Ep #66: How to Speak Up in the Workplace Anxiety-Free with Ivna Curi

You are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy, episode 66. This is the episode
where I talk to my coaching colleague, Ivna Curi, on how to confidently speak up
in the workplace. In addition to helping companies foster employee engagement, she is
also the host of the Speak Your Mind Unapologetically podcast. In our conversation
today, we talk about practical tips for learning to speak up in the workplace, As
well as showing up more powerfully in all facets of your life, let's dive in. This
is a podcast for overthinkers, overdoers, and overachievers who are tired of feeling
overanxious and just want to feel better. I'm your host certified life coach, Jackie de Crinis

So Ivna, thank you for joining me today for this conversation. We were going to
have a conversation as two coaches about anxiety and the ways to manage it.
My focus has always been on stress management and whether it's in the workplace or
in the home, but good daily habits for how to manage daily stress or acute stress.
And I think we dovetail quite well because you coach on people who need to speak
up in the workplace and the anxiety that's created either by speaking up or not
speaking up in the workplace so can you talk a little bit more about your clients
and who you serve and what you do. Yeah, I think that's really interesting that we
bring those topics of anxiety and stress and speaking up because you know my clients
are generally professionals. Who do have a hard time speaking up. And speaking up
causes anxiety, but more importantly, they don't realize that not speaking up causes
a lot of anxiety. And I would say even more anxiety than speaking up.
There's a lot of fear associated with speaking up, but anxiety, resentment,
frustration, anger, feeling misunderstood, unresolved issues, feeling like people are
taking advantage of us and not being able to say anything or not responding to that
situation, which just makes that grow, that negativity, that guilt,
that blame, that sensation of something's wrong, people are trying to exploit us.
And even in conversations, it could lead to boredom and disinterest. So a lot of
other stressors, a lot of other anxiety inducing issues arise from consistently not
speaking our minds, consistently not expressing our needs, our wants, our desires, our
boundaries, our wishes, our goals, even our dreams, right? Because expression speaking
up isn't a part of us of who we are and when we need to be able to have these
conversations in the society, right? In community, otherwise we also feel isolated.
So that's the context of anxiety when we don't speak up. - So would you say your
target client is that middle manager or junior level person who's trying to find
their seat at the table in board meetings or is it more on a one -to -one basis or
is it both? - Well, I help more senior leaders - Okay. - Help their teams to be
able to have that freedom of expressing themselves to disagree, share concerns, share
half -baked ideas, express their needs so that they're not disengaging and losing
interest and quiet quitting and complaining behind people's backs rather than bringing
their best self forward. And the reality is that when most people speak up, they're
happier, their leader is happier, their organization is happier, the shareholders are
happier. It's just that initial hurdle that's caused a bit of anxiety when people
don't know how to speak up. They feel anxious because they don't know what the
other person's response is going to be and they fear rejection, they fear alienation,
they fear being seen as an aggressive rude person, they fear backlash and
retaliation. And so those are some of the challenges. How do you see that in your
world of managing anxiety and stress. I actually want you to finish that thought
because I spent 35 years in corporate America, so I know very well, both from being
a junior executive and a high -level executive and middle management executive, that
it is a tightrope walk of the first order to speak up to your boss or speak up
to in a meeting, and every every situation is different. I'd love to hear actually
some of your go -to strategies for coaching people on how to feel comfortable
speaking up. That's interesting. Yeah, so a sort of communication is the primary
skill of speaking up in a way that is anxious -free, that is respectful,
and that is effective. And generally, people don't understand that assertiveness is a
skill. So there's a way of disagreeing. There's a way of saying no. There's a way
to express an idea or a concern or to push back on someone that is the superior.
It's a communication skill, essentially, that needs to be mastered, which involves
psychology a little bit, understanding the other person and creating safety for them.
But it also involves negotiation. And so a lot of people just don't understand the
skill and that's why they're frightened because they say things when their emotion is
just they're overwhelmed and they're already stressed and they just held back for so
much for so long. And now they're pretty much in the verge of exploding and they're
full of resentment and anger. And at that point, their verbals and nonverbal language
is going to be screaming aggression. And that's when the retaliation is going to
happen. Now, I like to add to the assertiveness element or sort of communication
skill, like to add empathy, especially for women, for minorities, for younger people
who typically experience more backlash at our higher risk of experiencing backlash and
retaliation or punishment of some sort. So the empathy part really helps,
but empathy really is a connection. It's any form of connection with the individual,
building that can trust factor before coming strongly against someone,
using curiosity, building a bond, acknowledging all these other tools to build
connection, and so that when they do speak up with assertive communication, which is
a highly effective way of getting the results that you want in that conversation,
because if you speak up and just say what you think, no, I'm not going to do it.
It's not helpful to anyone. If it's not effective, if you're not able to influence
the other party, because all that's going to do is cause negativity for yourself and
for the others. And so the only point of speaking up in most cases professionally
is to influence others. And that's where there has to be a skill, just like
negotiation. And so most people just are not aware of the skill.
And that's where I come in. But yeah, thank you for your question. And again, you
deal with the senior management for how to create an environment where their team
can speak up to them. But teaching that if you don't have that opportunity to teach
the senior leader, then is there an opportunity for a more junior person to still
speak up? Yes. And that's the main differentiator for me,
and what I firmly believe in, I believe that it's not just about the leader
creating psychological safety for their employees. And I was lucky to have a boss in
my early career that yes, he gave me psychological safety to speak up with him, but
I had to deal with a lot of stakeholders. And the vast majority of them were not
giving me psychological safety to speak up when they were superiors. and my boss
wasn't there in every meeting to protect me either, but he enabled me. He taught me
how to speak up. He would show me what I had to say, and he'd tell me,
"Keep on it. Don't give up. Just go and keep trying." When I didn't want to speak
up, he'd push me until I did speak up, but in the right way. We can't control the
people around us. We can't control all of our leaders and how they respond to
things. We can't control all of our customers. We can't control all of the people.
Most of us are not interfacing just with our bosses. We're interfacing with like 100
people in the organization. And so it's not a great idea to be reliant on others
for us to be able to speak up for them to say, "Oh, okay. I'm going to give you
full psychological safety. Now go ahead and speak up." Exactly. Well, I worked in
the entertainment business for 30 plus years, and that did not exist. Psychological
safety was something that was left in the garage and, you know, it was very much
navigating through shark infested waters. And so saying the wrong thing could have
absolutely ended up getting you fired, maybe not at the table, but shortly
thereafter. And there was no kid gloves ever in most meetings.
And I shouldn't say that all across the board, I had some incredibly wonderful
collaborative environments. And I hope when I was a senior leader, I created that.
But certainly growing up in it, that was not available. It was anybody could be
marginalized or metaphorically beheaded at a conference table unceremoniously.
I mean, I can think about some of the moments that I was either witness or
probably even a victim of, but not too often, but certainly witness to high -level
people just absolutely tearing somebody down for saying the wrong thing. Do you have
an example? There was a senior -level executive at a meeting with our chairman,
co -owner of the company. And he pitched an idea, and I can't remember what the
idea was, and the leader of the company said, somewhere there is a village missing,
they're idiot, and I just found him. It's terrible, but that's the reality. That's
what I've been experiencing all my career. To pretend that that's not going to be
the reality is to live in La La Land. So what are those tools for a junior
person? So I work with a lot of writers in television now, and there's always the
fear of speaking up in a writer's room because there's an executive producer who's
under terrible stress from the network, the studio, the budgets, the director,
the actors. So many things pulling at them all day long, millions of dollars on the
line and deadlines breathing down your next seven days a week. And that's how it is
to run a show. So whether it's the executive producer or the staff writer who's
coming in and it's their first job, it's an absolute quagmire gauntlet of ego and
stress and opportunity and all kinds of things. And so how does one find their
voice? You know, when you're in a comedy room, if pitching a joke, if the joke
works, then you're a hero. But just, you know, when you're pitching stories or
pitching character ideas or pitching a story idea for a future episode, it's brutal
how they might shoot it down or humiliate you or scare you. And they want you to
come back with more ideas, but it's hard to come back after you've been annihilated
in front of your teammates. So what's your recommendation for those kind of
environments where everybody's vying for attention, money, opportunity. - Where the ego
and the stress is taking over. - Very high and the stakes are very high. Yeah,
so absolutely, there are many things that can be done. And obviously, depending on
the situation, there are even things that you can say, right? Even scripts and
formulas that help in each situation. But just a high level, It always helps to
build a level of relationship with the people that you're going to be dealing with
because people don't shoot people that they have a relationship with. So if you're
able to develop that, great. Even if just a few encounters, just see them in the
hallway, just hello, ask them a question. Building a little bit of rapport always
helps win in a of tension, right? So building up or outside of the tension.
And then when you're in a tension situation, then it's much easier, they're way less
likely to shoot you down. Second, it's important to be very direct.
Direct doesn't mean attacking others, right? And being direct means saying exactly
what you want, not complaining, not antagonizing, not going the opposite and not
making assumptions, is being very clear about what you want, what you need from the
other person, what you're trying to achieve, communicating your intentions,
communicating what the shared goal is, finding common ground, and being very direct
and affirmative around what you think. And people, especially leaders, respond very
well to conviction. Now, speaking up hesitation doesn't help,
right? So it's important to speak up. And I know we speak up with hesitation 'cause
we're scared of people's reaction, but that has the opposite effect, right? These
leaders respect you when you speak with conviction as long as you're not attacking.
Now, here's another thing. We need to understand all the different ways in which we
attack people and not do them. A lot of people are either with their verbals or
nonverbal language attacking others. There's an indirect sense of judgment, of blame,
when we say things, and that's not helpful, right? And so, you know, for example,
if you're going to disagree with someone who's a few levels above you in a public
forum, right, in front of other people, you want to help them save face and not
make them look bad in any way, because, you know, they can counterattack. Instead of
saying, "Oh, that's stupid or okay, I disagree. Even saying I disagree is not a
great way of initiating that conversation because it creates a wall of resistance.
And so in that case, depending on where you stand in that hierarchy, you know,
asking, inducing questions and saying, Hey, I have a bit of concern around this, or
have you considered this other aspect? You know, what I've been, what I think is
this. So expressing what your thoughts is without attacking others is a great way to
engage the other in that conversation without making them feel bad or distract them
with like, oh, I have to protect my idea now, right? Because this is an intruder.
So we have a lot of power in getting others to collaborate with us. We have so
many tools available, we just don't use them. And sometimes we inadvertently attack
others either where we're angry, we're frustrated, because we think that they're not
listening to us, we held too long to speak, and now we have all these things in
our mind, and now we're not even listening to them. And so the earlier we speak,
the more often we speak up, it also normalizes that because when people are not
used to seeing you speak up, when you do speak up, there's a little bit of
resistance, like they're shocked. But if they see you consistently expressing your
thoughts and in your opinions and your concerns and your disagreements, and you come
to the table with a positive attitude with, "Hey, I want to work through this or
here's a consideration. Help me understand this." Or, "How did you come up with this
thought or this solution? Here are some implications that I've seen. Have you seen
this happen?" Then you're inviting others to collaborate, not to compete. So it's
just things like that. There's so many different tools depending on what you're
trying to achieve, but most people don't. I don't know about you. Nobody taught this
kind of stuff at school, during my MBA master's at work. It's just not something
that I learned. And it caused me a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety. And I had to
develop habits as well. And you talk a lot about that mindset and habits to manage
stress because when we don't manage the stress, we kind of fall into those mistakes.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that's sort of where my work comes in. And so my work
is all about you can't control others, but you can control your mind and your body.
And when you start there, you show up differently to every situation, right?
So We talk a lot in coaching, and I've said this many times on my own podcast,
about circumstances. And circumstances are everything from your job to traffic, to a
flight being canceled, to an illness, to the babysitter not showing up. I mean,
those are circumstances. Those are things beyond your control. And so we can't change
circumstances. I mean, sometimes you can. You can make a different choice. You could
have a a babysitter, you could take the train, you could do this, you could do
that. There are choices, but what you can control is how you manage your mind and
your body every day. It's a little bit analogous to what you talked about speaking
up early and speaking up often is getting
do stress. I mean, yes, you want to do stress management techniques when you feel
stressed. Of course, you do. But you want to practice them every day in a non
-stressful situation so that it becomes habitual and so that your foundational being
is stronger going into more difficult situations. Again, you can't change the
difficult situations. Those are what they are. Those are circumstances. But if you
show up well rested with a self concept of strength because you manage your mind or
you manage your body, you manage what you put in your body. You show up very
differently than somebody who's always late, always disheveled,
can never find their pen or their keys or their phone, right? You show up put
together. And it's not just a costume. It's not just the appearance. It's actually
how do you structure your day? My listeners have heard this ad nauseam,
because I talk about it almost in every other episode. My foundational elements are
what I refer to as homework, which is an acronym for H -O -M -E.
The H is to hydrate, and to stay well hydrated creates a sense of calm. It's eight
glasses of water throughout the day. It prevents you from overeating, it flushes
toxins from your body, it helps your skin, it helps your eyes, it helps every organ
in your body. But staying hydrated also creates a sense of calm. Because when we're
dehydrated, there is a feeling in our body that mimics stress, anxiety,
and even depression. Now, that's not to say you're dehydrated, that's why you're
depressed. No, they're not correlational. It's that it mimics those feelings.
So if you're anxious, have a glass of water. But as a habit, make sure you're
having a glass of water every hour or every hour and a half of the day so you're
well hydrated. So that's the first rule. The second, the O stands for observe your
levels and that is simply, are you eating properly? So that means making healthy
choices and frequently. And that's different for everybody. I recommend eating
something with protein at every four hours. Now I'm not talking about a big steak
and a big potato, and I'm not talking about a heavy meal. I'm talking about a
handful of nuts or a slice of cheese with maybe a vegetable or a fruit. I'm just
saying a snack that has high volume nutrition and it always starts with a protein.
So a protein smoothie, a protein bar, nuts, cheese, a little piece of meat,
whatever is appropriate for your dietary restrictions, but eating regularly and eating
healthfully, again, creates a better homeostasis in your mind and body. So you show
up differently. Nobody likes to deal with somebody who is hungry. You don't like
dealing with yourself when you're hungry and nobody likes dealing with you. So
managing that and then resting, Right? Did I get enough sleep? Do I have a bedtime?
I have so many clients who stay up half the night because they're scrolling on
their phones or they're binge watching Netflix. And those are the kind of habits
that then have a hangover, if you will, in the morning. Because if you've been up
all night, either on social media or on Netflix or on whatever, video games,
what have you, you're not giving your body, your mind a chance to reset. In the
same way, we don't leave our computers unplugged if we have a laptop all day,
right? Eventually you have to plug it in at night, better even to power it down,
shut off the system so it can rest, so that it can function better than your
body's the same way. So observe your levels means do I need rest and do I need
food? Checking in with yourself to see what you need. The third The third one is
meditation. So I believe in a daily meditation practice. And for a lot of my type
A overthinking clients, meditation is like asking them to pull out their own teeth.
Like they just, the thought of sitting quietly with their eyes closed for five, 10,
15, 20 minutes is excruciating. They say to me like, literally anything else.
I would rather do anything else. So I always say you don't have to transcendental
meditate. You don't have to do 20 minutes twice a day in silence. That's maybe too
onerous of a place to start. So start with two minutes or five minutes. Start with
a guided meditation. Put in your AirPods or your headphones and plug it into your
phone and search YouTube or Google or whatever and find a two -minute guided
meditation, and then sit on a chair, sit on your bed, sit on your sofa,
sit at your desk at work, close the door if you can, go in the bathroom if you
don't have your own office, close the door, and listen to a guided meditation. Calm
the brain down so you can think better. Now,
I like it best in the morning, but I'll take it any time of the day. I'll take
it between meetings. I'll take it after lunch. I'll take it before dinner. It
doesn't matter to me, but making a date or making a time to meditate.
And again, two minutes. That's all we're talking about. If you can work up to five
better, if you can do 10, great. But you never have to be alone. You can do
meditation with guided words. You can do meditation with music. I don't recommend
words in the music, but words that somebody's guiding you through your thoughts.
And then the last one is daily exercise. E is for exercise. And it's as simple as
a walk around the block or a stationary bike or a sport you like to play or
dancing in your living room or hula hoop or jump rope. It doesn't matter what it
is. People think exercise, oh, I got to join a gym. I got to drive across town. I
got to buy the right yoga pants. I got to buy $125 sneakers, none of the above.
I mean, if you want to do those things, sure. However, you like to exercise. But
exercise, and I've coached many people who live in places that it's very hard to
like get out in the winter, because it's three feet of snow or they have little
kids at home and they don't have babysitters at night, or they work 12 hours a day
like nurses and doctors. And so getting to a gym or playing a sport Monday through
Friday is just not feasible for them. So I say, okay, do you have a TV? Do you
have a computer? Do you have an iPad? Do you have a phone? That means you have
access presumably to YouTube. Put on a video, dance, put on music,
dance, that counts. But moving your body for 20 minutes a day, a walk with your
dog, a walk with your baby, a walk with your partner, a walk with a friend, a
walk with a colleague at It doesn't matter as long as you're moving. So those are
my four basic principles is the homework. And if you do those things every day as
a commitment to yourself, and people say, "Oh, it's so much commitment." Is it
really? You're gonna drink something today. So it might as well be water, right?
You can do that while you work. You can do that while you watch TV. You can do
that while you drive a car. So water shouldn't be that hard. That's the first one.
You have to eat meals. Planning your meals might be a way to get ahead of that,
you know, not getting to that hangry state, carrying a package of almonds or trail
mix or some cheese with you or a protein bar. That's a good way to stay like,
oh God, I have so many meetings and I don't have time. I used to work with a
doctor who worked 12 -hour shifts. And she said, "I sometimes don't have time to go
to the bathroom." And then I said, then have your nurse practitioner make sure that
you're out with each patient five minutes early. So you do have time to go get a
glass of water and take a bite of a protein bar and go to the bathroom, right?
Just like sometimes it's about shaving a few minutes off each hour to hit the reset
button for yourself. I wouldn't want to be the patient for that doctor without food,
dehydrated, and not having gone to the bathroom. - Or slept well,
or any of those things. - Not having slept well, like I would not want to be that
patient. - Right, you would rather your doctor, go take a sip of water, go take a
bite of some almonds, run to the ladies room or men's room, whatever kind of doctor
you have, and show up with a clear mind talking to you about whatever is happening
for you. So they're basic kind of like kindergarten level tools.
But when we practice them, when we schedule them, when we show up for ourselves, we
then show up very differently to the fire, you know, literally,
whether you're the firemen or the ER doctor or the comedy writer or the C -level
executive in a major corporation, when you fill your own cup,
you show up to the meetings, you show up to the problem -solving, you show up to
the clients or the staff meetings differently, because you feel like you've taken
care of yourself first, or you're about to take care of yourself, right? You might
be after the meeting that you're going to do those things. And when you've taken
care of yourself, not only do you have a lot more mental clarity, but let's say
you're having one of these hard conversations, you're able to really
understand yourself, what you're trying to achieve, but also you're able to read into
the other person. Because if you're hungry, you know, if you're tired, it's very
hard to actually be present in the moment of that conversation and read the
response, read what the other person is actually trying to say so that we can pivot
our communication in our body language accordingly. Because a dialogue,
a hard conversation is not a one -way street. We need to be constantly in tune with
the other person and adapting our language, adapting our approach to be able to be
effective and we can't do that if we're not doing the things that you just shared.
Well, the other thing is it's super important to model it for others. So whether
you're a senior leader in a company and you model that this is acceptable behavior,
you know, like if I owned a major corporation now, I would make sure there was a
meditation room. I would make sure there was a yoga room where people could go
stretch out and take time for themselves in between meetings. I would make sure that
there were healthy snacks available all the time so that people aren't down in candy
and caffeine all day to refuel. And there's nothing wrong with a cup of coffee here
or there and there's nothing wrong with some dark chocolate occasionally. And I'm not
suggesting that you be a monk in the way you live or the way you eat. I'm
suggesting that when we start to make healthy choices, we we show up with greater
conviction, all the things you were talking about, right? More certainty, more
confidence. And that's going to then, as you said, result in greater communication
and probably being more influential. But if you have jagged energy, volatile energy,
exhausted energy, you're not gonna be terribly influential. And even if you are,
you're not gonna be well -liked, and you're not going to probably like yourself
because you're going to feel crappy, and you're probably fueling your body with bad
things as well. So that's sort of my recipe for management of daily anxiety as well
as acute anxiety. And there's many, many more tools because as the situations or
circumstances become more serious, then you need other tools too.
But this is a good foundation to start with for pretty much everybody. So let me
share a quick story. Throughout my career, I always, before I got married, I would
email my mom, my mother, every time something was not well, when I wasn't feeling
great. And so she could get a sense of how well I was doing by the amount of
communication I had with her. And so the communication had grown a lot, and She was
getting really concerned about me and my well -being at work. I was working long
hours and I wasn't happy with work. I was really upset with the people and the
work. I just wasn't enjoying any of it and I was working long hours. Then I moved
to this other location and I started to have a very fortunate beachfront.
I started to take daily walks, half an hour in the beach, like just walking on the
beach by myself every morning before going to work. This became an absolute priority.
And my mother started to, she suddenly noticed I stopped communicating with her,
which, which actually meant I was really doing 100 % better. I was actually able to
cope. It was the same job, same work, same stressors. But I was able to cope with
all With all of that, those 12 hours of stress at work, with that half an hour of
morning walk on the beach, it made such a huge difference. Amazing. Yeah.
Those little things. It's the little things. And that's what these are. They're just
little things. And it really adds up to very little time in the day. And time is
one of these things, which I talk about also quite a lot. Time is one of these
dragons that people feel owns them, that it's just this beast of burden, that
they're always chasing time and there's not enough time. And I always argue, there's
more time than you think. You can create time within every hour. It's paying
attention to how you're wasting it and what's your priority. And when something
becomes non -negotiable, like a walk before work, or a two minute meditation before
you start your day, or drinking a glass of water between meetings, or during
meetings, or stopping for a meal or a snack, can again, can just be a healthy
snack. You suddenly find the time because you make these things the priority instead
of wasting time gossiping, complaining, scrolling through social media,
there's so much time. When we don't think we're wasting time, but if you were to
actually have to track it in a journal, you would find there's a lot of time
wasted in every hour. Even meetings themselves. Yes, you're in a meeting. Yes, you're
sitting around a conference table or a coffee table or on Zoom. There's a lot of
time wasted in those meetings too. And when we're tired, at least when I'm tired. I
grow impatient. - Everyone does. - I don't like people. I just want to be by myself.
I don't want to interact. I don't want to be in meetings. I don't want to engage
and I have no focus. So productivity just falls to very small tremendously.
So in that case, my priority becomes I need to nap. And back in the day when it
was office, I'd go to the car and I'd use my lunch time to nap.
That's how important it was. Yeah, that's wonderful. So you were doing two of the
homework items right there. I was trying all of them except for the meditation one
is kind of hard, but I do when I'm tired, I can put on the guided meditation
because it helps me actually sleep. I like doing as well just listening to music
and focusing on the music with my eyes closed. It's an easier way of meditating.
Yeah, so this has been such a great discussion and I've so enjoyed sharing best
practices with you about how to reduce stress and how to speak up and the benefits
of both whether you're in a corporate workplace or just in life. And how those
habits that you just described really help speaking up and the anxiety that comes
with it and being able to express ourselves in the workplace. - Yeah,
definitely. They definitely go hand in hand. So I hope that whoever's listening to
this gets value from this conversation and also maybe hopefully take some notes and
starts developing some new daily practices so that they feel more confident. - Maybe
pick one habit - And get going tomorrow, get started. - Well, the easiest one people
always tell me is drinking water, I could do that. I've given this as a conference
many times and people are like, I started drinking water, I feel better, oh my
good. Work your way down the list.
- Well, I know this was a pleasure. - Yeah, I really enjoyed our conversation. - Me
too, all right, take care. You too. Bye for now.