Ask Christa! How Do I Get Over My Fear of Speaking Up? (S4E47)

Introduction

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! the place where you can ask questions about how to work through business challenges and workplace issues. I'm Christa Dhimo and today’s listener question is about that moment in time when you’re just about to say something, then you hesitate, then question why you hesitated, then try to push yourself to do it anyway and in … and your moment is gone. All in just two seconds. One-One-Thousand. Two-One-Thousand. Poof!

I’m talking about Speaking UP at a meeting! 

Most good humans struggle with this at one point or another in their career, and sometimes when it happens once, it starts happening more and more.

Maybe you’re in a culture where hierarchy subtly tells everyone who can speak up and who should be listening. Maybe you’re in a wild west culture where everyone jumps in impulsively, demonstratively—lets the biggest voice and longest, fastest monologue win. Maybe you start to speak up and someone repeatedly speaks over you… and then.. well… why bother, right?

No matter the circumstance, we ALL get into a place and time when we leave a meeting wondering, “Ugh, why couldn’t I just speak up?”

That’s what today’s episode is focused on, and there’s a lot to it, so we’re going to stick to the narrow scope of the question, but I encourage and invite you to keep sending in questions on this topic as you’d like. It’s one we can never speak enough about (I know… I know…).

Listener Question

Here’s the listener question: “Around my friends, I’m a big talker. But then I get into work, and I can’t seem to speak up. There are only four people in my team plus our manager. Everyone is really nice, and I have all these ideas during our meeting, but when it comes to the end and our manager asks us to go around the table and share what we think others need to know that may have been missed, I suddenly go blank when it’s my turn. I write down my notes before the meeting and then during the meeting, but then I look at them on the spot and instantly feel like there’s too much to ask, or not enough time. Everyone else seems to be so at ease, and that doesn’t make it easier for me. How do I get over my fear of speaking up?”

Speaking Up Is Complicated…

Speaking up at work is COMPLICATED. Speaking up as a good human ranges from feeling intimidated to a fear of being criticized in public—or… even in private. A lot of people are also sensitive to HOW they’ll speak in front of the team, whether they’ll see too formal or stiff, or too casual, or even… “all over the place.” 

There are multiple levels of what enables employees to speak up, from individual style and how compelled you are to share whatever pops into your mid all the way to whether you run out of time or opportunities to speak up and… sometimes you never feel heard anyway. 

Even if it’s just two people talking, there are power dynamics and push/pull or give/take dynamics that may make speaking up… difficult. With more than two people, there’s working in a team, team energy, team climate. Then of course there’s the manager’s style, leader style, various cultural observations (sometimes called "phenomenons” in the research world…). ALL of that are just a few of the hundreds of factors that influence whether someone speaks up or not.

From our listener’s perspective, it sounds like they may be getting tripped up in the same way soooo many of us do: that moments’ breath or quick second just before our listener speaks, something zaps the speaking up part, so that’s what I’m going to focus on in this episode. Then as always, I’ll offer additional resources so you can all learn more at your pace. 

Start Messy, Just Don’t Waste Time…

So, speaking up. For starters, we need to cut ourselves some slack—at least on the inside. Let’s ease up on this expectation that we’re supposed to naturally know how to speak up and be comfortable with it. That’s just not how speaking up works, especially if you’re self-aware, aware of your surroundings, and are sensitive to your environment. In most societal cultures, we’re taught to wait our turn, raise our hand, use decorum and courtesy when we speak up. For the last twenty years, we’ve been trained that voicemails should be brief, comments should be concise, no one has time for more than a few words… and of course, how many of us remember the 140 character limit from nearly 20 years ago?

When we have so many inputs putting constraints and rules on our outputs, it’s no wonder so many of us freeze just before we speak, then pass on speaking up at all.

In the case of our listener, they maybe have 20 minutes or 40 minutes to take in a lot of information during a meeting, synthesize it so it aligns with the work they are doing, then report out or ask questions related to any perceived gaps.

Not everyone works that fast, and I’m not sure we always need to.

But we also have jobs to do, and some of the demands on us to be concise and brief is from instances when others have not been able to be concise or brief… and … that’s not good either. You want to have some decorum when you're speaking up. It just shouldn't prohibit you from speaking up.

Speaking Up Doesn’t Have to Be in the Room Where it Happened…

Now there are a few things you can do to take the bite out of speaking up and feel a bit more at ease.

First, if you relate to our listener in that just as you need to speak up or are asked to speak up, you freeze… or maybe you halt and freeze for a few seconds, then speak, but you’re rattled so much that you get a hot flash AS YOU’RE SPEAKING and have all kinds of inner chatter in your brain AS YOU’RE SPEAKING (“oh no, what am I saying, did any of that make sense, am I rambling now… what am I talking about… oh no… what WAS I talking about…”)… you’re not alone. A lot of people go through that. *I* go through that and I’m a professional communicator who delivers keynotes, various talks, facilitates big strategic sessions, answers tough questions in the moment and on the fly with a room full of strangers…

Talk to your manager. Talk about your experience at that part of the meeting and see if you can both work on different techniques that might help you—just between you and your manager. For example, maybe YOU go first so that you get that part of the meeting out of the way. You get the right amount of practice in, you speak up, then you listen and watch others as you all go around the room. Maybe you’re the LAST person who goes. You can see how others speak up and share, and you can take from their styles and maybe feel more at ease because you’ve already listened to everyone else.

Maybe you and your manager decide that you are able to opt out of speaking up in the meeting and instead you use 1:1 time with your team members while you work on feeling more at ease with speaking up.

There are different ways you can manage HOW and WHEN you speak up in a meeting when you know it’s part of the meeting.

If you don’t feel this is something you can go to your manager with, then who CAN you go to? A peer? Do you have someone on the team you trust where you can ask for their help? If you know you aren’t comfortable with speaking up first, maybe you can let someone on the team know your dilemma and you can ask, “hey—if our manager calls on me first to give my update, can you interject and go instead? Just ask, “Oh, would it be OK if I went just to get this part out of the way?”

Keep in mind that that kind of tactic might only work once, but sometimes it helps to have someone in the room who’s supporting you.

But if you DO have a supportive manager, there will be ways you can work together to ease you into speaking up. And… it doesn’t always have to happen in the room, at the meeting, on demand. We live in the 21st century. There are other ways you can share status.

Finding Your Style of Speaking Up

Now all of this is a short-term fix because the other important part is learning the SKILL to speaking up, and yes, it’s a skill and that’s why it can be so disconcerting to speak up, because if you haven’t yet found the right style and way for you to feel comfortable doing it… it’s not… going… to feel… comfortable.

Our listener has already begun using a few techniques that help: come prepared with notes, take notes while you’re there, gather your thoughts. But there are other things you can do, too. For starters, as you know the time to speak up is coming, take slow deep breaths and do some stretches in and around your neck and shoulders. I talk about this a lot—one of the easiest ways to relieve stress is to stretch the areas where it gathers: neck, shoulders. And. Breathe.

Next—Choose one or two words to start with. That’s it. Just one or two words. Most times, it’s just as our listener describes: we choke up to get started. We freeze. So… one or two words.

If you want to talk about next Wednesday’s deadline, it’s OK to say, “Wednesday. Deadline….” Then take a deep breath, and just talk about Wednesday’s deadline. “We all know it’s coming, I have no concerns, I appreciate everyone’s work, I’ll follow-up again next week.”

That’s it. That’s all you need to break the heebie-jeebies in your head about speaking up in the environment our listener describes.

Longer term, seek out ways to formally learn about and practice speaking skills. Toast Masters International. LinkedIn Learning. Local community college courses. Free online courses. A speaking group or communication group at work. Your COMMUNICATIONS department at work—ask them for resources.

And don’t forget that you’re not alone. The more you talk about the difficulties of speaking up, the more you’ll see that most good humans don’t find it nearly as natural as it may seem.

Additional Resources

For your resources, located in the show notes, I’ve included an excellent video from Lighthouse Communications, which I’ve included in some of my More Answers… newsletter. This is from March 2025 and it’s called, “How to speak up in meetings without overthinking (5 quick tips).” And yes, it is five quick tips delivered in fewer than five minutes, and they’re excellent. If you’re interested in learning more about communications overall, check out their site. I’m not affiliated with them, but I deeply appreciate their content.

Next up: An insightful article from Kurt Uhlir at CEO Netweavers called, “Overcoming speaking anxiety at work: strategies for confidence and clarity.” Also published in March 2025, it reviews self-awareness tips, preparation, even a great YouTube video about the neuroscience of anxiety and how to become more calm (it’s a fun video, too—neuroscientists are super cool people—they just have complicated-sounding titles…).

The last resource is a transcripted episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, a podcast produced by the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The episode is, “Speaking up without freaking out: how to tackle communication anxiety.” It’s from November 2020, and features a few different speakers talking about anxiety and speaking up… and I’m focused on pairing those two because what our listener describes is in fact textbook anxiety that occurs a split second before we speak up. I answered the question “How can I better manage anxiety at work?” in this season’s Episode 38, so check out that episode also.

And remember—Toast Masters. They’re a great resource.

Wrap Up & Submitting Your Questions

And that’s a wrap for Episode 47! We have just one more episode and we’re onto Season 5 where we’ll talk about career growth.

Submit your question on my show’s site, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H, where you will see all my episodes listed based on category and season. While your there—sign up for my More Answers… newsletter, where you will receive additional content on Sunday nights to set you up for the work week.

As always—thank you for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!