Be Confident In Work Meetings – How To Speak Up, Stand Out & Impress
To be confident in work meetings, to feel relaxed, keen to contribute and happy to speak up in work meetings is what we are covering today. I have 5 actions that will help you feel a lot more confident, prepared and sure of the value you can bring to colleagues and bosses by speaking up in work meetings.
Early in my career, I was shy. I hated speaking to groups of people. I had a lot of self-doubt about how valuable my ideas, solutions and contributions were. It felt safer to stay quiet and let other people talk. I felt intimidated by more senior and more experienced people in the room. I worried about my ideas being shot down, about making mistakes or looking silly in front of important people.
Be Confident In Work Meetings – How To Speak Up, Stand Out & Impress
- How to discover and be clear about the value you bring to colleagues and bosses
- The mindset and preparation that will have others very interested in what you say
- What to practice before the meeting
- 8 tips for how to sound very confident in work meetings
In fact, pretty much EVERY person you know who is confident in work meetings will have been in a similar place at some point.
What I am going to cover will help move you much faster from this position to a place where you are confident, clear, calm, relaxed and see contributing in meetings, regardless of who is attending, as just another part of your job. Speaking up in meeting will be no big deal. People will listen to what you have to say and take your ideas, solutions and contributions seriously.
Being confident enough to share your ideas, to raise thought provoking questions, to contribute to creating great solutions and to challenge others in meetings is hugely beneficial to how you are perceived at work, to the influence and impact you have and to your career prospects. The hardest part is taking the first step, to getting your first successes. It just gets easier and easier the more you contribute in work meetings.
Practical Actionable Tips
I share practical tips and actions that you can take right away. I have used these for decades, in thousands of work meetings, while progressing my career from trainee to board director level. These tips and actions work brilliantly regardless of what level you are right now, and regardless of where you work – startup to international corporate.
Before you go into any meeting, it is really important to spend at least a few minutes thinking the purpose of the meeting, what it is hoping to achieve and therefore what you are going to add to work meetings you attend.
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Be clear about the value you bring to each work meeting you attend
The purpose of most work meetings is usually one or more of the following:
- Sharing information
- Planning or co-ordinating tasks and activities
- Making decisions
- Solving problems
If you don’t understand the purpose of the meeting, ask the organiser. This is really important to do. When you know what the meeting should be achieving, it is a LOT EASIER to work out how you can contribute.
Then think about your role, your skills, your experience, the information and insights you could add that no-one else brings or that most people attending don’t know about. You will have more detail and depth of understanding than most people in at least one or two areas, if not a lot more.
Link the purpose of the meeting to the areas of your expertise. The overlap between the two is where you should focus your thinking and preparation time.
7 of the more common questions to answer for yourself, before the meeting:
- What recent changes have happened outside of the norm?
- What trends are happening?
- Why are these trends happening?
- What actions are you taking, or could you or others take to improve the good trends, or reverse the bad trends
- What ideas and solutions can you come up with, related to your area, that would help the team or company reach goals?
- Next – What problems are you encountering and what ideas and solutions do you have to reduce their impact or solve them?
- What do others need to know, relating to your area, to work more effectively or quickly or reduce surprises?
When you worked through these, you should find a ton of opportunities to add a lot of value to the work meetings you attend.
Yes – this does need a bit of work, especially in the beginning. Being clear about what you can bring – that no-one else has – will boost your confidence AND make you valuable to have in work meetings. After some practice, you will be on the look out for information, insights and problems as part of your everyday job. The extra work to do this preparation will disappear because you will do this automatically while doing your job.
2 – to be confident in work meetings, bring ideas and solutions to solve clearly identified problems
Every role and every team face problems. Business grow in size and complexity. They introduce new products or services or enter new markets. There are always new problems arising.
Become a person who spots problems early AND is able to suggest solutions. When you do this, colleagues and bosses will WANT you in meetings and will want you to share your opinions, ideas and solutions with those attending. They will support you and help you speak up in work meetings as a result. [Tips on improving your questioning skills]
Get into the habit of looking for and spotting problems in your area or in areas in which your work interacts with. Speak to your colleagues about their problems. Ask questions like:
- Is this task or activity STILL NEEDED?
- Could the task or activity be done DIFFERENTLY so it is quicker or more accurate?
- How could we use LESS RESOURCES to get the same result?
- What CAUSES delays, timing changes, resource shortages, or surprises?
- Can we reduce or change the steps in this process to get better results or a quicker result or a cheaper result?
The Next Step
Once you have a list of problems you can think about solutions. Solving small problems is really important. Solving most of the big problems in business is usually a process of solving a lot of smaller interconnected problems.
When you have an idea, contribution or solution worked out, don’t forget to
- List out the assumptions you are making for your idea or solution to work
- Be clear on the resources needed
- Structure your solution, with the most important recommendation first, followed by your logic AND backing evidence and data to support your idea or solution.
- Add WHY your idea or solution should work. Where has it been done before or where has something similar created great results.
Remember, everyone has an opinion. Reasoned, logical, evidenced recommendations are what people listen to and have confidence in.
Lastly, think through and list out as many questions and challenges you can think of that might be brought up by others in the meeting. Think through and prepare answers. This is a really important step that will give you confidence, help keep you calm and collected during the meeting and will add a lot of credibility to what you say in the meeting.
Thirdly, here is what to practice to be confident speaking up in work meetings
When you have gone through the preparation discussed, you will be a lot more confident about how to contribute in meetings. You will stand out in work meetings because you have done a bit of preparation. In my experience, most people don’t or can’t put much effort into preparing beforehand.
The last part of your preparation is how to deliver your ideas, message or solution to bosses and colleagues. When all those eyes are on you, you want to appear calm and confident. You want to speak clearly, with easy to follow structure, that will get your point across quickly.
Make the time to practice your delivery before the meeting.
Get your talking points clearly organised. Think bullet points rather than scripts.
Go into a room and speak out loud your message with the same energy, volume and determination as you will use during the meeting. Visualise all the people looking at you and listening attentively. Visualise the light bulbs going off in their facial expressions, the understanding sinking in.
Keep repeating until you are happy that you sound confident, clear and concise.
As you become more confident speaking in meetings, this practice step will become quicker and easier to do until you no longer need to do it.
Fourth, here are 8 tips for how to sound very confident in work meetings
Use as many of these as you can during the meeting. These are all great for how to be confident in business meetings.
1 – Arrive Early
Arrive a few minutes early and speak to other attendees as they arrive. The more greetings and small talk you engage in, the more get to know others and the easier it will be to speak in front of everyone once the meeting starts. Getting there early will reduce any nerves you have and keep you calmer.
2 – Speak Early Rather Than Waiting
Speak early in the meeting rather than waiting. The earlier you speak, the less likely someone else will say something you were planning to say. Speak as soon as is appropriate. This also leave less time for doubts and self-talk to creep in to put you off speaking up in the meeting.
3 – Use Stright Forward Language
Use simple straight forward everyday language as much as possible. This is a lot easier to understand than corporate speak, abbreviations, technical language etc. Keep it simple.
4 – Project Your Voice
Fourth, project your voice and speak loud enough so everyone in the room can hear you clearly. Speak slightly slower than you would normally in a one-on-one conversation. This will make you easier to understand and make you feel more confident as you speak.
5 – Don’t Use Deferential Language
Don’t apologise or use deferential language before making your point. Just say your point, putting the most important message first and then justifying second.
6 – Ask Questions
Ask questions to get others thinking. Asking questions is a really valuable way of contributing in work meetings. Your questions should:
- Ask others to expand on what they have said
- Ask them to explain their logic or provide evidence of their approach IF you are not sure about what they are suggesting or if you see that others are not sure
- Highlight a problem or challenge with an idea or solution or its implementation
- Get others involved and help them contribute to the meeting, especially if you know they have something useful to add
7 – Handle Interruptions
Handle interruptions by asking if you can finish your point. Be assertive but not rude or inconsiderate. Say something like “Can I can finish my point before we move on to that” and carrying on finishing your point. Be confident in meetings when you speak and maintain eye contact with those in the room.
8 – Acknowledge Others
Finally, acknowledge and praise others for making good points, adding good ideas or solutions AND asking questions about or challenging your ideas and solution. Using other people’s contributions to STRENGTHEN your idea, contribution or solution will increase your credibility, your authority and how others listen and interact with you. This in turn will increase your own confidence.
Keep working on all the tips and actions we have discussed today and you will become more and more confident in work meetings.
in summary
Becoming confident in work meetings is a journey. We all start at the bottom without a lot of confidence. The less confident you have right now, the more you need to practice and prepare before the meeting. The more you practice and prepare, the more confidently you will speak during the meeting. Feeling confident when speaking up in meetings is one of the best ways to encourage you to contribute in work meetings.
To remind you, the 8 tips to stand out in work meetings, to impress in work meetings are:
- Arrive a few minutes early
- Speak early in the meeting
- Use straight forward everyday language
- Project your voice and speak a little slower than normal
- Don’t apologise or use deferential language.
- Ask questions to get others thinking
- Handle interruptions assertively
- Praise others for their good contributions
I used to be terrified of speaking up in meetings, particularly if there were much more senior people in those meetings. I felt is was safer to stay quiet. I could mess-up, say the wrong thing, look silly etc that way.
If you want to get ahead, get noticed and create some impact on your team and business, this approach simply DOESN’T work well. I found this out and worked hard to build my confidence and presentation skills.
It didn’t take long before colleagues and managers really started noticing. They paid more attention to what I had to say. I felt better, more confident and spoke more confidently. This cycle continued until I was very happy to discuss, challenge, question and contribute in any meetings. My profile in the business, my impact, my reputation and my relationships with senior managers all step changed and I didn’t look back.
Get a similar boost to your confidence, you impact and your reputation. Take action and put this tips into practice now.
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