Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep103: 3 tips to overcome shyness and communicate with confidence.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Today, I want to tell you how you can overcome your shyness and actually speak with confidence. I noticed that this is a very big issue with corporate professionals who feel very shy, very anxious, frustrated because of the inability to communicate with somebody else. So

Starting point is 00:00:47 if you're feeling stressed out or extremely shy when you need to meet a new person or meet a person that maybe is part of your team or your company but you may not have a lot of interaction before, in this episode I'll share with you three tips to help shift your mindset, as well as suggest to you some actions that you can start taking today to overcome your shyness and start speaking with confidence. And if you stay up to the end, I'll also share with you a personal story on how I managed to overcome my shyness as a highly introverted person to eventually becoming a corporate leader capable of giving presentations and nowadays as a career coach running a lot of live events as well as live training. So if this

Starting point is 00:01:30 is something you want to hear about a little bit more, make sure that you stay until the end of this episode. Now let's just dive right into it. So in most instances, if you are feeling shy, social anxiety, unsure of what to say and whatever not, the main reason this is happening, and it's time for you to realize this, is number one, you are judging yourself very harshly. So this is something that you are feeling like other people are always judging you, maybe thinking that you're stupid, you are silly, or you're saying the wrong thing. Maybe you're afraid that somebody might think that you are not good enough or not good enough at your job, or just saying the wrong thing in general, maybe not capable, not competent. So you'll notice that all these things are just

Starting point is 00:02:23 things that are in your mind and it stops you from wanting to get to know somebody else. It stops you from wanting to connect with somebody else or even connect or rather communicate with somebody else because you are very focused on yourself. A lot of things is happening in your mind and you may or may not have confirmed it because you're just thinking about it. Let me give you a really good example here. One of the clients that I've worked with for quite some time already, when she first worked with me, she was an absolutely quiet person.

Starting point is 00:02:56 She never spoke up. She never expressed herself. She always thinks that there is something wrong with her. So throughout our sessions together, gradually she realized that, oh, there is no real evidence of people thinking of her badly or there's no real evidence that people do not like her. A lot of it is just on her mind because when I asked her, can you give me a real example as to has anybody actually said that you're stupid? Did anybody directly give you feedback

Starting point is 00:03:23 that what you say is wrong or you're incompetent? So after going through multiple questions, she realized that, oh, nobody has actually said that. I was the only person who said that. So if this is you in very similar situation as my client, then you may want to realize that you could be the one who is really judging yourself and taking it personally, whereas it could just be a mindset block that the moment you overcome that, you realize that, okay, if you want to build relationship with two people, then it's just that one step forward that allows you to communicate and then start building that relationship, all right? Now, moving on to the second way to overcome

Starting point is 00:04:03 shyness, and let's talk about personality. So if you're a person who feels very shy, very likely from a personality standpoint, you may be an introvert. So the tip number two here is to first recognize that shyness is completely okay. There's nothing wrong with feeling a little bit shy. There's nothing wrong with feeling more reserved. shy. There's nothing wrong with feeling more reserved. You are a little bit on the quieter end and that is completely okay. A lot of people misunderstand introversion. They think that introverts are very weird, socially awkward.

Starting point is 00:04:35 That is not true at all. Sometimes the quiet people really have the loudest mind and if you happen to be an introvert who prefers to do things on your own you're feeling a little bit shy that's okay the point i want to help you understand here is there is nothing wrong with you so what if somebody says that you're a little bit shy completely fine personally for me i'm also an introvert and this is something a lot of people are surprised to hear because they say that they see me you know giving talks, they see me doing videos, and they think that everything is hunky-dory. But it's for me to step out of my comfort zone and realize that, oh, change really begins one step at a time. Saying one thing at a time is one action, one question, and one statement that allows you to step out of your comfort zone

Starting point is 00:05:25 because you are finally taking action. And a lot of it comes from adopting a beginner's mindset. Understanding that skills, it's a level. Communication skills, it's a level. Confidence, it is a level. Even overcoming shyness, it is a step-by-step process. So there is no point trying to compare yourself, whether you're an introvert or not. Compare yourself with other people, other introverts

Starting point is 00:05:51 or other extroverts out there. That will create a lot of stress and it will make you feel like there is something wrong with you and therefore shyness is a bad thing or unable to express yourself is a bad thing. Not necessarily so. So again, what I'm trying to put in here is use your personality as a strength. Use your personality as a strength. Okay, now moving on to the third tip I want to share with you and this is about understanding the importance of communication in creating more opportunities for yourself. I find that inner motivation comes from recognizing the importance of doing something. So if you are a very shy person and you feel it is stressful to communicate, and then you end up thinking a lot more and not doing it,

Starting point is 00:06:38 in most instances, maybe you are not exactly sure the importance of communication, or you don't know how to communicate. You don't know how to express yourself in a way that is not awkward. You're not sure how to express yourself in a way that somebody can understand you. You're not sure how to express yourself in a way that you can convey your message and be likable at the same time. So maybe the problem is the how in which that is a communication skill

Starting point is 00:07:05 that you can overcome and you can upgrade, not so much about the fact that it's just being shy. Because if you don't know how to do something, naturally you'll fall back to your default behavior. And if you're an introvert like me, or you're naturally a little bit on the shy side, you will just go back to your default behavior and think that it's okay. So what I want to share with you is, nope, confidence comes from competence. If you want to gain full confidence in your ability to communicate, make sure that you are understood, speaking up, expressing yourself, you need to learn about the communication process. How do you listen well? How do you express yourself in a structured manner so that you will overcome the anxiety? Once you have a structure,

Starting point is 00:07:51 you know how to communicate, you know how to do it, then the anxiety will pretty much just go away. So going through the step-by-step to become an effective communicator is something that I cover in a lot more detail in my paid program, The Corporate Survivor. But the point I want to share with you in this episode is recognizing that maybe what you're missing is a simple step-by-step framework to give you confidence to express yourself. And therefore, the shyness will just naturally take the backseat because you now know, okay, as long as I follow this communication framework, I say this, this, this, everything is going to be fine because the other person is able to understand me and therefore, it will then turn into a two-way conversation. This is how you get into an actual conversation with a person and you'll move the focus from you to focusing on the other person, which is really the most important thing. Okay, these are the three tips that I've just shared. You may

Starting point is 00:08:46 notice that the tips are quite mindset focused and with a combination of skill set as well because I'm a strong believer that if you want to overcome your shyness, mindset is a big thing. Having that mindset blocks and fear of judgment is really what's stopping you. Then once you can overcome that mindset barrier of understanding that you will get more opportunities if you can speak up. You have more options if you can build relationships with people by networking with other people. And all these really start from that one step of moving out from your comfort zone, saying that one thing, asking that one question and making that one statement

Starting point is 00:09:25 is going to help you get there. What you need to do is to stop comparing yourself with other people and make sure that today is better than yesterday. And that is good enough. That is good enough.

Starting point is 00:09:39 And thank you so much for staying to the end of the episode. And I'm going to share with you how me as an introvert utilize and really use the three tips that I've shared with you to eventually become a global speaker today. So first thing, I recognize that ever since I was young, I always felt that other people were judging me because I was a very quiet kid. I didn't really talk much.

Starting point is 00:10:04 And of course, growing up in Asia, we are always told that you need to talk to other people. You need to get along with your friends and your cousins and everyone else. And I wasn't really that kid. And because of that, I always felt like I'm getting feedback from other people saying, hey, you need to be very friendly. You need to go and talk to this person, that person. And that created a lot of stress for me, and it wasn't a good thing. And after getting a few sort of comments, eventually I sort of like went into my own hate analysis paralysis, thinking that whatever that I say is going to be stupid, and therefore

Starting point is 00:10:37 there is no point saying anything. How I eventually overcome this one was I started talking, you know, one or two sentences here and there, just asking one question or two questions here and there. Then I realized that, oh, actually, nobody gave any negative comments. You know, people were actually pretty keen to talk to me because they always felt that, why am I not talking? It becomes then awkward for them to come and talk to me. So then I realized that, okay okay maybe it's me not recognizing that maybe it only took one step eventually I did get there but I wish that I had realized it a lot earlier that maybe it was all in my mind it was all in my mind it wasn't really

Starting point is 00:11:16 about other people judging me or rather it was me judging myself and that was where I really stepped out of my comfort zone. And later on, when I was in my corporate job, on my way to become a corporate leader, I needed to do big presentations to very, very senior people and hundreds of people in the organization. That was also something that was extremely scary. And remember, I was a highly introverted person.

Starting point is 00:11:42 So it was really awkward for me to present to these this group of people but I had to remind myself that there is a reason why I am given this position there's a reason why I'm in this managerial position there's a reason why I'm in this leadership position and this is the requirement of the job and it's a skill that I need to gain and I need to develop and master if I want to advance to the next level of my career. So what I did was again, as long as today was better than yesterday, it was already fine. So I remember when we did a global training from New York to London to Hong Kong to Africa to India, China, Malaysia, all these other countries, what happened was I just needed to make sure the first session,

Starting point is 00:12:26 or rather the second training, was better than the first training. The third training was better than the second training. And I can tell you that when we started the training in January 2016, till the time I ended the training, the eighth training in March 2016 in London, I was running the entire training program, whereas in the first session, I only spoke for 10 minutes and I was already so nervous. So the point I'm trying to make here, and I hope that also inspired you, that if within a short period of time, I could get out of my comfort zone just by comparing and making sure that today is better than yesterday and just keep practicing and just ignoring what other people are saying. But focusing on myself or what I can do rather than, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:06 focusing on my analysis paralysis, that really helped me to have that breakthrough. So if I can do it, I'm sure you can do it as well. So the question for you before we end today's episode is, what is the one thing that you are going to do to step out of your comfort zone, to overcome that shyness that you are feeling, but other people are probably not judging you in any way so what is that one thing that you'll do to step out of your comfort zone today drop me a message on linkedin and let me know and just remember shyness is not a prison cell it is not a prison statement if you want to become a more confident communicator you need to start by understanding and learning

Starting point is 00:13:46 the step-by-step communication skills starting from the communication process then to the art of listening to the art of expressing yourself as well as the art of building relationships so if you need more help you can always check out my paid program, The Corporate Survivor, at www.thecorporsurvivor.co. But anyway, I do hope that the episode inspires you. And if you want to learn a little bit more about introversion or even extroversion, I do have multiple playlists for introverts and extroverts on how you can overcome your natural personality and really leverage those as a strength instead. So if this is something that you want to get more inspiration, you can always check out the playlist right after this episode. So with that, I wish you all the best and start communicating today. Cheers. See ya. Bye.

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep103: 3 tips to overcome shyness and communicate with confidence.

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