Back to Dear Lucy homepageI’m a manager in a trading company. My career has reached a plateau largely owing to my performance in meetings. When I’m with a group of people I find it really hard to express my ideas and get nervous before saying anything. I’m very soft-spoken, and can’t project my voice in teleconferences and have to repeat myself. I usually have good ideas and when I discuss them on a one-on-one basis, people like them. What can I do to overcome my soft voice, project my voice and speak up?
Manager, male, 40
Lucy’s Answer
There is only one solution to your difficulty and that is to force yourself to open your mouth in meetings. If you do this often enough the nerves will eventually go away.
Don’t worry if your ideas refuse to be translated into a stream of compelling or even coherent words: press on. However dismal your performance seems to you, others will be obsessing over what they have to say and will neither notice nor care if your brow looks a little sweaty.
Indeed I suggest that you shift the emphasis away from yourself and on to them. Are they such talented orators? Are their ideas any better than yours?
Once you have assured yourself of their fallibility, I suggest you make yourself invincible by working harder on your own ideas. Spend half an hour before meetings working on one or two simple things that you would like to say. (An unbelievably obvious tip, this, yet almost no one plans in advance what they say at meetings.)
Once you’ve thought of what to say, say it. Easy. Or rather, it isn’t easy, but it does become easy-ish eventually.
You can, of course, get professional help, but I am not sure if I recommend it. On your behalf I have been trawling the web looking for good advice, and the only effect this has had on me is to shake my own hard-won confidence as a public speaker. One tip is to mingle with the audience before a speech - a horrible idea. Another is that you practise in front of a mirror, which I’ve tried and can confirm makes one even more self-conscious than one was feeling already.
I also don’t think you should worry about your quiet voice. I have come across people in senior positions who make a point of talking in a whisper so that everyone has to strain to catch every word.
