#6: Speaking up in a meeting, Navigating journey as an immigrant from engineer to SVP, Leaders' hub, Q&A

45% of women business leaders say it’s difficult for women to speak up in virtual meetings

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Speaking up in Meetings

Meeting Participation 101: Tips to Speak Up and Be Heard

Raising your voice in meetings can be intimidating, but it’s important to share your thoughts and ideas. As someone who used to stay quiet in meetings, I’ve learned that speaking up leads to better outcomes for everyone.

We are not taught on how to best express our ideas and opinions. Even when we do so in meetings you may get spoken over. So how can you take control?

👉🏾 Let's start with a plan, if you are trying to speak up in a meeting...

• Decide which meetings are critical & where you want to contribute

• What do you want to speak up about, practice aloud what you want to say

• Meet with stakeholders & key people- Get to know them and their careabouts

• Speak up often in meetings

• If someone interrupts you, politely say "Can you hold that thought, let me finish and we can deep dive into it"

• Find allies who can support you.

• This for the Allies " Support those who speak up but are unheard in meetings". Give them the floor, acknowledge their inputs, otherwise they may not contribute next time.

• Own your space & your voice - you will see the impact

This path can be intimidating at times, things will go wrong sometimes but persevere.

👉🏾 Your contributions are important to driving better products and outcomes

Guest Highlight

In this episode, Deepa shares her experiences as an immigrant climbing the corporate ladder, the challenges she faced with work visas, and the importance of mentors in furthering your career. She also provides insights on advocating for yourself, getting and processing feedback, and staying current on your skill set. We unpack a lot of valuable insights, including how to advocate for yourself to your managers, the importance of mentors in getting feedback and furthering your career, and how to articulate what you want during performance reviews. Deepa also shares tips on how to present to executive leaders, how to take career risks, and the lessons she learned from failure. As an immigrant, Deepa faced unique challenges with work visas and the immigrant experience. In the episode takeaway, Deepa provides an action list for listeners to implement in their career journeys. This episode is a must-listen for anyone facing career challenges as an immigrant or looking to further their career with the help of mentors and effective communication skills. To listen to the whole podcast visit Women, Career and Life.

Leaders Hub

When you are assigning projects to your employees, are you weighing on who will get the high-impact -high-visibility projects? Don’t always give them to the high performer in you group. For one they might be the only one with the juicy projects and second they may feel overwhelmed with high profile projects.

Give these higg profile project to other team members who are ready for a challenge or may not realize they are ready. While assigning these projects, keep in mind that women and minorities in your group may not speak up and ask for these projects but are more than able to do them very well. Give them a fair shake at these high-priority projects. I highlight this because women (from many conversations) sometimes get overlooked for these critical projects. Don’t assume your team member has work-life conflicts or that their plate is full. Ask them and as you are their manager, you can redistribute projects to build a holistic & strong team.

Q & A -ASK AWAY

I want to move from an engineering client-facing role to a hardcore engineering role, how do I do that?

First list engineering tasks and accomplishments you did in your client role. Layer that with your education credentials. If there is additional training or certification needed, sign up for online classes on Coursera, Udemy, etc. Update your LinkedIn profile, and use the hashtags wisely. Reach out to people on LinkedIn (Former colleagues & new contacts). Ask them how you can pivot to the role. Get connected to people in the industry, do informational interviews, and let them know of your experience and interest. Attend virtual or in-person networking events. Update your resume & Apply!

Please send your questions to [email protected]. Your answer may get featured in the newsletter and spark a conversation.

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