I have anxiety when speaking up in meetings - how do I overcome this?

Question

I just joined a new team within a Google Infra team and have been attending many team meetings and architecture planning discussions. I’m very quiet in these meetings and don’t feel comfortable saying anything - I’m afraid I’ll say something stupid, or I’ll be exposed as someone who shouldn’t be a senior engineer.

Rahul Pandey · Accepted Answer

Asking good questions is a powerful way to contribute in a meeting, and that’s how you should start as someone new on the team. Realize that the risk of your question being “dumb” or “awkward” only goes up over time – better to ask it now than 3 months from now. For important meetings, I’d bring in a sticky note with 1 or 2 notes/questions that I could contribute to the discussion. I’d use this as a crutch to say something meaningful before the meeting ended.

I have anxiety when speaking up in meetings - how do I overcome this?

Discussion