Speaking up beyond your area of expertise

Unless armed with a 50 slides deck with impeccable animations, charts and a bullet proof narrative, speaking up to topics outside my area felt almost like … being an impostor. All the while, my colleagues, predominantly but not exclusively, men, offering their often best-guess opinion with abundance. To some extent I felt outraged that people had the audacity to fill in the silence with rubbish and to some extent I felt jealous that they can do that with immovable confidence. And what is more is that their loosely held opinions would turn into execution, in the absence of better ideas. And that is how you can recognize that not speaking up is doing a major disservice to the company you are part of.

ANCHORING.

Using a framework, a line of reasoning or a model that you are familiar with can help you verbalize your opinion better all the while entrusting confidence into your judgement. This does not need to be explicit, although if your audience is familiar with it, it should be. Merely using a theoretical construct to build your argumentation will help convey your message with power.

PARALLEL.

Creating a parallel with a different business area, perhaps your area of expertise, can help you speak from a place of authority. The underlying business mechanisms are, in their fundamental nature, similar across areas and when a new, unfamiliar problem arises you can borrow existing knowledge in an innovative way.

TEST & ITERATE.

In quite a number of industries, particularly those revolving around online business models, testing and iterating is a sanctity. No amount of pre-judgement or parallel thinking will grant you the results of testing multiple hypothesis in tandem and iterating until you have a solid answer. Proposing a trial is probably the safest bet in the board room.

ACQUIRE EXPERTISE.

When the business challenge seems truly overwhelming don’t hesitate to propose a recess for research or bringing in experts in the field. There is nothing worse than winging it with a risky business situation that nobody in the room has the experience to challenge.

Stepping into a leadership role requires speaking up for matters outside of your corea area of expertise none in the less because of your growing business acumen and familiarity with the company or the industry. Not speaking up will often be interpreted as a lack of seniority, and what is worse, will allow less sound opinions seen to fruition. Stand by the principle of adding the maximum amount of contribution you can make to the conversation: you might be surprised that it is beyond how the conversation would have concluded without you.