Find your voice and be heard
The other day, I found myself in an uncomfortable situation. I wanted to address someone’s behaviour, but found it challenging. The person is the leader of a group I belong to and uses his position to make catty comments under the guise of ‘banter’. ‘Someone needs to have a word with him,’ I fumed to a fellow group member. As long as that someone wasn’t me…
Hold my tongue
Why is speaking up so daunting? I am no shrinking violet, yet I agonise over turning down an invitation or questioning a decision with which I don’t agree. Often, I find it easier to put up and shut up – after all, no one else seems to have a problem with this guy. ‘It’s just his sense of humour,’ said my friend after he belittled someone, but it didn’t feel like a joke to me.
‘It can feel safer to stay quiet and not rock the boat,’ agrees Chloe Brotheridge, author of The Confidence Solution (Penguin, £9.99). ‘So much of it comes down to conditioning. At work, for instance, if a man speaks his mind, he’s a good leader but, when a woman does it, she’s seen as bitchy or bossy.’
“When we are required to speak up, this gets to the root of our deepest fear – that we will be seen by others and judged for it”
There’s a beautiful quote in Brotheridge’s book by author Debbie Ford, renowned for her work on the shadow self: ‘The greatest act of courage is to be and to own all of who you are –
