Hey, what's up, and welcome back to another episode of the Straight Shooter
Recruiter podcast. This is the show designed to help you thrive and you're nine
to five and beyond, So thank you for checking it out. If it's
your first time listening, please consider it leaving a rating and a review.
It helps the show grow. And if you think you're going to enjoy this
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really really does help. And make sure you take me so I can share
it out as well. It's been awesome seeing how much this show has grown
over the last four years and just getting all of your feedback, seeing you
enjoy it. It's just it brings me joy. It brings me real ass
joy. And it's been a minute since I have recorded something. Most of
my content for the last month and a half has been prerecorded because I've been
traveling. If you follow me on Instagram, you've basically seen me document this.
But I was in Calgary and then I got back, and then I
went to London, England, and oh my god, I just the issue
with me. I promise you can skip ahead and I'll get to the actual
topic. But I think the issue with me is every time I go to
a new country at or a new city, I'm like, oh, yeah,
I could live here, and then my entire desire is to pick up
and relocate. Like, ask me why I was ready to move to Alberta.
I'm not a country girl. I am not someone who does the outdoors,
but the hiking and landscapes were so pretty that I was like, should
be Like should I be someone who does this? And then I went to
London and was like, Okay, no, I understand why London is like
this big hub and everybody from Canada moves there because it's so freaking beautiful.
But anyways, I'm back in Toronto. I am happy to be back in
the city and I'm just ready to sit down and talk to you. And
speaking of talking, okay, this episode is going to be all about how
to speak up at work, how to take up space at work, how
to get comfortable communicating at work, and ultimately this is a skill that's going
to help you in every area of your life. So don't go into this
with the mindset that this is just an episode for the office. But I
promise your fear is holding you back. I guarantee that your fear of I
don't know, being perceived as stupid or being perceived as pushy is going to
hold you back from making money and getting promoted and getting ahead in your life.
So that's what I want to tackle with real tips, tangible tips,
things that have worked for me. Let's get into it, Dear Emily,
My biggest stressor at work is that I'm too scared to participate in larger team
conversations and contributing my ideas and thoughts. My manager has been pushing me to
be vocal, and while I'm able to voice my ideas and smaller groups,
it's hard for me to participate in larger group discussions, mainly for the reason
and fear of being judged for what I say and having all of these eyes
on me. I know it's so important to be vocal in corporate settings,
especially so I can stand out to senior leaders, but I've never been good
at this ever since I was in school, and I don't know how to
overcome this and show my participation, especially if I want to stand out for
promotions. You're a great speaker with stellar confidence. Thank you. Do you
have any tips for this? Oh? My gosh. First of all,
thank you. You are so kind. And I want to start off by
telling you I was not always a confident communicator. I wasn't someone that was
naturally very outgoing or very articulate, and I'm definitely not perfect at it now,
but as someone who literally makes money from speaking on the internet and speaking
at events, I have kind of mastered this as much as I think I
can. And there's a few mindset shifts that are really important. And I
know everyone, especially on TikTok and Instagram, talks about mindset shifts like do
this thing and it'll change your life. Like, no, what I'm going
to tell you is actually going to change your life because it changed mine.
And then there's tangible, practical things that I want you to do that are
actually going to help you beef up your communication skills. So let's just start
off with the mindset stuff. And this counts for the office, this counts
for a date, this counts for meeting strangers. The biggest reason that people
tend to freeze up or clam up when it's time to ask a question or
time to put themselves out there is because they're overthinking it. And I know
that seems extreme obvious, but there's something I've talked about a lot on this
channel, which is improv theory. And if you don't know, improv is
a style of theater or acting where the actors don't have scripts. They're just
thrown on stage and they make up and improvise a scene as they go.
And there's a golden rule in improv, and it's the rule of yes.
And it means that if my actor and partner said the sky is falling,
I can't say no. I have to say yes, and it's hot,
pink or yes? And should we dance in this rain? You really want
to make sure an improvisation acting that you're building on the scene. And the
only way this works is by not overthinking what your next sentence is. Because
if you told me the sky is falling and I had to say yes,
but I was overthinking what I was going to say, there would be a
really long lull in that scene. It would break the flow, it would
make it awkward, it would make the scene overall kinds of shitty, and
that's like, that's not what we want to do. What improv actors are
exceptional at is thinking after they start speaking, and I know that's wild,
and some people should take this advice because some people are straight up stupid.
But not you, not us, like not our crew, you know what
I mean. People who are able to start speaking and trust that they're on
the right path and then think while they speak are going to see their career
grow exponentially and their lives grow and things just get better. So how do
we actually do this? The first thing you need to do is except that
you are probably never going to say the perfect thing. It is never going
to come across as polished as you would like it to in your head.
So you firstly need to recognize that people are not judging you as much as
you are judging you. I know you mentioned you were nervous that there are
more eyes on you, or people maybe questioning what questions you might have or
ideas you might have in meetings. I guarantee you are one of the harshest
critics in your life. The same way you aren't looking at other people in
meetings or on dates thinking oh my god, like why would you ask that?
Or why are you wondering that people aren't thinking that of you? In
fact, people aren't thinking of us nearly as much as we're thinking of ourselves.
The other thing you need to do is let go of the idea that
what you say is that significant. This whole improv theory where you're speaking first
and then thinking second really works. And the reason for that is because we
are much more likely to communicate poorly and say things even worse than we intended.
When we overthink it. We actually have better results. And this is
proven by studies and science from Harvard professors. But we have better communication results
when what we say is imperfect, but it's delivered authentically, and it's delivered
in a little bit more of a calm and believable way. And the best
way to do this is to talk first and think second. So practically,
what does this look like in a meeting? You're in a meeting, you're
talking about an event plan, and you have a really good idea. What
you would have done before listening to this episode is you would say, Okay,
I have an idea that we should have a cotton candy stand. How
should I bring this up? Should I shut down someone else's idea? What
words should I use so I don't come across is pushy? What words should
I use here? How should I phrase it when should I bring it up?
You are thinking entirely too much. When there is a lull in the
meeting, you're going to unmute yourself or speak up if you're in person,
and you're not going to apologize for having an idea. You're not going to
start off by saying, sorry, I have an idea. You're going to
say, I really like this. I was just thinking about the possibility of
adding a cotton candy machine. What do we think? There we go,
And you don't need to say it as like blunt or as simple as that,
but just start speaking. Just start speaking. It doesn't need to be
the perfectly structured sentence that you want it to be, And I guarantee you
will communicate with better results the less you think about the actual words that you
use, like I guarantee that public speaking, speaking up in meetings, dating,
all of these things are connected because they naturally put us in uncomfortable positions.
And the more and more you're exposed to these uncomfortable cases where you have
to speak up, the more likely you're going to get better and then more
confident and more able to do this without all of this anxiety and fear A
bit part of why people stress out about speaking up in meetings or even going
on first states is because we have wired our brains and told ourselves that this
is a stressful experience. What if I told you that, if you woke
up and looked at yourself in the mirror every single day and said I'm a
strong communicator, I am bold, i am fearless, that your brain would
actually rewire. And I know this sounds like fluffy bullshit, but there is
science behind positive affirmations and how they directly tied to our performance, particularly at
work and with our confidence. I can give you a kind of separate example,
but it's something that has really resonated with me. I always used to
tell myself, I'm not athletic. I'm not athletic. I'm not a sporty
girl. I'm not sporty spice as I would say. And I would tell
myself that to lend blue in the face. And then when I'd be at
the beach with my friends and we're playing soccer or volleyball, I would either
not participate because I'm not sporty, or I would participate, and I would
be so in my head about how bad I am at sports that I would
be even worse, and so much of that became a self fulfilling prophecy.
I tell myself I'm bad, so I perform bad. The second I started
saying, oh, I'm not super sporty, but I am really fit or
I'm in great shape. Suddenly, when my friends and I got together,
I had a little bit more confidence because I wasn't tearing myself down for no
reason, and I wasn't telling myself a rhetoric about me that maybe wasn't entirely
accurate. So change the language that you're using when you think about yourself and
how you speak to yourself as well. Going back to the whole doing this
a lot. I need you to practice speaking up in practice taking up space.
I need you to say something in every meeting. I don't care if
it's asking how someone's weekend was. You just need to make sure you're putting
yourself out there. And if there's not an opportunity to do that, make
small talk with someone in line at Starbucks, cold call a friend. And
I know that calling a friend isn't that dramatic, but we don't really phone
call as much anymore. So do things like that. Put yourself out there
frequently enough so that you no longer associate speaking up with anxiety. You just
associate it with being an everyday part of life. And a lot of this
fear of speaking up also comes from this fear of taking up space, and
like I hate to say it, sometimes it comes from insecurity and not feeling
super secure. Because if you really believed that your idea was good or that
your question was valid, you wouldn't be so scared to speak up about it.
And I'm not saying this to like dog on you. I'm telling you
this because I have felt this as well. Where I've been in periods of
my life where I'm super insecure and I don't feel like myself and it makes
it more difficult to do all of these things. So really work on your
confidence and make time and dedicate to working on your confidence. And for me,
the best thing I have done in terms of confidence, firstly is therapy,
because therapy is fantastic for everyone who has access to it. Secondly is
changing the language I use when I speak about myself. And we kind of
talked through that a little bit already. But the next is look at your
inner circle, Like do you have a circle of friends and family who consistently
uplift you, and if not, how can you surround yourself with more people
who are going to empower you and make you feel more confident Because a big
part of our fear of communicating is our people hearing us. And that's a
sad thing because we're scared of being heard because we feel like we don't deserve
to be heard. Okay, let's talk about the technical how to be better
at speaking up. So there's the practicing. So for the next thirty days,
I want you to say something to a stranger every single day, Okay,
and I guarantee it's going to help. The next thing I want you
to do is start consuming podcast and media all about effective communication skills. I
do have a whole bunch of videos on TikTok and Instagram, and I think
on YouTube and this podcast as well about tactical things you can do to be
a better and more clear communicator. Some of those things just stop the top
of my head. Firstly, slow down your communication because confident people are comfortable
to take up space. Confident people also avoid using filler words like like or
um or you know, because that also can indicate a sense of insecurity when
you're communicating to a large crowd, so slow down your speech, be comfortable
taking pause. See how slow I just delivered that smile. When you communicate
with people, use your hands, be expressive, really be in the moment,
and let your body language reflect that. Even if it feels like you
are faking it, It's okay to feel like you're faking it. I felt
like I was faking it too, until I did it so much that it
became my default setting. The same way you are now in a default setting
of being anxious when you communicate. You can reverse that and you can make
your default setting feeling a bit more steady and calm and present as you communicate.
This next one is corazy, but I talk about it all the time,
and that's because it works. I want you to practice answering interview questions
or Vogue questions or hot Ones challenge questions, any question that is able to
be answered easily without you preparing a script. So you could just google a
bunch of questions, could be on anything, prop up your phone, and
I want you to answer each of those questions on the spot while you're recording
yourself, so then you can watch back and see what are my nervous habits.
I personally am a fidgetter. When I'm nervous, I start speaking really
quickly. My body language looks really tense. And I realized that just because
I might feel confident or muster up the courage to say something, my body
language is telling the truth that I'm literally shitting my pants. And then it
also is telling my brain, hey you're stressed, Hey I'm tense, like
you should be more worried about this, and it just doesn't. It doesn't
make anything easier. So actually recording yourself and taking the time to go back
and listen to it, that is a game changer. There's also really great
organizations that specifically focus on solid communication and strong communication. Toastmasters is a great
one to help you, especially with delivering presentations. But for me personally,
practice is the thing that makes the most difference, in addition to mindset and
really working on building up your confidence and not allowing the opinions of others to
influence you. Because yes, there might be a day where you ask a
stupid question, or where you say something silly, or where something pops up
where you're like, oh my god, why did I say that? Why
did I do that, and at the end of the day, if you
are secure in who you are, it's not going to matter what other people
think. And that is the most freeing and fantastic feeling in the world.
It takes a long time to get there. I am still not totally there,
but these are some of the things that really helped me kind of on
that journey. I also should mention I don't write scripts for this podcast.
I just have my topic, I know generally what I want to talk about,
and I just flow, which is why I hope you guys like the
show. I know you do, but like you know, it's always a
little nerve wracking getting behind the microphone. But that's another thing you can do,
is just practice free flowing speech, even in just the comfort of your
own home. Because if you go back and listen to my first ever podcast
episode, it sounds so different. My voice is so squeaky and high pitch
because I was so nervous. And now I feel like I'm just myself talking
to my friends, like I'm literally in my Pj's having a coffee right now
on a Sunday morning. Like it's just it's a practice makes perfect situation.
So just something to think about. But I really hope this was helpful,
and don't forget. If you do have questions or topics you want me to
cover, hit me up in the description because that's where I put the link
to the podcast episodes and we have gotten hundreds and hundreds. But if there's
anything I haven't covered that you are dying for me too, or if you
have specific questions on yourself or your career, or your friendships or your confidence,
put it in there. That's a spot again. Don't forget to show
this show some love. Okay, it's a one woman show. It's a
woman don't show. It's a Canadian show. Come out, support us on
socials. Leave us those rating and reviews. It matters so much. And
I thank you for being here. I love you much, Lee, and
I will talk to you next week's Seat Cheeks