New employee? New meeting room? New team? How do you speak up?

Reflecting on Season 1: In a room full of experienced individuals, how can a new employee be successful in bringing their ideas forward? 

 Why did we ask this? 

 We think this question came out of our own experiences being new employees, right out of school. We were joining organizations and working with highly experienced individuals who were subject matter experts. On the one hand, being mentored by them is the experience of a lifetime, but on the other hand, we felt like we were sometimes too intimidated out of respect, to bring up our ideas in meetings. It might not just be students who are right out of school in their first jobs who have this feeling. 

 Any time someone starts out in a new company, they may feel like they are right back where they started – with the same need to prove themselves and facing the same dilemmas they faced in their first job all over again. Can I ask this question? Is this the right place or right time? If I ask the question, will I sound unintelligent? Through season 1 of the EITF project, our experts had a lot to say on this topic, and here’s a compilation of what we learnt –
Building confidence - Confidence is highly underrated these days and building this leads to a lot of positives in the workplace. For new graduates who are just starting out in the industry, our experts say knowledge gives confidence. Learning as much as you can can help build the confidence to propose new ideas. 

Preparation – Prototype and test your idea to make sure that it can work at a basic level. This in turn will give you the confidence to propose it and to ask for feedback from experienced individuals. 

Asking the dumb questions – Make sure that you don’t focus on making sure your question is intelligent and skip over the ‘dumb’ questions. They may seem dumb to you but having them unanswered can stall the progress you had for your idea. 

Know your audience – Not all questions need to be asked in meeting rooms filled with experienced individuals. Sometimes, taking it offline and asking direct questions one-on-one, can help you further your idea and bring it to a new stage in your prototyping efforts. 

Evaluate your idea – Make sure that your idea caters to a need within the company. If it lies within the common interest of a few people in the company to solve a problem, it will motivate them to provide new ideas for you to move forward.

Do you agree with what our experts have said? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments, or shoot us an email via contact@eitf-project.com!


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