The most often occurring fear that my coachees have shared with me is the fear of speaking up.
“My heart beats faster, my hands get sweaty and I decide that I will just remain quiet” said one coachee. This was similar to many others who had differing physiological experiences of the fear of speaking up. Also common to these managers was that they had something of value to say!
Remaining Stuck
Robert Kegan and Lisa Leahey who researched for years why change is difficult for individuals to ‘Just do it” as Nike would have us do, called behaviours like ‘keeping silent’ – Instead Behaviours. These are behaviours we do instead of that which would be better for us e.g. “speaking up”. So instead of speaking up we keep silent.
They discovered that there are competing commitments which are things that we want to avoid happening. It is these competing commitments that keep us stuck.
Some of the things that coachees avoid by keeping silent are:
– Being wrong
– Creating conflict
– Looking stupid as others know more
– Disagreeing with the boss
– Being seen as incompetent by those more senior
– Being exposed as not having all the information
– Embarrassing others
It makes absolute sense to remain silent if these things are to be avoided. This is the answer as to why “Just do it” is not the route to changing ineffective behaviours.
Assumptions
Robert Kegan and Lisa Leahey also recognized that behind each one of these competing commitments lurked an assumption, often hidden from out=r conscious thoughts. These assumptions can be uncovered logically from the list of things a behaviour is avoiding for an individual. For example “Being wrong” has an assumption “if I am wrong in what I say, others will think less of me” and “If others think less of me my career may be at risk”.
When I work with coachees on uncovering their assumptions relating to competing commitments they are able to word assumptions that they recognize is being true to them. Assumptions whether they are conscious or hidden from our consciousness, operate within our brains as filters used by the amygdala which is the part of the brain that warns us and danger. The way the brain functions is to communicate danger to you. In the case of the example above the communication is a foster beating heart and sweaty palms. It is warning the person quoted above that there is danger of competing a commitments coming into effect. “look out –if you speak up you will create conflict” is is what the amygdala is triggering the body to tell you. The body will continue to do this until you change the assumption being used in the filter.
How to test and change assumptions
I will share with you how we approach changing assumptions and then write more about the power of speaking up.
Step one is two recognize the communication coming from your body when faced with the possibility of what you want to avoid occurring. Thank you body for warning you. Recognize that it is the assumption that you have made sometime in your life that the body is using to warn you of danger ahead. In this first step you recognize the symptoms that is the communication from your body and then hit an imaginary pause button. By hitting the button you are giving yourself some space in time to decide whether you will use your instead of behaviour of being silent or you will speak up.
Step two is to do what you decided to do. Because we were looking at how to change assumptions I would encourage you to choose the option “speak up”. You do this as an experiment to prove whether your assumption is accurate or not. Let’s assume that you do speak up and that having done so, what you were afraid might happen, did not happen. This allows you to possibly change your assumption. As you continue experimenting the assumption will morph into a different assumption for example “When I speak up others listen and appreciate my contribution”.
Step three is to continue experimenting in different situations where are you find it reluctant to speak up. Overtime your assumptions will change and these new assumptions and then used by your body to communicate to you that all is well. From experience what happens initially is that these symptoms like fast beating heart and sweaty palms start getting less and less and eventually they disappear.
Of course this takes a bit of courage and I want to give you some tips on how to make this easier.
Tips on Managing Change to Speaking Up
1. Reflect on what you are avoiding by remaining silent.
2. Discover the assumption behind the outcome you want to avoid.
3. Select one assumption to work on and what experiment you want to run. In this case the experiment will be choosing the venue where you will speak up. The venue can be one where if things go wrong it is not the end of the word for you. Maybe in a cadence meeting or with your staff.
4. Use conditioning to help ease your speaking. Conditioning is a preamble before you share what you have to say. The purpose is help avoid your competing commitments. An example. Let’s say you are listening to a conversation in a meeting and you feel a need to share some information that is being missed. You condition the audience by saying “I have something I want to share which I think might be useful in this discussion” and then you share.
The value of conditioning is that you provide context for what you are to say. It makes the listeners hear you in this context.
Another example: “I want to share some information with you but I realize that I might not have all the facts.” In this case if someone has more information and they share it that is good. You can simply reply “Thank you I learned something today”.
Another example “I have a suggestion that is different to what is being discussed. I feel it important that you hear and consider it.” This will avoid conflict and probable lead to a good discussion.
5. Make sure that what you want to share is authentic. By that I mean that you genuinely feel that you thought, information or idea are of value to be shared. Many people speak up and do not say anything of value. Some speak up just to make their presence felt. You wan to be someone who speak up keeping the objective of the meeting or discussions in mind.
6. Speaking up can sometimes take courage. For example, if you are in disagreement with another. Think whether the disagreement is in opinion or in fact. Opinions are just that opinions. If they not supported by facts they are difficult to argue against. If they are facts based then it is a questions of whether the facts are complete or biased and can be argued against. Another example is the well used phrase “Elephant in the Room”. This is when the speaker names the issue that should be discussed but everyone is avoiding. Another situation is when you are the junior person in the room. In this case using conditioning is valuable. You might say “ As the most junior in the room I might not be aware of everything regarding the issue being discussed, nonetheless I would like to share ……”
