How To Lower Your Anxiety To Speaking Up And Sharing Ideas
Many leaders set the bar high for sharing a new idea. As a result, they fail to build influence and presence. Here's a different way to frame the goal for sharing increases confidence and frequency.
One of the critical aspects of leadership is to be heard. Frequently, aspiring executives are given feedback to have a strong voice, give their opinions, and push for a point of view. It is required to go from “doing things” to “leading things”.
The challenge isn’t having ideas. Most people have interesting ideas about their work, their teams’ work, or other people’s work. Some have entire brainstorming docs, data points, and written documents. Yet they hold back their ideas. They stay quiet through the entire planning off-site. It doesn’t get raised at team meetings. It just sits in the mind or on their computer.
The main concern? I’m not confident yet that it’s a good idea. I don’t think there is enough data backing it. I don’t want to put something out there and get told it is dumb by my colleagues.
This is ego and fear of judgment holding us back. New ideas are, well, new and different. Fear keeps us in the realm of certainty, where we are comfortable.
And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you rarely share ideas, then more scrutiny is placed on the ones you do share. And when you only have one or two shots on goal, there is a higher bar for it to be good.
Reframe The Goal
When our goal is to share good ideas and get positive feedback, we’ve set the bar very high. How many people can come up with amazing ideas in a vacuum? Setting such a high bar prevents us from taking any action.
Instead, reframe the goal as “Let me put something out there so you can show me why it won’t work.”
When you focus on learning and feedback, the bar to share is much lower. It is implied that the idea isn’t perfect, so it’s ready earlier. I know it might not be good yet. It’s a strawman, a starting point. This framing is a safety cushion for the ego.
When you want to know all the ways it won’t work, you’ll also more naturally start conversations with different types of people. You want to gather all the ways it might fail, not just the ones that those with whom you work regularly or are close to the topic can come up with.
More Direct, Supportive Responses
This reverse framing also tends to create more direct, supportive responses from others. When another person comes to you with, “I’ve got this great idea!” Our natural inclination is to critique and find fault. We want to give them all the reasons why it might not work. In the reverse, when someone says “I don’t think this will work, but I do like the concept”, we are more likely to help them find ways to make it work. Not only does the framing lower the bar to share, it also increases the probability of receiving a positive response.
That’s all folks! See you next week at 3:14 pm.
Yue
Yue’s Coaching Corner
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The framing to give yourself permission to share and invite people into a conversation and get curious about their feedback so you can iterate is a powerful one.
Great article! I unintentionally framed an org discussion this way with one of my directors and found them more willing to think about a new org design and structure. Also helped to frame the issues that the new org was trying to tackle and admitting that org designs are not a panacea.