4

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

Profile picture
Senior Software Engineer [L5] at Google2 years ago

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.

179
1

Discussion

(1 comment)
  • 3
    Profile picture
    Rahul Pandey [OP]
    Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
    2 years ago
    • 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.
Google is an American multinational technology company that focuses on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, and much more. It is considered one of the Big Five technology companies.
Google96 questions