Soft Spoken People can Succeed Too!
Posted on August 20, 2022 by Johncey George, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
Introverts are generally quiet and usually soft spoken because they want to conserve their energy. In a corporate environment, how does one survive?
One of my current Coachees is from an MNC and she recently got promoted into a leadership role. She said that one of the messages she managed to send across to teams is – “Soft Spoken People can Succeed Too”.
Introverts are generally quiet in nature. They are usually soft spoken because they want to conserve their energy. In a corporate environment, this is often misunderstood or misinterpreted as lack of either confidence or competence. They may be also perceived as a weak person.
How can you overcome this? Here are a few tips:
1. Practice Assertive Communication. Assertive communication is where individuals clearly state their opinions and feelings whilst still being respectful. This type of communication requires self-awareness on the part of the speaker and plenty of practice.
2. Add value to conversations. You may be soft spoken and may prefer to speak only when necessary. But equip yourself to make valuable contributions to the conversation. I remember one of my bosses from my corporate stint. His name is Arvind. Arvind was an extremely quiet person. I clearly recollect being at meetings where his peers were actively engaged in arguments and debates about a point in question. Arvind tended to be quiet throughout the meeting but at the end of it, he would open up and come up with some really insightful suggestions or views from a completely new perspective. We always found this very interesting. What is important is not how much you can talk but how much value you can add to the conversation.
(One of the coaching programs which I run “Enhance Your Strategic Thinking”, helps in preparing for such value-added conversations.)
3. You need to be “seen” and “heard” by people outside your department. So if you get opportunities to speak in a townhall, or in a public forum – grab those opportunities with both hands. Practice public speaking and this will add to your credibility and confidence.
4. Increase and solidify your connectivity with the team by meeting them one to one. This gives both of you an opportunity to understand each other and will help you build strong relationships. Strong relationships, I believe, are the cornerstone for your success as a leader.
5. Break out of the Soft Club. It is only natural for a soft-spoken person to be part of a social circle or office circle where people are equally soft-spoken in nature. I encourage you to build a network outside these circles too. This will help you learn from others and you will also be seen as a person with wider network and acceptability.
Author: Johncey George is an International Coaching Federation accredited Leadership and Life Coach. He is a ICF PCC and an empaneled coach with several organizations. Johncey focuses on Executive Leadership coaching.
Johncey has special interest and expertise in coaching introverts. He is India’s first and leading Leadership Coach for Introverts. He helps them celebrate their strengths and become successful as leaders. Being an introvert himself, he understands their thinking process. He combines this knowledge, his corporate leadership experience and his coaching expertise to help create more leaders among the Introverts.
Johncey has 23 years of corporate leadership experience as COO, Director, Board of Directors. He did his BE in Computer Science and then did his Management Education from IIM Bangalore, Harvard Business School, ISB Hyderabad.
