The Speaking Record: Why You Hold Back at Work

By Natacha Montemuino, MD  ·  3 minute read  ·  Issue #3

It's 2021 and I'm sitting at a large conference table in the executive wing of corporate headquarters for the chief medical officer's leadership team meeting. I'm at the height of my career, excited about all of the new responsibilities and visibility of my new role.

There are ten other MDs in the room, all seasoned clinicians with solid track records in corporate healthcare. I'm one of two medical directors. We are the only two women in the room and we're surrounded by VPs who have been in those rooms far longer than I had been.

The chief medical officer sitting at the head of the table turns to look at me as I deliver my program update. He nods as I speak, and seems pleased. As soon as I finish, he says: "A person who," while looking down at his notebook.

I don't understand what he's referring to and say: "Excuse me. I'm not following."

He responds: "You said a person that. This is not correct. The correct way to say it is a person who."

It takes me a split second to register that the chief medical officer was actually correcting my grammar in this room, in front of these people.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice two of the VPs chuckling and feel a lump form in the back of my throat. I smile to hide my confusion and say: "I see, thank you." Then proceed to put my laptop and belongings into my bag.

My body is now tense. I pride myself on my English. I'm fortunate to have attended an elite private school before majoring in communications as a pre-med undergrad who wrote for the university newspaper. My grammar is solid. 

But none of this matters when the chief medical officer chooses to single you out.

I had listened to other leaders in that same room make more egregious grammatical errors about which the chief medical officer said nothing. He chose me.

Perhaps it was unintentional. Perhaps it was a form of corporate hazing I had never expected or experienced before. The bottom line is that it made me uncomfortable.

Such moments have a sneaky way of accumulating into what I call a speaking record and can shape how you express yourself in every room that follows.

What the research calls it

Your body keeps a speaking record of every speaking experience you've had, good and bad.

The uncomfortable or bad speaking experiences can trigger what researchers call communication apprehension, the anxiety or fear that you experience during a speaking moment, or before one even begins.

That anxiety often appears in the body. For some, it's a racing heart, shaky hands, or sweaty palms. For others, it's a feeling of humiliation, exclusion, or a sense that speaking like yourself in that room will cost you something.

Communication apprehension can arise in any setting where the stakes feel high, such as a conference room full of leaders with more tenure or initials after their names, a stage, a small group, and even a one-on-one conversation.

The room's authority

Three factors can shape how much communication apprehension you experience in any given moment: the context itself (the audience and the setting), your individual attributes (your personality, self-esteem, and communication history), and broader cultural influences.

Of those, the audience is one of the most powerful. Specifically, who is in the room and how much expertise and authority they hold.

Where the record begins

My speaking record didn't start in that conference room.

It started in childhood. Yours likely did too. At dinner tables and in classrooms, in the moments when expressing ourselves brought judgment, correction, or silence.

Those moments become data points of lived experience. Your nervous system files them, and when you walk into a room that resembles the ones where those things happened, your body pulls up the record. It recognizes the authority in the room, the distance between you and the people around you, and the sense that being visible here carries a cost.

Your nervous system is working from a lifetime of evidence.

Where this leaves us

Understanding why you hold back in those rooms is the beginning of changing it.

Lived experiences create learned behaviors that become habits. The holding back, the silence, the idea you keep to yourself are habits your nervous system built from real evidence, accumulated across years of real rooms.

And when you see them for what they are, you can deliberately build new skills that make speaking feel safer. You can create new experiences to add to your speaking record, ones that show your nervous system a different outcome is possible.

The record that shaped how you speak today was built entry by entry, room by room.

The next entry is yours to write differently.

Something to think about

If you don't make change, nothing changes.

Staying quiet in career-shaping rooms is a pattern. And patterns are easier to change when you're surrounded by people who understand exactly what you're up against because they've experienced it themselves.

What would it feel like to stop staying quiet alongside others who have felt exactly what you feel?

Reply and tell me. I read every response, and I love hearing from you.

That's all for this week. See you next Wednesday.

Dr. Natacha

PS: On June 18 at 8PM ET, I'm hosting a free live training where I'll walk you through the five steps I use with quiet high-achieving leaders to help them communicate clearly in career-shaping moments. I hope to see you there live. Click here to register.