Do you find
yourself in a meeting where you are a significant attendee because of your role
in the team, family or company, but quietly listening and falling into a
wallflower mode especially because you are socially challenged, shy,
introvert or less confident with a new role or environment?
Being a
stakeholder of the team, your silence is often thought of as sign of weakness,
coldness, or disinterest. It creates a wrong impression for a passionate
person who may simply be introverted, shy or hesitant.
Start attending
meetings with confidence using 6 action tips that will add to your
effectiveness and visibility in team meetings:
#1 Be prepared
You need to be
prepared in the meeting in terms of what you know, what you can do and how you
can perform well in the “game”. This requires a strategy – where to
‘attack’ the issue, how to defend if necessary and anticipate any surprise hit.
Find out key
things as part of the preparation: know the agenda, review references if
the organizer sent one, think through potential questions or issues and who
else are attending. Knowing these can help you prepare a strategy before
a meeting and boost your self-confidence beforehand.
#2 Come early for
your ice breaker
Typical party or
meeting engages in some ice breaker. Socially challenged, shy or
introverted personalities require a “self ice breaker” to allow some time for
warm up before the actual meeting. This allows you to be comfortable with
the environment and enable you to establish rapport with the other attendees.
I find that doing
this helps a lot in terms of establishing my presence in the room. It
gives me the occasion to introduce myself to those whom I do not know yet, to
make a pep talk with someone I have not seen for a long while or chat with a
colleague about some work related matter in a light way (such as “did you see
my email about…?”)
#3 Modulate your
voice
Regardless of your
role in the meeting, if you want to impress an image, you need to work up on
the use of your voice. Image and credibility matters in every meeting as it
builds up a brand called you.
Voice modulation
is not about changing your natural voice. It is about giving color to
your tone of voice. The change in volume, speed and pitch gives your talk
a vocal variety.
When you need to
emphasize on a word, you increase the volume of your speech; when you need to
make the audience feel your words you act out the word as when you make a shaky
voice when you say “afraid” ; when you need to express a mood such as when you
slow down talking to say you are bored.
#4 Make a comment
when you find yourself getting into the wallflower mode
Listen to the
ensuing conversation and inject some comments to re-activate your presence in
the meeting. Some comments can be in the form of a question to lead
people to the solution especially when you have certain knowledge or expertise
that can help churn out the answer.
Another scheme is
by making a reaction to what was being said “wow”, “really” or
”unbelievable”. From a reaction, you can start contributing
something by elaborating on your reaction in a brief way.
#5 Be honest with
what you do not know
In a classroom
environment, we were taught that – we should do our homework and so when asked
a question, we are expected to answer or at least try.
The real world is
different. You are facing a real life situation and a real problem to
solve.
Did you notice
that the smartest guy in your workplace invest on honesty to say “I also do not
know the answer” and put up a smile? No one has all the answers
immediately. And everyone has the right to say “I do not know”.
You can say “I am
not quite sure that is right”, “I probably need to do some checking” or “Can
you give me a moment to check that now?”
#6 Ask intelligent
questions
Sometimes it is
better for us to formulate the questions rather than wait for one to pop in our
mind. By intentionally asking questions, it trains our brains to think
and learn to be comfortable raising the questions.
Gary Lockwood of
bizsuccess.com says that another benefit why you should ask questions with
impact is to help the people you are asking to think deeper into the subject.
When attending a
meeting, do not just ask about the “when”, “where”, “what” and “why”. Ask
also about implications or relate these to the implications even if the nature
of the discussion does not warrant that.
Next Level on
Building Self-Confidence
Knowing what to do
is a step to build self-confidence but doing what you ought to do put you to
the next level.
By following the
tips in little steps, you can use the meetings not only to be effective at work
or life but also a way to project better impression on others.
Which tips are you
already doing? Which ones do you think can you start using?
___
About the Author
Rob Leonardo is
the creator of ConfidenceCues. Check out his Manifesto of Confident
People Series, a FREE
program for building self-confidence and achieving success in your own terms.
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