Overcoming Social Anxiety in the Workplace

By Amanda Cota, Senior Associate of R&D

Over the past two years, I’ve built an impressive collection of eclectic earrings. At the surface level, it is fun to wear goofy things like rubber duckies and Lego lightsabers. On a deeper level, it helps me have something to talk to people about and it is almost always something clients and people I meet, remember.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve had horrible social anxiety. I suffered stomachaches at the thought of presentations or speaking in front of even a small group of people. A simple solution of wearing something goofy, that I knew people would comment on, created an icebreaker that made me feel more comfortable talking to people; especially about myself. Choosing to wear something loud forced me to step out of the corner that I often put myself in during social interactions. It encouraged conversations to start on a not-so-serious note and was enough to give me the confidence I needed to get a presentation done, teach a class, or even communicate a design idea to a client.

Now, wearing statement pieces has become a part of my personality; I almost never go out without a pair of funky earrings. During Innovation Boot Camp, I planned out earrings that matched the theme or technology of the day. I found that students were excited to come in every morning and see what the earrings of the day were and try to guess what the tech was we were about to teach. Even with our military friends, my earrings always get a laugh or smile out of them, which breaks down the walls of rank and formality often found within the organization.

            As a woman in a technical field, being able to speak confidently and intelligently in room often filled with men is a valuable skill to learn and a fear that absolutely must be overcome to be successful. In my work, although some confidence comes from experience, my earrings let me get my voice out there at the beginning of meetings so that it is not as daunting to present ideas or speak my opinion.

Skills like this are not taught or emphasized in engineering classes, just like most applicable technical skills that are touched upon in the classroom, aren’t truly understood until applied in the field. Learning confidence is as important as learning to CAD, design, solder, fabricate, or program. Knowing this would have helped me so much in college. I often let myself get pushed into a corner in group settings, didn’t advocate to have more important roles in projects, and allowed older, misogynistic professors to mansplain to me during office hours or presentations. Even though I excelled in college, when I got into the professional field, I realized the gap in my education wasn’t technical but personal.

This wasn’t the reason I began collecting eclectic earrings (I’m a huge geek!), but it certainly pushed me to become the woman I ultimately wanted to portray to the world. I wanted to have a voice, but I needed to find my way into conversation that didn’t outright force me to be super assertive in every conversation. Thankfully, having an easy talking point nurtured some sense of assertiveness into my personality, and now I find it much easier to jump in or even take charge of conversations as needed.

My initial fear of speaking up will always be present, but finding a unique and silly way to express myself allowed me to overcome enough of that fear to be a productive, confident, and more useful engineer and person in general.

A look at Amanda’s collection of statement earrings!