How to speak up: research-backed tactics for finding your voice

Executive overview

Most people know they should speak up more, but the obstacle is rarely about knowing what to say — it's about managing fear, power dynamics, and ingrained silence. Connson Locke draws on over a decade of teaching leadership at LSE and her own long struggle to find her voice.

The core insight: you are usually the one silencing yourself — not the room.

Managing negative emotions

• Negative emotions are signals, not the problem itself. Ask what the emotion is pointing at.
• Fear says: take a different approach, build confidence first, or find a new strategy.
• Anger says: something needs to change — act on that, don't just feel it.
• Getting "bigger than" the emotion means acknowledging it without letting it take over.
• Practical method: a few deep breaths to create distance between the feeling and the response.
• People who can't regulate negative emotions lash out or shut down — both damage influence.

Deliberate practice over repetition

• Deliberate practice (from Anders Erikson's violinist research) is not logging hours — it's targeting your weakest spots with focused effort and feedback.
• Reflection after meetings is foundational: what did I do well? What did I hold back?
• Journaling works for introverts — writing through the moment often shifts your perspective on it.
• Talking it through with a trusted colleague or coach surfaces options you wouldn't see alone.
• Roleplay is uncomfortable but highly effective — it builds muscle memory for in-the-moment thinking.
• The discomfort of roleplay is itself the practice; pushing just past it is where the growth is.

Reframing power differentials

• Research by Dacher Keltner shows that focusing on a power gap inhibits the lower-power person and makes the higher-power person transactional.
• Instead of "this is my boss," focus on what you're trying to achieve and how they can help make it happen.
• Your boss becomes a resource for a goal, not a threat to manage.
• This shifts the dynamic from fear to purpose — fear may still be present, but it no longer blocks action.

Priming confidence before high-stakes moments

• Power writing: spend 10 minutes writing about a time you had power over a situation. This primes confidence before presentations or difficult conversations.
• Power posing: a dominance stance (arms wide, or raised) for two minutes privately before an event.
• Hormonal evidence for power posing is contested, but presenters who did it were consistently rated as more engaging by judges who didn't know who had done it.
• Both techniques work regardless of the mechanism — use them.

Generating positive emotions through purposeful free time

• Hedonic pleasures (beach, Netflix, good food) are necessary but not sufficient for fulfilment.
• Eudaemonic activity — learning, making, volunteering — provides a sense of purpose that hedonic rest doesn't.
• Volunteering in retirement is linked to better sleep and stronger cognitive function.
• Creative activity (making something with your hands) produces a visible result that reinforces a sense of agency.
• The connection to speaking up: people with purpose generate positive energy others want to be around — this builds influence even outside formal conversations.

Leadership as facilitation, not direction

• Locke has shifted her view 30–45 degrees: the leader as facilitator is increasingly more effective than the leader as authority.
• The traditional leader-as-influencer model assumes the leader has the answers and communicates one-way.
• The facilitator model assumes: I don't have all the answers, but I know who to ask and I can change my mind.
• Example: as programme director at LSE, pushing a hybrid schedule top-down generated immediate pushback; facilitating a conversation with student reps produced a better schedule and buy-in.
• Speaking up is not just about what you say in a meeting — influence also accumulates through how you show up consistently over time.