How asking questions could be the most powerful way for introverts to speak up

Inspired by recent conversations with coaching clients and in advance of facilitating an away day next week, I’ve been considering how to alleviate the discomfort many introverts feel at the prospect of speaking up in meetings.

If your goal is to perform at your best, or be recognised as someone with leadership potential, you can’t sit silently in meetings. So, what can you do to help yourself feel comfortable speaking up?

One of my biggest bugbears is poorly chaired meetings. You know the ones – there’s no clear agenda, no one has told you in advance what will be discussed or what decisions will be made so there’s no chance to prepare and the ‘discussion’ is a free-for-all with no attempt at taking turns so only the boldest people get to speak. The result? A small number of people, not necessarily those with the best ideas, end up dominating the discussion and introverts leave feeling frustrated, unheard, irritated and overlooked.

There’s no doubt that one way to make it easier for introverts to speak up is for chairs to facilitate meetings in ways that ensure everyone gets a turn to speak and can prepare what they want to say in advance, if they want to.

But this article is about what introverts can do to take responsibility for speaking up, even in situations where you don’t feel you know enough about the subject to make a valid contribution or feel nervous about speaking up.

Extroverts are comfortable thinking aloud and allow their ideas and opinions to form whilst they are speaking and interacting with others. By contrast, introverts prefer to think before they speak. We need time - preferably alone - to think, reflect and form our ideas and opinions before sharing them with a group. We only speak when we are convinced we have a valuable contribution to make.

Keeping quiet too often can be damaging to how we are perceived by others. Like it or not if you don’t speak up, other people – colleagues, clients, your boss – are likely to form the view that you are not engaged with the conversation, have zero ideas and nothing to say.

The irony is there’s often so much going on in an introvert’s head that it’s difficult to keep up with our own thoughts, ideas and opinions, let alone formulate some of them into actual sentences to be spoken out loud! But the thing is, other people can’t see or hear the rich thinking that goes on in your head if you don’t vocalise some of it. They simply see a quiet person with nothing to say. So, what can we do to make sure colleagues know we have plenty to contribute?

Personal admission time: I’m yet to master this one myself. Many a time I’ve found myself in situations where I’ve felt engrossed in the discussion and my mind has been in overdrive but I’ve left the room having not uttered a word. Why? Sometimes it’s because I’m too busy thinking my thoughts and simply forget to vocalise some of them. Other times it’s because I’m feeling a bit intimidated by some of the other people in the room. For instance, I remember accompanying a well-known politician to a meeting with another high-profile person I greatly admired. I sat with them for an hour, listened to their fascinating conversation and had lots of great thoughts but was struck dumb throughout! I left feeling like an idiot and deeply disappointed in myself for not showing these amazing people what I could contribute.

Other people are a powerful source of inspiration. Last week, one of my coaching clients decided to ask more questions to demonstrate active engagement in discussions. She felt this would be a useful tactic in situations where she felt unequipped to voice a firm opinion, such as when she lacks knowledge of the subject or has not been able to prepare in advance.

This triggered a memory for me. When I was a Director in a breast cancer charity, one of my fellow leadership team members – also an introvert - was a great role model for speaking up. Paul has a huge intellect and can always be relied upon to ask intelligent questions. Often, his questions would sway the room because we all knew that if Paul was speaking it was because he’d decided he had good reason to do so. And when Paul asked questions (rather than making a statement or proposition) it had the effect of forcing everyone else, especially the extroverts, to pause for a moment and fully consider what they were saying. This created space for other introverts to chip in with some tentative thoughts – the act of asking a question removed certainty and made it easier for everyone to speculate. Sometimes, Paul’s questions caused a decision to be delayed until the next meeting, which bought him (and his fellow introverts) time to think. We could reflect and prepare our contributions in advance of the next discussion and I’m sure this led to the team making better informed decisions.

So, if you’re sold on the idea that asking questions could be the key to making speaking up a little more comfortable, what could you ask? Obviously, it depends on the context of the situation but perhaps these suggestions will prompt some ideas:

? How does this idea help us achieve our strategic objectives?

? I'd like to understand more about what you’ve just said - can you tell me more about how it will work in practice?

? I haven’t thought about it from that perspective before - what’s the evidence that what we’re talking about doing will work?

Whatever you choose to ask, make sure you frame your questions to be perceived as engaged, positive and curious (not irksome, negative and contrary).

What do you think? Could asking questions be an effective tactic?