Women in Climate (WiC) network
Women in Climate (WiC) network
Posted by Penny Maher
2 June 2025For our May event we organised a workshop with Ellie Highwood from “Send Them Soaring” around finding your voice and silencing your inner critic. A lot of us struggle to “speak out” (e.g. ask questions, voice an opinion, etc) in seminars, group/department meetings, and at conferences. Aside from practicalities (not having a microphone, being sat at the back of the room, not getting picked by the session convener/chair, …) this is mostly due to people feeling intimidated and awkward about the prospect of saying something stupid or obvious, or not being able to articulate, and therefore embarrassing themselves by speaking out. The thing that is stopping us is our “inner critic”! The inner critic is trying to protect us and keep us safe, but sometimes the thing it’s trying to keep us “safe” from is not actually that dangerous, and it might be more of a risk to not speak out/go for that opportunity/… because we are being held back.
Tuning in to our inner critic, visualising them (even giving them a name!), and noticing what they say and when they’re the loudest, can help us break out of the pattern of being stopped by our inner critic. Instead, question whether in this specific situation we need to listen to the inner critic or whether the inner critic is too worried and we can in fact go ahead and speak out (or whatever it is they are stopping us from)! We learnt techniques to turn down the volume of our inner critic. We heard that it can be helpful for yourself to find direct/indirect evidence to prove to yourself that you are qualified to speak up/for the task. Another approach is to choose a “safer” situation to gain confidence and get used to speaking out (e.g. start by asking questions in a smaller group meeting and build your way up to larger group meetings/department seminars and eventually conferences). It can also help to motivate you to speak up if you remember that by saying “no” to speaking out now, you are saying “yes” to the feeling of regret/annoyance with yourself later, or you can also try to envision someone else (that you respect) asking your question.
We also talked about “calling out” bad behaviour – this can be really challenging especially if you struggle to speak out. One way around it can be to “call in”, where you speak to the person after the meeting and tell them that what they said was offensive/unjust – people are more likely to be able to take criticism when it’s not in front of their peers or a large group – but only do this if it is safe to do so. You can also try to delegate this to the session chair. Another strategy that can help if you want to address an issue in a meeting is to get support from your colleagues ahead of a meeting so that they can back you up during the meeting. Peer-support (or allies) can be great in this respect for supporting your point during a meeting, or for example pointing out that you weren’t done speaking if someone else speaks over you.
It was a great workshop, with fun activities to help visualise the inner critic and discussions in groups and with the room about when we struggle most with our inner critic and which situations are the most challenging for us. The workshop was held in person at the University of Exeter in the morning and at the Met Office in the afternoon, and the Women in Climate network is grateful for generous support from the Researcher Led Initiatives (University of Exeter) for this event!