Ever been in a room where you felt completely out of place – like everyone else had the right to be there but you? You’re not alone. I’ve been there, too. And even though I now speak on global stages and coach high-level execs, I didn’t always feel confident using my voice.
In fact, I used to stay quiet even when I had something valuable to say.
Learning how to speak up when you don’t belong isn’t just a leadership skill—it’s a survival strategy for ambitious women in today’s workforce.
5 mindset shifts that helped me finally find my voice and speak up with clarity (even in the most intimidating spaces):
1. Silence Isn’t a Strategy – It’s a Symptom
If you’ve ever told yourself, “I’ll speak up once I’ve earned it,” you’re not alone. That was me for years.
I thought staying quiet would prove I was patient and professional. In reality, it made me invisible.
Silence can often be a trauma response, especially for women who were taught to be likable, agreeable, and never “too much.” But silence won’t earn you a seat at the table – it only ensures that no one hears your ideas.
The first step in learning how to speak up when you don’t belong is understanding that silence won’t get you seen. Speaking up will.
2. Not Speaking Up Is Costing You More Than You Think
For years, I watched less experienced colleagues get the credit for my work. Promotions passed me by. Opportunities vanished.
Not because I lacked skill – but because I lacked voice.
When you don’t speak up, people assume you don’t have anything to say. It’s not fair, but it’s real.
This was my turning point. I realized staying quiet wasn’t helping anyone – least of all me.
3. How to Speak Up When You Don’t Belong – Without Being Loud
Let’s break a myth: speaking up doesn’t mean shouting over others.
True leadership comes from grounded clarity. You don’t have to raise your voice to raise your value.
When you speak with calm, clear confidence – rooted in facts, purpose, and values – you own the room without dominating it.
Leadership isn’t loud. It’s intentional.
4. Confidence Comes from Clarity, Not Bravado
I used to think confident people were born that way. But here’s the truth: confidence is learned.
And for me, it came through clarity.
When I understood what I stood for, what I contributed, and what problem I was solving, speaking up felt natural – even if my voice still shook at times.
Confidence isn’t about being fearless. It’s about being aligned.
Get clear, and the confidence follows.
5. The More You Speak, the Easier It Gets
Learning how to speak up when you don’t belong is like building a muscle. The first few reps are shaky. You’ll second-guess yourself. But over time, it gets easier.
I created my keynote “Defying Doubt : Speak Up, Stay Confident, and Be Seen and Heard as a Respected Leader” and the Say It Like a Leader Instant Access Workshop because too many women still wait for permission to speak. And too many allies aren’t sure how to support them.
We need to change that – together.
Ready to Learn How to Speak Up When You Don’t Belong?
If this resonates, I’d love to share the exact five-step framework I now teach to leaders across the country. It’s called the VOICE Method, and it’s inside my Say It Like a Leader Instant Access Mini Workshop.
This self-paced training will help you:
- Speak up in hard conversations
- Advocate for yourself with clarity
- Lead with confidence—even when fear is loud
Get Instant Access to Say It Like a Leader here.
Let’s Talk About It
When was the last time you held back from speaking up? What held you back?
Drop me a DM on LinkedIn. You’re not alone.
The more we talk about how to speak up when you don’t belong, the more we rewrite the rules for what leadership really looks like.
CLICK FOR TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] I’ve spoken on major stages. I’ve also coached executives and still, there were rooms in my past where I never said a word.
Today I’m sharing how I finally found my voice in the rooms where I felt like I didn’t belong. And what you could do to speak up even when self-doubt creeps in.
If you’ve ever shrunk yourself to make others feel comfortable, this one’s for you.
My name’s Corrie LoGiudice and I help ambitious women and allies lead with clarity and confidence, all while avoiding burnout all together. Subscribe. If you want real world stories and leadership strategies to help you speak up, take action and step into your next level.
As a professional keynote speaker and coach, people often assume that confidence is just a given. But for a really long time, I didn’t feel like I belonged in the rooms that I was in. I actually have a very expensive piece of paper that says I could draw well. A fine arts degree.
[00:01:00] So when I had started my career as a graphic designer in my family’s large regional business, I. Could not have felt like more of an imposter. You know, suddenly I was thrown into scenarios where I was on conference calls and in meetings with people who had straight up MBAs, and all I had was the expensive piece of paper.
So as a result, I never spoke up. I watered myself down. I avoided conflict, and ultimately none of it helped me lead.
Over my years in learning and figuring out the best ways to speak up, I learned of five different things that I needed to shift my mindset on in order to be able to confidently show up as myself and show up as the confident leader that I always had the ability to be.
Number one was silence wasn’t the solution. It actually was a symptom. So I stayed quiet thinking I’d earn my right to speak. But when you think about it, that makes no sense, because if you’re trying [00:02:00] to earn your right to participate by staying silent. No one actually knows what it is you have to contribute in order to earn that.
It makes no sense. It’s like a chicken and an egg scenario. So I felt, for whatever reason, that I somehow had to wait for permission, and I didn’t realize that that silence was actually a trauma response. It wasn’t a strategy.
So many of us women in particular as children, we are commended for things like, waiting our turn and being patient and being likable, right? And not, being too much. So I had no idea by the time I became an adult that I was more or less preconditioned to be quiet and wait. And that’s not the way that, the business and career world works at all, right?
So silence wasn’t a solution. It was actually a symptom of the way I had grown up. And the way that we teach young girls, and boys for that matter, boys are taught a little differently on how to communicate in [00:03:00] those kind of scenarios. So it really required me rewiring when would be the right time to speak up.
So this didn’t really change for me until number two, my turning point, which was when I realized that staying quiet was starting to cost me. So how many of you can relate to this? Drop it in the comments that you’re passed over for things that you’re entirely qualified for. So I started to watch people who were far less experienced take credit for things I was doing or get promotions that I was most qualified for, and it was all because I didn’t speak up, and I wasn’t just quiet, it ultimately made me disappear, like I might as well have not even been there.
So the third big mindset shift I had to make was understanding that speaking of doesn’t mean having to get loud. This was by far my biggest shift. I didn’t need to yell in order to be heard, it didn’t matter, I just needed to be clear and concise . Grounded, intentional. Confident in what it was I was [00:04:00] saying in general, the person who owns the room is the one with the most conviction in what it is that they’re saying, right? So it didn’t matter. I didn’t have to be loud. I didn’t have to speak over people. I just had to speak truth and speak things that were based in fact.
So leading into this, number four was that my confidence actually came from my clarity. Not from bravado. I Started to understand that the more I knew about what I stood for, the more I knew about what value I had to add to that conversation. The more that I knew about what the task at hand was, what the project was, what problem it was that we were looking to solve, the more that I fully understood all the mechanics going into it.
The easier it was for me to speak up and say something when it mattered, because I knew I was a subject matter expert on it. And it still took me a while to learn how to do this. My voice would still even shake at times when I did it. But the only way [00:05:00] that this starts to get easier is the more and more and more that you speak up and do it. So having that level of clarity, in your overall work experience, your expertise, the project scope, right? All these different things totally play into it, and it’s ultimately up to you to own that. It’s not up to everybody else that you’re working with to know your resume straight up when you show up, right?
You have to show up with those receipts and that comes through in how you speak and what you are speaking on through that expertise, when you do choose to speak.
And ultimately, this is what I teach. I, teach this now because I lived it. It’s why I created My Defying Doubt keynote and the Say It Like a Leader Workshop, which is Sister workshop because too many women in general, are waiting for permission to take up space and ultimately a lot of our allies are unsure on what to do to support us in doing so. So in creating these, keynotes and workshops and really diving deep into [00:06:00] what systemic challenges women have coming into workplace is a lot of it rooted in our childhoods and how we were taught to communicate as children, and how to bridge that gap and ultimately how to communicate more thoughtfully between people that you meet while in leadership can really help bridge that gap.
And this is important because the definition of leadership is by learning and challenging yourself to master a skill, and then being able to teach others and coach them effectively in a way that they then can lead others to do the same.
So the reason why I list it as five, as one of my big mindset shifts. Was because me shifting and understanding that, hey, I have the ability now that I’ve mastered this to teach it to other women and to other allies, and this is important because I lived it and I understand the challenges, and I’ve been successful in being able to bridge that gap and can show others how to do the [00:07:00] same so that we no longer have that gap, have that scenario where women don’t feel that they are allowed to speak up, then that’s a very, very important thing for me to set forth and to do, right? Because the more women and allies I teach, the more that they could teach and then the less of a issue, this is moving forward for everybody and more voices get heard overall.
So I’d love to know when was the last time that you held back something that you really wanted to say? Drop a comment below. I promise you are not alone. Let’s take this as an opportunity to discuss why so many of us have difficulty speaking up in rooms where we feel that we don’t belong, even though we have every single reason to need to do so, especially in this day and time.
If this hit home and you would like to know my exact five step framework, it’s called the voice method to learn how to say it like a leader yourself and confidently speak up in scenarios, [00:08:00] whether it be a conversation you wish that had gone better, or a conversation that you are dreading and avoiding.
My, say it like a leader Instant Access Mini workshop is the perfect place to learn how to do this.
It’s a self-paced training to help you speak up, advocate for yourself, and lead with confidence even when fear is loud.
I truly hope that you found value in my sharing this today, and I will see you on the next one.
Thanks for checking out the next step with Cory Lowe. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a review. Together we’ll transform overwhelm into action and we’ll keep taking the next step towards competent leadership. See you next time.