JUNE 2025 - Think on Your Feet: How to Speak up with Confidence in Any Meeting
1 in 4 adults have anxiety about speaking up in meetings, and a staggeringly low 1% of people feel extremely confident speaking up in meetings in crucial moments. You might think this only a trait in new managers or early career professionals, yet this is not the case.
Some senior leaders still find it difficult to speak up when they are caught off guard or are challenged by a critical stakeholder. They wonder: how do I hold my ground, and make persuasive sense when I have not had the opportunity to prepare for this challenge?
Why do we panic in these situations?
We all have two small almond shaped parts of our brains called the amygdala – one on each side of the brain. The amygdala control our feelings of fear, the right hand one more involved in the initial reaction of fear, and the left hand one more involved in the sustained processing of emotions, although both do work closely together. The amygdala can react to being put on the spot by promptly communicating with the part of the brain that activates physical changes to get you ready to tackle a threat – increased heart rate, increased blood flow and adrenalin causing increased alertness and feeling on edge.
This is the fight or flight response. It is an automatic response that has not gone through the ‘rational’ part of your brain – the front part that evolved later and allows us to rationalise, strategise and make logical decisions. The automatic nature of it is why people who struggle to manage anxiety in meetings say “I can’t help it”, “it happens without thinking” “it is something I have never been able to change”, “it caught me off guard”.
Managing meeting anxiety
You CAN change it, and people do every day. As the amygdala is an automatic physical response, you want to be able to work at changing the response in 3 ways.
1. Recognise it, react immediately with slow breathing, feet planted on the ground, lowered shoulders and relaxed posture.
2. Activate the rational part of your brain, the bit that evolved later, at the front of the brain (prefrontal cortex). This part of the brain wants to think about outcomes, strategy, decisions, actions and goals. Distract the emotional ‘you’ and activate the rational ‘you’. Some of my clients find it helpful to think about taking the ‘you’ out of the situation entirely and thinking about it as ‘what would a person in my role need to be thinking and doing here?’
Ask yourself key questions: What matters here? What are we trying to do? What needs to have focus here?
This calms you, stops the hijack of the emotions and ultimately is really useful for getting things done.
3. Know your triggers. Be mindful of what sends you into this response and be prepared to react as per 1. When you know you face a situation that might trigger this response spend more time activating the rationale part of your brain before it happens as per 2.
Practice and experience
If you do the third action consistently you will find that your amygdala will stop reacting in meetings and perceiving a threat when you are caught off guard. You will be able to activate the rational part of your brain automatically through practice and getting more comfortable. This means the more you can put yourself in the situation in a meeting when you are contributing, the better. You are learning a new way, and practice is paramount.
Performance anxiety
People can also have a fear of sounding uninformed or being judged by others in the meeting. They may think ‘whatever I say now needs to be high value’. This usually comes from performance anxiety or social anxiety. These anxieties also trigger the amygdala, and therefore following the 3 steps is crucial to overcome this anxiety.
Larger meetings
In general, people are more anxious to speak up in larger meetings, when performance anxiety can increase. A useful way to reframe your thinking here is to recognise that whilst your emotional brain thinks speaking up is a risk, your logical brain will know that not speaking up is a risk as well.
You need to be visible and input into meetings to develop in your career and make an impact. Focusing on the risk of not speaking up can help motivate you to input.
When you are unsure
Being able to state a point but make it clear that it is an initial view, or an instinct, or something that needs further thought can be crucial. You don’t have to be certain to give a view.
You can say ‘My initial thoughts are….’ or ‘I would need to check the data, but I have the view that….’ Or ‘let me check that, I know we have that insight and I will let you know following this meeting’.
This is not a reason to not do the pre reading for a meeting (that is a given). Building confidence to work at senior or board level means being prepared, plus being prepared to be challenged or questioned on elements that have not yet been defined.
Contact us for an exploratory chat if you would like support for you or one of your team to improve strategies for speaking up with confidence in meetings.