Dr. Aziz explains when to speak up at work: if you're stuck ruminating or stuck in a pattern that doesn't work. He walks through the internal blocks that stop you, then shows how to do it in person, starting small, and sooner rather than later.
Chapters
It's absolutely essential for you to speak up for yourself at work. You're going to discover exactly why in this video and then how to do it. That's the most important part. So you can actually get into your workplace and start speaking up for yourself when you want to and need to. Where do you need to speak up for yourself at work? You'll know that you need to speak up for yourself at work because here's two signs. One, there's a residual resentment or rumination. So you ever had this. You leave a situation at work, you're driving home, you're trying to have dinner with your family or friends or by yourself, and you're just grinding away on something. You're irritated. You're almost like having a fight with that person or you're listing all the reasons why they're wrong, or something's going on, but you're not in the moment. You're stuck on something that happened and that person is bothering you. You might even be building this big case as to why they're inconsiderate or stupid or wrong or bad. You know what I'm talking about. So that's a sign. Maybe they are stupid, bad and wrong. I don't know. But it's more of a sign that you didn't speak up for yourself. You didn't say what needed to be said. You didn't, and it left a residual. The other sign is some dynamic is happening that doesn't work for you. You're putting in way more time. They're demanding things of you. They're treating you in some way that just something feels really off and you want it to be different, but you haven't said anything or you haven't spoken up for yourself. Or maybe I haven't done that effectively. And so something off is happening and it just keeps happening. Both of those are big signs that you need to speak up for yourself. And if you have a history of being a nice person, you might not think you have permission. Which leads to the first point in speaking up for yourself. First things is to permission. It's not what you say. The biggest reason people don't speak up for themselves is not because they don't know what to say. That comes later. It's you shouldn't. How dare you. You're selfish, you're wrong, you're mean. It's dangerous. They're going to criticize you, they're going to counterattack you. They're going to shut you down. Something really bad and embarrassing and awful and worse is going to Happen. So just lay low and try to get through it. And also you should be more flexible and it shouldn't bother you so much and you this and that and then you're trying to like talk yourself out of it. Get really suspicious of the voice in your head that tries to talk you out of speaking up for your yourself. Because in almost all cases speaking up for yourself is a good idea. And no, I'm not talking about like the flaming email at one in the morning where you're like, you know what your problem is Barry? Right? No, no, I'm talking about effectively speaking up for yourself. Which leads to the second thing, which is in the moment, directly to the other person as much as possible. So in person, zoom phone, text message, probably not even an email. I mean that's a little vague depending upon the situation, but I would even steer away from email as much as possible and go talk to the person, say what needs to be said. Now sometimes if it's group environment and you don't want to bring something up in front of like eight, eight other people, then talk to them one on one, right? But whatever it is, interacting with them face to face as a human, verbally as much as possible because there is so much lost in the email. There's so much we read into emails and emails often seem more harsh, you know, or a lot of the non verbal communication is missing and so people misinterpret stuff all over the place. The best thing to do is to go interact with the person, which I know is terrifying. It's scary. We're like oh God, can I do it in another can chatgpt go do it for I have to go talk to that person. Oh God. Which goes back to the first one. You think that something awful is going to happen and the truth is that something awful is happening. If you don't speak up for yourself, it tends to get worse and worse and worse. You stressing yourself and ruminating and sitting in resentment for days or being in a situation that really doesn't work for you over weeks, months, years, those take significant impacts on your lifestyle, your life quality, your health. So it's a big deal. Like this is an act of taking care of yourself. This is an act of you being on your own side. It's essential for your own mental health and well being to speak up for yourself. And guess what? It actually goes way better than you think. Yes, someone might get upset, there might be some messiness, but you can get to the other side of that. And you only discover that when you start committing to do it regularly. And so that's the third piece that's really, really important is say something. I was working with a client on this recently. He's a physician, he works with a group of other doctors. And there's one that was having these interactions with him that just didn't feel right. Sort of accusing him of things or implying things about him or just communicating him in a way that didn't feel very respectful and he wanted to say something about that. There was this, but I don't know exactly how to do it. We did a role play where you could come up with some idea on how to do it. But then in the moment, right, we freeze up. We're like, I gotta say it, right? What was that thing I said in the roleplay? How should I do it? And guess what? Something is better than nothing. Just speak up. Even if it's not perfect, even if it's not polished, you say what's happening. And a great way I talk about this in my book, not nice to start the conversation, is hey, I noticed or I'm wondering about. You're bringing attention to a topic. So you don't have know exactly what you're going to say. But you could say, hey, I noticed that when we came in, in the meeting yesterday this happened. Or I was wondering about when you told me this, what you meant by that. Right, I noticed that I'm wondering about. And then you just dive right into the thing. And if you want more in depth examples I go through in the book, not nice, you know, all different ways to address certain things and there's a seven point process and all that. But the key point for this video is for you to feel an empowered sense of yes, I can do this and yes, I'm going to do this directly to the person and yes, I'm going to do this now. Because here's the thing, if you don't speak up in the mom and they say something and you walk home and you're resentful and they're like, no, I'm gonna, I am gonna go talk to them. And then it's like three days later, right? And you're like, hey, remember that thing in that meeting when you said this is this. And they're like, no, like, well, I do, I've been thinking about it for three days, right? And it's so much less effective. And look, don't use as an excuse to say, well, I didn't speak on the moments, I guess I never can. Look, later is better than Nothing but now is better than later. That's true for so many things in life, isn't it? Where can you practice? Where can you apply this? And there's one last thing I'll leave you with, which is you don't have to start with facing the dragon in its lair. You're like, oh my God, my boss's boss is terrifying. I can't do it. Well then don't start there. Is there a colleague on your level? Is there someone who doesn't even have any authority over you and they just kind of talk down to you or they criticize or they interrupt you and you find a way to challenge that, to speak up about that, you know, someone who's not overly threatening or doesn't have tons of power over you, Find small ways, look for those little low hanging fruits, get more practice, more experience under your belt and maybe even look outside of work, right, where you start to speak up for yourself a bit more socially in different communities that you're in and look for those little opportunities and you'll start to build a momentum of like, wait a minute, I can do this. The world doesn't explode. People don't, you know, attack me with a bat because I spoke up for myself. And you start to develop a growing sense not only of confidence in yourself, but confidence in I can navigate difficult conversation. And there's only one way to get the confidence that you can navigate difficult conversations, which is having those conversations. So I hope this serves you. Share down below in the comments what you're finding most valuable and until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.
