5 Steps you can do if your ideas are shot down during meetings...

Your team is doing badly and is not meeting the KPIs. You have some good ideas to share and rectify the situation, but even before you finish your sentence, you got "shot down" by your other colleagues.

You felt demoralised and didn't want to contribute anymore...

That's it? You do nothing after that?

It's perfectly okay to feel that way at that moment. Losing a battle does not mean losing the war.

Keep calm and continue to contribute your ideas. Don't underestimate your ideas!

Here's a 5-Step Method you can do should you encounter similar situation:

1) Prepare/ Structure your ideas into mini-speeches that has "Intro, Main Points, Conclusion/ Call To Actions"

2) Request for "permission" to speak. Permission here does not mean you need an approval, but rather to create a "presence". Stand up to speak.

3) If someone "shoots down" your ideas before you can even finish your sentences, smile. Then acknowledge that person's viewpoint.

4) BUT continue standing up. Be firm yet polite and say that it is only fair to share & discuss opinions after one has finished speaking. "Seek permission" again to continue or end your speech proper. Once again, you are creating presence and a polite way of saying "Hey, you shut up. Listen to me first!"

5) Then continue share and convince others of your ideas as you had planned.

That idea may be the catalyst your team is looking for.



Yours creatively,

Hazriq Idrus
Founder, The Speaking Factory Pte Ltd
Author, The Stage Fright Antidote!

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