How to Speak Boldly at Work (Without Burning Bridges)

In this episode of Relationships at Work, we explore what it truly means to speak boldly in the workplace—and why it’s more about connection than confrontation.

Joining us is Verna Myers, renowned inclusion strategist, author, and former Netflix VP of Inclusion Strategy. She shares powerful lessons on how to challenge harmful behaviors, speak truth to power, and communicate across difference with clarity and courage. From managing emotions to knowing when to pause, Verna offers strategies for bold communication that builds trust—not fear.

🗣️ Topics include:

• The difference between speaking and truly communicating
• Why psychological safety starts with leadership
• How to challenge bias without causing shutdown
• Tips for preparing (and practicing) for high-stakes moments
• The role of curiosity, compassion, and timing in speaking up

Whether you're a leader or just finding your voice, Verna’s insight will change how you show up in difficult conversations.

Hey! If you're enjoying the insights from our guests, you'll love our R@W Notes Newsletter. It’s packed with guest takeaways, the resources that inspire them, and my own tips on how we as leaders can be better humans for the humans the are responsible for. Go to RelationshipsAtWorkShow.com and Subscribe Now and help the workplace be more human.

And connect with me for more great content!

• Sign Up for R@W Notes
• Subscribe on Youtube
• Follow on Linkedin
• Follow on Instagram
• Follow me on Threads
• Follow on TikTok
• Email me anytime

Transcript

Russel Lolacher: So we're outside. I keep moving around for WorkHuman Live. My guest today had a brilliant idea for us to get out onto the grass, and so you may hear some birds chirping in the background, which is fantastic. Today, I'm with Verna Myers. I'm excited to talk about our topic today, which is about speaking boldly.

And as a comms nerd, I'm very curious as to your approach to this, especially considering some of the cultures, challenging cultures that we can sometimes find ourselves in. But before we get to any of that. Verna, I've got a question, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience?

Verna Myers: I have an experience that I'm going to try to leave some names out of.

Russel Lolacher: Please do.

Verna Myers: Okay. So I was in a leadership position and I was very unhappy. With the decisions that the executives of the company had made about the future of the company. Now, there were two leaders. There was one leader who had made this decision, who was the CEO and I.

He came to me first to tell me that he was going to make this decision because he knew I would be unhappy with it. And we had our conversation, which was a little bit of an argument and a little bit of me listening and him listening and whatever. But he ultimately made the decision he was gonna make, and in a larger meeting when he announced the decision, I asked a follow up question that wasn't about what I was upset about, but it was one of the areas that I thought would suffer as a result of this particular decision. And after I made that, after I, I posed that question, the question was answered, and then that leader turned to me and said, Verna, do you wanna tell everybody how you feel about the decision?

Now there must have been about 120 people in the room, all executives.

Russel Lolacher: Oh.

Verna Myers: And I thought to myself, okay, this is, this is, this is when you make a difference. This is when you speak the truth. And I spoke the truth as I saw it, and it was critical. And I explained why, and I also made, made it very clear that I wasn't against the people.

I was really against what I thought would be a negative outcome of the decision given where we were, said we were trying to go, the commitment we were trying to make going forward. And after I finished, like we were, it was virtual, so everybody was writing like on the comment section. Thank you, Verna, I appreciate your comments.

It was like millions of 'em. And there were ones coming to my phones and they were all right. And afterwards I thought to myself, what an incredible leader. To invite that kind of feedback in a public space. He knew exactly what I was going to say. He knew it wasn't going to be complimentary of him or the decision, and yet he wanted to make, he made space for me, which meant he was, he was recognizing he was making space for others as well. And that was kind of the most amazing experience I had in leadership, which was for a leader to be willing to throw himself under the bus so that I could say my thing. And you know, it didn't change the ultimate decision, but it put in the room more considerations that would hopefully shape, and it did.

If I look two years out from that decision, it went in the direction that I wanted it to go. And I think part of it was because I was willing to stand up and speak out and I was, and it was not held against me.

Russel Lolacher: And he would've had to have known you well enough. Because if he pulled that on an introvert.. Or somebody who just, or had, didn't feel any psychological safety, that could have gone a very different way.

Verna Myers: Yeah. Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: Very different way. But to have the confidence in the relationship with you and know you well enough that this is going to be, even though you probably felt like you were on the spot in the moment.

But he knew enough that you were confident enough and strong enough that you could take that position. That's, that's amazing.

Verna Myers: Yeah. I mean, it was the faith and you know, a lot of the, I could have told you stories about when I felt betrayed in certain situations. In this situation, after the meeting was over, I picked the phone and I called him and I said, I love you.

He was like, I love you too.

Russel Lolacher: That's amazing.

Verna Myers: And that just doesn't happen. Usually someone does something that they say they weren't gonna do or they, they change their mind and they don't give you any notice. There's just so many ways to be betrayed.

Russel Lolacher: Yes.

Verna Myers: In the workplace. And a lot of people just don't have the integrity. They, they don't hold integrity. And so you always a little suspicious. But this one was, it, it did my heart well.

Russel Lolacher: Sadly, that feels like, to your point, it's an anomaly how easy it is to go to the negative stories. 'cause I've been doing this show a while and I always ask that question and nine times outta 10, it's always from 20, 30 years ago and it's almost trauma that they've been carrying with them for decades.

Verna Myers: Yes, yes.

Russel Lolacher: But to hear those stories of how it's done well always I love asking the question, good or bad. 'cause we can always learn from everyone. It's just rare how often the good ones seem to come out. I think this lends itself real easily into our topic because you did speak boldly, you did speak truth to power with a hell of an audience, but you still did.

And so I think the first thing I need to ask, which I love defining things, it is a cornerstone of this show, is that we talk about stuff all the time, but we don't actually define what we're talking about. So in your words, how would you define speaking boldly?

Verna Myers: Speaking boldly. Lemme tell you what, it's not first.

Russel Lolacher: Okay? That's always a good way to define.

Verna Myers: It's not about standing up, putting your hands on your hips and you know, screaming at the top of your lungs in some kind of agitated way, right? I mean, often boldly is something that people think about where they're thumping their chest and they're saying, I'm right and you're wrong.

Speaking boldly is not being afraid to say out loud the things that you are feeling and thinking with the goal of communicating. See, this is the thing. A lot of people are speaking, but they really not trying to communicate. And so when I talk about speaking boldly, it's about what can you do? What kind of tools, what kind of tone, what kind of attitude and mentality can you bring to your conversation that allows the conversation to continue?

Which is really what communication is about, right. If what you're saying shuts everybody up in the room, you probably are not speaking boldly.

Russel Lolacher: How do you measure it then between a constructive and a non-constructive way of speaking boldly?

Verna Myers: So one is right. You shut up everybody. That's one way. That we to know that it's not constructive.

Or at least it hasn't invited engagement. Or you have started a war. You know, those are two areas of like non, either quiet like silence or just lots and lots of feedback that isn't quite helpful. That takes us in the wrong direction. Now when you know you are doing a pretty good job of communicating is when there's, maybe not silence, but there's a pause and then it's followed by a question or curiosity. And by the way, the other way to engage right is to learn how, when we say speaking boldly, that doesn't mean only talk, like making statements. It also means, can you figure out that question? That open-ended, non-biased question that keeps an engagement going, even when you know the person that you're talking to, you don't agree with.

Russel Lolacher: So what is a situation where you would need to speak boldly? 'cause not every situation demands it. I know people that will wait for a town hall and then vent everything that's ever bothered them in their lives to the entire organization.

And I have questions like, why are you not talking to your leader?

Verna Myers: Meanwhile, right. Meanwhile, the leader's, like I asked a million times how people felt about this, right?

Russel Lolacher: Yeah.

Verna Myers: So speaking boldly is something that really can happen in so many places and with so many different audiences. It can be one-on-one.

It can be that you have a coworker who just said something that you think is wrong. But you have, and you can see the implications of that, that opinion or that thought. Are you gonna let it fly? Just let it go? Or are you gonna say, actually, tell me why you think that. Or where does, where did you get that information?

That's an example of speaking boldly versus just going, ha ha. And then thinking, I don't wanna be with this person, and this person is not, doesn't believe, and doesn't think like me. So it could be a one-on-one thing. It could be in a team meeting. It could be when the leader says, do people have any objections to the direction we're going in?

And you have an objection, but you are worried about what to say or how to say it, and so either the leader doesn't give you enough time. So that's another thing as a leader that I, 'cause I'm so, I talk a lot and so I have to remember as a leader that that's not my role, a lot of times. I did this thing when I started working globally and I realized that I had people on my team that were... where English wasn't, their wasn't their best language as far as communication. Like they had another language that they would've been much more fluent in, or as a lot of people would say, I'm really funny in my own language. And I realized that I had people on my team who were not feeling comfortable speaking.

And so I would count 18 seconds after I asked a question. 18 seconds is like an eternity, especially for a person like me. But almost always before I got to 18, somebody found their voice. And it could be an, it could have been an introverted person who was just like, I don't know. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Or it could be, like I said, a person who was dealing with a language difference or whatever. But sometimes people are processing differently. And so I learned to wait and give people the opportunity and the space to speak boldly, and it's always a brilliant idea. I mean, I'm like, I can't remember waiting for someone and thinking that was the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Why did I spend the time? Usually it's just like, wow, I didn't think about that.

Russel Lolacher: I'm thinking on it from a preparatory standpoint too. So there are gonna be moments where you need to speak boldly and you know you're gonna have to, so you get a week, you get, you get some time to sort of prepare yourself. And others you're in the meeting, it comes up and you know you have to say something.

Verna Myers: Yes.

Russel Lolacher: So how can you prepare yourself in two very different situations where you have a lot of lead time and to get your mindset right? And others where the mindset has to be already in the right place, or you might seem like you're ranting.

Verna Myers: Yeah, if you've got a, if you've got some time to prepare, what you're doing is like your information gathering. You're figure, you're thinking who's in the room and what are they thinking and what are their questions going to be and what, what might I say that could be misconstrued and, you know, what's the context and how, what do I say first and what do I say second?

And then it's just, you just keep working it. You also try to figure out how to, not to make it be so long, and then you wanna figure out how to follow up after you've actually given your statement or post your questions if it's on the fly or it's in the moment. This is where practice counts. So I often say to people, if you wanna learn to speak boldly, you can do it in like low risk situations.

You're with your friends, you're, you know, with your family, depends on your, your family as to whether that's low risk or not. True.

Russel Lolacher: True.

Verna Myers: You can figure out how to get in the right space in different situations that aren't so scary. And if you practice that, then you're much more capable of being able to deliver that, that kind of communication when it's in the la you know, it's, it's spur of the moment. Like for example, and I do a lot of work on like bias and you know, the ways in which people are unintentionally saying things that are like making it very hard for folks to sit there in the room or whatever. And I learned to practice interrupting these kinds of biases.

And by the way, when I say interrupting, I don't mean like you're giving a lecture or a workshop, I just mean you just not letting the bias or the insult flow, right. Without being interrupted. I used to practice with like taxi drivers, so if taxi drivers are listening, it's not like I'm trying to say like, as a group, there's a problem, but I had been in, I have been in, you know, cars with people shouting at the pedestrians and saying some really terrible things, and so sometimes I would just kind of time getting out of it and paying and saying, excuse me, but I don't think we use that word anymore. And then like leaving as quickly as possible, because I'm thinking if you're gonna say that about someone else, you're gonna probably say that about me or my group or whatever.

And so let's interrupt it. And by that practicing, I mean, I can come up to a group of strangers and we're having a conversation and they say things that, I mean, obviously I don't go over, go after everything, but there are things that get said. And you're like, that's wrong. And I have learned to say things like, wow, my experience is really different.

Russel Lolacher: I like the framing of the I as well. Because people get really defensive real fast. Especially when we're talking about things around, you're kind of mentioning around the diversity side of things. Yes. Yes. Or or, or...

Verna Myers: Politics.

Russel Lolacher: Or politics are huge these days. So they're gonna be preconceived notions.

They're gonna be such baggage, and you don't know how they're handling that baggage. So to frame it is, I feel, my experience. Fellow communication nerd, right? So I hear that, that, how that could be so much more like... Less, you're putting less baggage on them.

Verna Myers: Yes.

Russel Lolacher: You're putting less shame and blame on them.

Verna Myers: Yes.

Russel Lolacher: So then they at least have a moment to go, oh, it's an other, it's something us together can sort of talk about.

Verna Myers: Exactly. And also it's about having a few statements in your toolkit, right? So I have a couple of statements that will help me speak boldly. One is, what do you mean? Because sometimes you're just wrong about what someone means, and now you've gotten all huffy and you know you're going on your soapbox and you do whatever.

And that's not what they were talking about. Right? And so I often ask, what do you mean? Sometimes it makes, it rarely makes it worse. It can make it worse. 'cause then they're like doubling down on something that you really think is bad. Which isn't great, but it just gives space and opportunity. But it's also about curiosity, like are you really interested in what people think or what they mean? Because when you're sincere about it, then people kind of open. And when people open, then their hearts are kind of more open. Their minds are more open. And then you can kind of arrive at a conclusion together, and it may not be that you end up agreeing.

But you understand each other differently and, and, and often better. You're like, oh, I can see why that person is coming from that point of view. Yeah, so that's one. Also, I will say you have to manage your emotions. And I can't tell you how many folks who, I'm just like you, I don't know where we go, but this, I cannot help you 'cause you have not figured out how to manage your emotions. You are like yelling and screaming and you're, or you're pouting or you're being, you know...

Russel Lolacher: Righteousness can get in there as well.

Verna Myers: Vengeful. Yeah, yeah. Or, and you're like, that's not necessary. We don't have to go there. But I understand that people are tender about a lot of things, so also I believe compassion is part of speaking boldly.

Where you're just like before deciding this is the worst person. This leader will never understand. This co-worker, no wonder they're like this. They come from this, whatever. All of the stuff that we tell ourselves that make us less interested in being curious in another human being, we have to learn to manage that talk, even overlook that talk, and then really come up with a leaning toward the person instead of a way.

Russel Lolacher: Being overly emotional, being self-aware enough to know you're being overly emotional, is there situations maybe besides that where you shouldn't speak boldly?

Verna Myers: Yes, I am certain there is, I make choices, definitely, and I, I make choices about is this the right time?

Is this the right audience? Am I okay? Am I coming from a spirit of compassion or am I agitated, frustrated, angry, and therefore it's not gonna come out right? So I often say to people, take a beat. You know, like, because you can go back, you can go pick up a conversation. You could be like, you know what?

Remember we were at dinner the other night and that came up and I didn't know exactly what to say, but then I was thinking about it. So I would wonder if we could talk about it a little bit more, right? Because I wanted to share some of the things that came up for me. You can do that. You can go to someone's office.

Hey, I think I stepped in it today. I didn't mean to do that, but I noticed it cut off all conversations. So I really want to hear what your thoughts are like. There are ways to come back and so if you can't do it right away, it right away helps, because if you got a audience, it means you don't have to go to all of that audience instead of say the same thing, but it a lot of times where it just isn't gonna work.

You, you are speaking in front of a person, you know, they don't have their emotional control. You know, they're gonna use it against you, you know, whatever. So it may not make a di may not make sense, but don't drop it, drop it. Try to find other opportunities.

Russel Lolacher: I love that you integrated vulnerability in there as well. Is that just sort of like, Hey, let's talk about this thing? Yeah, more like I, I had a moment. I wasn't prepared to talk to you yet. I had to do some thinking about that as well. And sometimes I think a lot of us as communicators have to understand that that might not be the right audience either.

Just 'cause you're super angry or passionate about a thing that they just said, they still might not be the right person to talk to. Their superior could be, their colleague could be. Or you're not the right messenger for it. That is also a big piece is they need to hear that, but they don't need to hear it from you based on existing relationships.

Verna Myers: Yes. Yes, I, that's such a great point because you know, a lot of times you may need a person to help you or support you, or often I say to people, and this is often for folks who are, feel like they don't have a lot of power in the dynamic, right? And they're like, no way. I can't say anything. I can't do anything.

Is there a person you could talk to that you feel fairly certain would not use it against you and that you could brainstorm with and or who could be the person who does the speaking or have a suggestion about how you would go about it and who else you would bring in? You know, the thing is, is that with, with leaders in particular, I know that I used to say this to my team all the time.

I much prefer you come to me. But if I'm doing something that is making it seem like it's not a good idea to come to me, lemme know that too, because I don't want to get some third party coming and saying, you really upset, blah, blah, blah. Because it just feels like, I thought we were closer than I thought we had, you know?

But one does need to examine, like what messaging are you sending.

Russel Lolacher: And it informs you as a leader going, if they have to go to somebody else, yeah. To tell me then what am I not doing exactly to make them feel like they can be safe. I often say that people talk about an open door policy. I'm like, the least important thing in that sentence is the door.

Verna Myers: Yeah, exactly.

Russel Lolacher: The door doesn't matter. It's do people feel safe to walk in? Regardless of the door.

Can't believe we ran outta time. So I'm just gonna wrap it up with one question. If somebody's maybe a little more on the timid side or they're not a communications. There's tons of people I know in the technical sector who are not. This is just not their, their go-to. It's not their strength.

What would you recommend to somebody in that space who's trying to be a better communicator in the realm of truth to power? Speaking boldly, where would you recommend they start?

Verna Myers: I think you start with the fact that as a human being, you have the capacity to gain new skills. I mean, we all have what feels comfortable.

We all have like what our personality is and when we feel like most secure, but that doesn't mean we don't add new skills to our toolkit, especially once we realize it's gonna help us. So I would say, first of all, even though you may be introverted, that does not mean that you can't actually speak boldly.

Now, you won't be necessarily standing up in the town square. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. But you can have a one-on-one conversation. You know how to do that. You can have a you can go to a person who you think models what you would like to see from this other person and say, how can I model this or tell me how I might share this information in a way that, and you can say this like, I'm an introverted person.

I'm not really sure how this works, but if you could help me, I see that you are not an introverted person. People, women actually come up to me often, and they may be from like countries where women culturally are not given permission to really be forthright. Or they're operating in a culture that's more direct and they're indirect.

They have often come to me and like, I wanna do what you just did. How do I do that? And mostly it's telling them that there's a unique version of this that will work for you, and the work is to find a number of pieces of information. So, you know, there's so many good books, there's so many good videos. There's so many, you know, good articles that you can read and then figure out which thing fits best for you.

Russel Lolacher: Thanks, Verna..

Verna Myers: Thank you.

Russel Lolacher: That's it. We're done.

Verna Myers: Awesome.