"You have two ears and one mouth, that shows that listening is twice as important as speaking"
It is something that comes easy to me. I find it easier to listen to others rather than speak constantly and expect others to listen to me. This can be good in certain situations but detrimental in others.
I have focused on this throughout my career and it was something I made a concious decision to try and change. How many times have you been sitting in a meeting and you have a thought but don't want to say it out loud because of what you think people might think after you say it? I would go over and over in my head about how to say it and whether I should say it and what people might respond with and then.... Someone else in the meeting says exactly what I was thinking. Worst still, everyone says what a good question or idea it was and that person gets praised. Now that inner voice of mine is telling me I should of said it in the first place and I end up feeling bad.
This has happened to me so many times but it weren't until I received some feedback from my line manager that I decided to do something about it.
What I did is I prepared. One of the things I know about myself is that when I am prepared I feel more confident. So, before every important meeting I would put some time aside to think about some good questions. Because I had time to thin about it, I made sure the questions were as good as I could think of and I was happy about asking them.
Then when the meeting came along I would ensure I used the first opportunity possible to ask my question. I would pick my best question and the advantage of getting in early would be that the chances are no one else would have already asked it.
It took a bit of effort but I ensured I did this at every important meeting. Therefore peoples perception of me was that I was interested in the meeting, contributed towards it and asked intelligent questions. It makes such a difference to what people think about you.
If you are shy and tend not to speak up, people don't think, "oh they're just shy that's why they don't speak". They think, "they're not interested in this meeting" or "they have nothing to contribute to this group".
You will often find, as I have, that when you think something is a silly question it is a really good question because everyone else is afraid to ask it and everyone gains value from the answer to it.
So if you are shy or a naturally quiet person, the only way people are going to hear you is if you speak up and make yourself heard.
You don't have to be the person that is speaking the whole meeting and talking non-stop. You just have to be the person who, when they do speak, they say something worth being said. Once you nail that, people will always be interested in what it is you are saying.
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Thanks for reading,
Gav
