Speak before you think.

—Links—

Career Coaching: https://www.mrjonathanoffice.com/career-coaching 

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Read my letters: https://mrjonathanoffice.substack.com/ 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Day Day Up, the weekly podcast for Chinese professionals navigating the Western workplace. I'm Jonathan, let's get into it. You finally have something to say, but you're a step too slow, and the meeting has already moved on. Or worse, you have something to say. And someone else says the exact same thing seconds before you. And worst of all, you get called on to speak, all eyes on you, and you freeze. Let's be real. We Chinese are at a disadvantage in meetings compared to our Western coworkers. One obvious reason is that English is our second language, but there's a cultural reason too. Growing up in the Chinese education system, most of us simply never got many chances to speak. I would know, because as a CBC in Canada, I grew up with those chances all around me. I majored in business administration, and in my program, nobody cared much about assignments. Instead, we were graded on contribution. It came down to a simple formula. The number of times you spoke in class multiplied by the quality of what you said, which means if you never spoke, your score was zero. Guess what happens when the incentives are set to encourage speaking? Whenever the professor asked a question, there was none of the awkward silence of a Chinese classroom. Hands shot up everywhere, a swarm of voices competing to be heard. That's where I learned one of the most important lessons of my career. The opportunity to speak is a gift that you have to fight for. So I raised my hand for every single question the professor asked. Did I always have something to say? No. Was it an astonishingly accurate representation of the real workplace? Absolutely. In a crowd of coworkers fighting for attention, sometimes your best move is to raise your hand first and then figure out what you want to say. And that's the very first level I want you to break through. Level one, just speak. What's Newton's first law? Objects at rest stay at rest. Objects in motion stay in motion. When you freeze, your inertia builds, and so does the pressure. Did they notice? Do I look dumb right now? The next thing I say had better be brilliant. Forget that. Your only goal at this stage is simple. Just speak. Whenever you're frozen, give yourself three seconds, take a deep breath, one to two, three. Go. And the easiest thing to say at this stage is just simply repeating the question back. Say your director asks you in a meeting, why is churn higher than expected? All eyes on you, that's okay. Just speak. Why is churn higher than we expected? First, I'll collect my thoughts. Zero thinking required, but it sets your brain in motion and buys you seconds to think. Level two, speak with structure. Now that you break out the brain freezing, you need to find the actual things to say. We don't want to overload your brain at this moment, so just do these two things. First, zoom out. Say the main thing is and finish the sentence. No pressure here. You're looking for the first point to cross your mind, not the best point. Bring one clear idea into focus in one sentence. Next, zoom in. Say, for example, draw and give exactly one. If you're struggling, pick between a number, like a statistic or metric, a moment, like a story, or a name, like a person, tool, or place, that's it. Two sentences can bring a main point to hyperfocus. Like this. The main thing is we're missing data from web users. For example, web users tend to be more engaged, so not having their data may make our churn look higher than it actually is. Is that the complete answer? No. Is it enough to stay in the discussion and contribute something meaningful? Absolutely. Level three, speak with influence levels one and two get you back into the conversation. Once you're comfortable with doing them repeatedly, you can start incorporating level three. This is where you start to lead the conversation. Most questions have another question behind them, one that the ask is too polite, scared, or even too unaware to say in the open. So ask yourself, what do they actually want from this answer? Almost always it's one of three things. A worry, do I need to be concerned? A decision, what should we do? An understanding, how does this work? If you can tell which one it is, aim your answer at it. If you can't tell, check your guess out loud. It sounds like we're concerned that churn is actually getting worse. Is that right? Then instead of starting with the data, start with the worry. The main thing is, I don't believe churn is actually rising. For example, we're missing data from web users who tend to be more engaged, so our churn looks worse than it really is. I can validate that by end of week. So here's my challenge for you. This week, raise your hand before you know what you're going to say. Because the chance to speak with everyone listening, it's a prize. And you've spent enough years watching someone else take it. Alright, that's your growth tip for this week. Now let's take a melon break. The bench player who out memed the GOAT. If you're an NBA fan like me, chances are you've been keeping an eye on the WNBA, Women's National Basketball Association, as well. And this month, the whole internet did the same, for the silliest possible reason. During a June 27th game, Sophie Cunningham stood there and pointed at a player on the other team, silently for 22 straight seconds. On her podcast, she admitted it was the stupidest thing she'd ever done, but she couldn't stop because she could see it was driving the other player crazy. And the internet lost it. One clip alone racked up over 32 million views in a week. It spread across TikTok, Instagram, and X as a full-blown reaction meme with compilations, remixes, people captioning it for every calling someone out without a word moment in their lives. It got so big, the White House's own account jumped into riff on it. 22 seconds of a role player pointing has become one of the biggest memes of 2026. But you know what? I can't stop thinking about. Sophie Cunningham's teammate is Caitlin Clark, a generational basketball player who everyone's calling the goat of women's basketball. Caitlin Clark is the one rewriting the record books. And yet it's Sophie, a bench player, getting the memes, the love, the attention. You know what that reminds me about? Greatness earns respect, but personality earns hearts. You can be the most talented person in the building and still watch the room light up for the one who's simply the most fun to be around. And if you don't like that, then you're simply missing the point. Here's how you can use this topic in small talk next week with coworkers. Did you see the WNBA player who's going viral? She just stood there pointing at someone for 22 seconds, and apparently everyone loved it. Turns out she only kept going because it was annoying the other player. I've been laughing about it all week. With your boss. Funny thing in the WNBA right now, on the same team, you have a generational talent, but it's her role player teammate going viral for a silly moment. It reminds me that value and visibility don't always go hand in hand. Of course, the goal is always to have both.