117. How to confidently contribute in a meeting

Do you want to confidently contribute and influence in meetings? But you don't feel heard and tend to ramble or just not get your point across? This episode gives you the keys to the confident meeting castle. I outline my simple four step process to ensure you stay on message, avoid rambling and come across as confident, competent and credible!

Transcript

Hello, hello. Welcome to That Voice Podcast! Welcome back if you're a longtime listener. Great to have you here. In this episode, we're talking about how to confidently contribute in a meeting. How to confidently contribute in a meeting. I hear so many people say to me, ‘Oh Sal, I just can't get heard in a meeting. I get interrupted or I don't know how to interrupt, or I just ramble and ramble and dig myself a grave and never get my point across.’

We don't want to do this. In any meeting, whether it's online or in person, whether it's with our team or stakeholders or colleagues or the board or managers or potential clients, anyone. We really want to put our most confident foot forward.

And in this episode, I'd love to share with you a really easy four-step process to do that. Before that the most important thing in meetings, you might want to write this down, is to take up space. Take up space, own it like a queen. So online you want to be filling that screen. Feeling a little TV screen.

If you put your hands on your head, you want your hand to pretty much be touching the top of the frame. If that's not the case, you probably have too much head room. You want your shoulders in the frame so you can use your hands as well. So often, I see these little dark pinheads. What I mean by that? It's dark because the light is either non-existent it's blasting in from the side or it's behind the person, which means they look like a silhouette. And there's so low in their chair, that in the frame, on the zoom screen or team screen, it's just a tiny little head and it doesn't matter how strong your voice is and how prepared and amazing and clear your content is. It's going to be very difficult to have influence when you look like that on the screen. So please, take up the screen.

I do have a free checklist, How to wow on webcam. I don't have it available at the moment, but if you email me or reach out to me on Instagram @sallyprosservoice with your email, I'll be able to send that your way. And that goes through all the different things that you can check off to look great before you do an online meeting or present online. In-person, the things to watch out for are the little butts scoot into the chair, right? So I see so often that people will sort of sit sideways on the chair and swing their legs in under the table. No, pull out your chair, step into the space, sit down like you are a queen sitting on her throne. Channel like Game of Thrones, which I haven't seen by the way. I must be the only person who hasn't watched it, but some kind of period drama where they are real. They are Royal. This will help your posture and will help you take up that space. So don't have your pen and paper or your laptop really close to you. Spread it out a bit, put your hands on the table. It's not fine dining.

It's not, you don't have to have your hands under the table like at some posh dinner party. Take up that space. Now of course, nobody loves the man spread up. So I'm not saying man spread. I am saying, come a little bit further up the scale. We want to lean in. We want to take up that space physically, and then we're in a position to use our voice.

Of course, with our voice, we want to be breathing. And entering strong, not tentatively tiptoeing in. We want to be going in with intention and a bit of volume also. Especially online. If you feeling like you want to speak, then take the unmute off early and then you're ready to go. In today's episode, I don't want to focus on vocal production. There's a lot of episodes where I talk about that. If you're not sure which ones, reach out or join the Masterclass Vault, there is so many great masterclasses on this, including how to literally resonate, how to speak with less arms and more intention. There's a whole master class on breathing, Hamas the class on articulation, lots of fantastic resources to help you develop a really strong voice.

This is a framework for your content. Super useful. It's four steps. And step one is take the baton. Take the baton. So if you imagine in a meeting, it's like everybody has, well, not everybody, but the person who's speaking has the talking stick, and you can imagine it like a Baton in a relay race. And before you start with your content, you wanted to take that baton and it can be as simple as thanks, Sally.

Just some acknowledgement of the other person. It can be: I'm really glad you raised that. I can see where you're going with that, Phil. Really interesting point, Jenny. I'm throwing in the name because there's always helps. If you use somebody's name, it's really, really great for relationship building. But it's a way of acknowledging the person you're taking the baton from, and it will also help everybody's attention divert from that person over to you.

It's like I'm taking the baton, I'm taking the talking stick. It also works as a little ego stroke as well. If you're not agreeing with somebody. Now, you did not want to be passive aggressive. What's the tone of voice? You don't want it to be like, I can see that you're trying, tom. No, but you can say, I'm really glad you raised that. I can totally see how you got to that. So a genuine acknowledgement.

Then we get to step two. Now, step two is the most important if you ask me, and it is called setting the rules. Setting your own rules. When you set your rules, there's a lot less chance you're going to be rambling. When you set the rules, you need to use a number. And number like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

It could be, We've looked at all the options and one stood out. Or, There are two ways we could approach this. There are three main points here. There's so much to talk about, but the one key takeaway. So many different sentences can be used. The key is to use a number. Because that takes us to step three in the process, which is obey the rules, obey the rules.

So whatever number you've said, then that's what you do next. You obey it. If it's one point share one point. If it's three points, share three. If it's two options, share two. And once you've hit that number, you know, that you've finished. It will stop you from just talking and talking and talking and digging yourself a grave and praying that the more you talk, the more that there'll be convinced, which is often not the case at all. Often, talking too much has the opposite effect.

Then step four is hand the baton back. So if you're opening to questions, it could be, how does that sit? How does that sound? Does anyone have anything to add to that? And this is where you really have to watch the tone and quality of your voice because we don't want sentences.

Like, does that make sense? Is everyone all good with that? You know, so, that sounds very unsure. We want to go down into our heart voice with the vibrations behind the walls of our chest and be really strong channel the queen. It's like the queen handing back, actually forget the Baton. Let's imagine a beautiful, fine bottle of wine.

And we're handing over the bottle of wine with grace, with elegance, with strength, with sovereignty, with sovereignty, you want to be sovereign in your meetings and sovereign with your words and sovereign with your voice. Honestly start channeling like the period dramas. It's a really good, good thing to think of.

Imagine, like if I was sitting in the Zoom meeting or walking into this office meeting and I am wearing a long velvet robe and a crown. Crown is actually a good one because it helps with your posture. And this is why, you know, power suits and high heels. But then I feel like me, but I feel so good wearing them.

It helps me get into that zone of feeling sovereign.

Sometimes you're not opening up to questions. So that fourth step could be simply, I'll hand back to you, Sally. Thanks, Tom. Jenny and finance you're next. You know, it can be something just like an easy statement, but following those four steps will really help you contribute confidently to your meeting. It'll make you feel like you're really part of it.

You know, sometimes in meetings it can feel like everybody's just doing their own monologue. Like nobody's in the meeting together. Everyone's just piping into say what they want to say without any acknowledgement of each other. Or you go to a party and there's 10 conversations happening around the table.

You want everyone to be together and you want to show that you're listening, which is why that acknowledgement and that baton. Baton, is that it. Baton, baton sounds a bit posher. It's the baton handbag that really helps with that collaboration. So it's confidently contributed, confidently collaborate.

We could be doing a tongue twister with all of these C words. So to recap, one more time, take the baton. Sally, I'm really glad you raised that step to set the rules. We looked at all the data and came up with two options. Step three, obey the rules. Option one was blah, blah, blah, option two, blah, blah, blah.

And there's of course, subsets of structures you can use within that. And then when you're finished, step four, how does that sit with you? Would anyone like further information? And you're handing it back.

Amazing! Reach out on Instagram @sallyprosservoice. Let me know what you thought of this episode. Let me know when you try this technique, how does it work for you? If you'd like to learn more techniques like this that you can use in meetings, the next masterclass in the members only masterclass vault is all about this.

It's called meeting magic, and there's lots of different techniques you can use to confidently contribute and to really get your voice heard and to have influence. So you can walk out of a meeting and be like, Yeah, I nailed that. Yep. I was queenly. You can go back and you can sip your fine wine and flick your cape and straighten your crown and be like, That's right, bitches. And that's the feeling that we're going for.

So Members Only Masterclass Vault. Great option, lots of great material in there that you can add to your repertoire to take into a meeting. The upcoming masterclass is all about meetings. And if you would like advice for your specific scenario, we can workshop different answers to different questions that commonly come up for you with different types of stakeholders.

We can talk about personalities, all of that and get really specific. Then one-on-one, let's do it. Reach out. I've got a couple of one-to-one spots available at the moment and we can make it happen. Because that's the feeling I want you all to have, to be able to click, leave meeting auto walk out of the room and be like, ‘Yes, girl. I nailed that!’

Love it. Have a wonderful, wonderful week. And I will be back on the podcast airwaves next week.