a meeting, feeling rubbish about yourself, because you didn't contribute, you're not the only one that's feeling those things. Like I said, it's a big issue that comes up with are be bolder participants, and beating yourself up about it isn't going to help the situation at all. And creating pressure on yourself to speak up more next time isn't going to help the situation at all, either. So just be kind to yourself. And just for a little bit of context. So I am sitting here talking to worth somewhere between one and two, probably 1000 People in this episode, I am not someone that likes to talk for the sake of it. I only like to talk if I've got something valuable to say, I was extremely shy when I was younger. And I really, really lacked confidence. When I was younger, I absolutely sat in those meetings thinking I really should say something, people are gonna judge me because I'm not saying the thing. I really should say something, what am I gonna say? Oh, no, I can't say that. That would be stupid, I don't want to be judged. And it will be going on in my head for almost the entire meeting. And now, I was gonna say, Look at me, but you can't see me because I'm on my podcast. Now listen to me, I can talk for ages. So just because you feel like that now doesn't mean that's how you're always going to feel for me, when there was a massive difference between early on in my career. And when I was still very much learning and didn't have much that much confidence to the point where I was I actually I do know my stuff on this. And actually, if I don't contribute it to this meeting, some decisions are going to be made that are going to make it harder for me to do my job or for my team to do my job. Or there are things I think people need to be aware of. And so just also recognising that the confidence to speak up sometimes comes as you evolve in your career as well. It doesn't mean you don't still have self doubt I work with very senior people, including chief execs, who will still have that focal inner critic, and self doubt. But it just it shows up in a different way.

So just knowing that it's actually totally normal to doubt yourself, particularly when you're relatively early on in your career and haven't had a chance to basically build up all that experience to actually look, I feel like I lack confidence. But these are all the things I'm actually capable of. Okay. Second thing I want you to know is, please don't speak for the sake of it. The point is to add value. So don't make yourself do something you don't want to do that isn't going to add any value. The third thing I want you to to recognise is a really, really important one, which is every meeting needs different viewpoints and different perspectives to be useful. So a good meeting is not lots of people who already know what they think and already know what everyone else thinks and everyone completely agrees, making decisions that you could have actually just made by email because everyone was already on the same page. I mean, that sounds like a terribly boring meeting. Meeting should be a place for discussions and decisions where you're hearing different viewpoints and perspectives. So just because you're new, doesn't mean you can't add value. In fact, that perspective that fresh perspective is really good. Sometimes we think we're asking stupid questions when actually those stupid questions are really, really insightful questions. Some of the questions we asked in coaching, and as you evolve as coach, you have more and more training, you realise that the good questions are not the complicated ones.

The simplest questions are the most powerful questions. So recognising that you don't have to be the most experienced, you don't need to know everything. And you don't need to have been in your job for two years. In order to be able to add value to a meeting, the meeting needs different viewpoints and perspectives. And if you have been invited to a meeting, it should be because your viewpoint and perspective and your knowledge or experience, something that you bring to the table has value, it should be while you're in a meeting, you shouldn't be in a meeting, if that's not the case, they shouldn't have invited you. And they did invite you. So recognise that and you don't have to sit there and compare yourself to other people. So you don't have to sit there and think well, I'm not as I don't know, succinct as that person, or the opposite. I'm not as fantastic a storyteller as that person, or I'm not as extroverted or as analytical. Trust me, everyone is sitting there comparing themselves to other people. I literally coached people from within the same team. And the introverts are sat there thinking, Oh, I think a good leader is extroverted. And that's what I should be, and I'm not, and the extroverts are sat there thinking, I really wish that I was more thoughtful, and, and more analytical and karma in the way that I spoke. And that's the kind of leader that I should be, and I'm not, we're all doing it. So you don't need to compare yourself to anyone else in any way when you're in a meeting. Because when we're doing that, we're not focused on the meeting, we're not kind of doing that active listening of reading the room, we're focused on ourselves. And what can sometimes help me, for example, when I'm doing the podcast is not think about myself and how I might be judged for what I'm saying and how I could have articulated things better. But instead, think about, how can I serve best?

How can I add as much value as possible? And hopefully, I'm also an example of you don't have to be perfect, to add value to be good at what you do. I'm sure there are people with a better podcast voice who are more articulate, who don't emotionally blurt what's going on in their life. But I like to think those things and make it easier to listen to me because you can resonate, you can connect with me, and it's the same with you in your meetings. Okay, point four in terms of things you can do is ask questions. So I think we put lots of pressure on ourselves when we struggle to speak up in meetings. And if we are making a point, and we fear judgement, we can say I don't have all the information to hand for that, or what if I'm wrong, but it's quite hard to be wrong when you're asking a question. So questions are a brilliant way to contribute to a meeting. Now I learned this years ago, in a bit of a sneaky way in that at university, we had a tutor group, I guess it was once a week. And I noticed that in that tutor group, the tutor clearly had to tick next to everyone's name that they contributed something because they made sure that everyone had contributed I, to my shame and demonstrating the privilege I had to be at university did not always do my homework had not always done my reading by established if I asked an intelligent question near the beginning that I wouldn't get called on for an answer about some homework that I hadn't done later on. And so that's when I first learned the power of questions. And I'd like to think I'm more mature about things now. And I certainly do do my homework when necessary. But questions are a great way of influencing the direction of a meeting, there are a great way of contributing. If you want to influence the direction of the meeting, it might be questions like, Have we thought of everything here? Or does it feel like we're going a bit off track?

You can try open questions. What else? What else do we need to think of? is a great open question. Or if you want you can use closed questions to try and direct people. So an open question means there could be any answer a closed question It leads people probably towards a yes or no. Questions are a fantastic way of influencing. And we share some of those, some of my favourite ones within be bolder and influence and impact. And then my final practical point is if you are someone who has thought of what you want to say, you're waiting for a chance to say it. Meanwhile, the meetings going on around you a bit, you are still sat there doing what I'm doing now, actually probably, which is kind of jigging your leg or fidgeting a little bit waiting for your turn. And in your head, you're practising, what you want to say, we're top tip for you, is when you've thought about what you want to say, just pop down one or two bullet points. It might be it's your first sentence or your last sentence, or it might just be, you know, these are the two points I want to make. So that you know you've captured it, you don't need to keep repeating it. And you can focus your attention on the meeting so that when you sense that opportunity to contribute, you'd say I've got something I'd like to contribute here, or there's something we may not have thought of yet, and contribute what it is that you want to say. So really, really simple technique, just write it down, no one's gonna notice because people are taking notes in meetings all the time. And if it's a virtual meeting, then definitely no one's going to notice.

Okay, so we've covered quite a few reasons why, why we might sometimes find it hard to speak up. We've also talked about some of the practical steps that you can take in order to speak up. Now if you're listening to this and going okay, Carla gets it. But I need more, then do join us in be bolder for the March cohort. Because within that we work on loads of this stuff. So we'll work on your inner critic and finding the right way for you to turn down the volume on it and not take what it's saying. So seriously, we'll work out which unhelpful beliefs are holding you back and help you to reframe them will also help you to tune into what I call your inner leader, which we've not talked about in this podcast. But really, if the opposite to your inner critic, and you do have one, we just need to unleash them, and help you tap into them when you need them. And then also, we have a whole 90 minute session on speaking up in meetings, including how to stop using some of those qualifying statements and caveats.

Like I might be wrong, but we're saying Does that make sense at the end. So understanding why you use them, why that's not a good thing, and giving you some different phrases that will help you achieve the same thing in a more powerful way. So I would love to see you on be bolder, if this is something that that you would like to know more about. So that's it from me for today's episode, I hope you have a lovely couple of weeks, I have really enjoyed getting some messages on LinkedIn, from people who have been listening to the podcast, and wanted to let me know that they found it useful. So please do if you're not connected to me on LinkedIn, we haven't messaged me, please do that. And I would also love it if you would help spread the word. So if you are an experienced leader, most of this episode will be things that you've probably already experienced, know about mastered, might need a bit of practice. In putting them into practice, I often find that lots of stuff, I might go into course and think Yeah, I know this. And I'm like, Oh, well hang on, I came on this course. Because I haven't dealt with that issue. I came on it to solve something. And I might know it, but I'm not putting it into practice.

So there might be a bit of that. But actually, it could be that this is an episode that someone in your team would really benefit from listening to. So what I would really encourage you to do with this episode is pass it on, pass it onto a peer, pass it on to a colleague pass it on to a family member or friend. But some of this stuff. It's so fundamental to how we feel at work because we spend so much time in meetings.

And so if you found it helpful, please do spread the word and let people know about this particular podcast episode. Brilliant. Take care, and I'll speak to you in a couple of weeks.

If you've listened to the podcast and you want to know more about how we can work together, here are a few places you can look. First of all, I've got a couple more freebies. I've got a free PDF on increasing your leadership impact at work, and I've also got a free masterclass on becoming a more influential leader without letting self-doubt hold you back. So head on over to the website to book yourself a place on the masterclass or to download that PDF. There are my open programmes Influence and Impact for women at management and leadership level, and Be Bolder, a four-week live assertiveness and confidence course for women at any level, you can preorder my book closing the influence gap, a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard.

You can also work with me one to one particularly if you're a senior leader, and you can hire me to work in house to do talks for awareness weeks, one of workshops, a series of workshops, or to run my influence and impact programme or be bolder programme in house as a women's leadership or women's empowerment offering. If you want to talk about any of those on my website, you can drop me an email or you can also book a quick 15 minute chat so we can talk about what you need and how I might be able to help you or your organisation. So I look forward to chatting to you.