Get Anxious Speaking Up At Meetings?

Never mind title, position, length of employment at your company, most people get anxious, sometimes very anxious, when they speak up at meetings. It doesn’t matter whether they’re on the calendar to make a report and had plenty of time to prepare, it’s a spontaneous opinion, or even just asking for clarification.

This often near-paralysis for bright and talented people makes me really upset as it’s a waste of talent for their companies, BUT more important it has bred a culture of meeting-paranoia that permeates the work force.

Just the other day a group of women spoke with me about how upsetting it is when they speak up and then get called down for it later by their female colleagues—“Why do you go on and on like that?” “You make the meeting go on longer when you think you have to speak up.” “I wish you’d keep your opinions to yourself, they never go anywhere.”

While I wish that the Feminist Movement had been more successful in helping women dismantle old ideas about womanhood that are still holding women back, the fact is that the fear of speaking up at meetings attacks men as well as women.

And given that meetings are the life-blood of corporate relationships, what can you do to achieve more freedom to express yourself!?

If you do a web search for anxiety at meetings or anything related, you’ll find several sites where experts provide tactics like:

* Don’t over prepare
* Arrive at the meeting 10 minutes early
* Practice your listening skills
and so on….

But these behavioral techniques don’t change the inside playing field, and don’t even begin to address the “what’s going on” element that is the only pathway that can set you free to actually enjoy speaking up at meetings.

So, what IS going on!?

First, check yourself out across these three elements, issues that may be pretty much unconscious but nevertheless driving insecurity and doubt about speaking up:

What Were You Told Growing Up About Standing Out?

Some people were given the sincere message by parents, teachers, and others in their community that they could be anything they wanted, while the majority of folks get some version of “we don’t act like that” or “people won’t like you if you try to be the star”—some version of don’t stand out that still resides deeply imbedded in their unconscious programming.

Were You Made To Feel Welcome – Or Not?

Most parents unconsciously repeat how they were raised. And without blaming anyone, it’s important to know that after more than two decades working with thousands of mostly well educated and successful people, if you were truly wanted and welcomed you are in the minority—as shocking as that may be.

Was Your Expertise Valued and Supported by Those Who Raised You?

At the dinner table were your opinions, daily experiences, and responses to what other family members had to say welcome and valued? Most people, if honest with themselves, will have to say “no” which is one of the most lethal obstacles to feeling comfortable speaking up later in life.

So, what to do!

— Begin a process of Self-Branding, with speaking up at meetings one of the cornerstone elements of getting known for your particular areas of expertise, creativity, and inventiveness. This way, when you have a point you want to make, but begin to undermine that impulse, you can catch yourself with the awareness that you need to seize the moment in order to better position yourself in the eyes of your manager or whoever is running the meeting.

— Understand that, as part of your Self-Branding campaign, you need to develop a solid identity platform of your own making and that means that your opinion of what you want to say in meetings is more important than any imagined responses, thoughts, or feelings from others, or even what may be negatively hammering at you in your own head.

— Recognize that as soon as you grant power to others’ opinions/comments to hurt you, you have reverted back into a childhood identity when the adults’ opinions really did matter.

— At this time in your life it’s essential that you understand that anyone who would want you to hold back from expressing your ideas is coming from their own insecurity or jealousy.

Yes, there will still be anxiety as you go forward, but now please know that this kind of anxiety can be understood as a necessary element of feeling unmoored at leaving behind how you were taught to think of yourself growing up, and instead you are now authorizing yourself to take stage as who you really are!

I look forward to your comments about conscious Self-Branding through speaking up at meetings and how it’s been helpful to you—whether as someone who leads meetings and/or attends then.