How to Be a Leader When You Have Social Anxiety

Posted on July 01, 2021 by Katy Morin, One of Thousands of Health and Fitness Coaches on Noomii.

About 10 years ago, my goal in life was to find a job where I could work from home, preferably in my pajamas, and where I didn’t have to talk to anyone. At that time, my social anxiety was so bad that I wanted to avoid all contact with people. Because I avoided social situations, I became worse at socializing. Because I was bad at socializing it gave me more anxiety. I was caught in the vicious cycle of anxiety and depression for most of my life. Before joining Toastmasters, I had accepted the fact that I would never go far in life because anxiety was holding me back from doing what I really wanted to do.

Growing as a leader in Toastmasters
When I joined Toastmasters, I hated it. It made my anxiety worse at the beginning. After 4 months, a few colleagues in my club convinced me to take a leadership role. I became VP-Education. This role really helped me grow as a leader and communicator because I had to talk to people. Don’t get me wrong, I love talking to people, I just didn’t know how to talk to people.

After one year of being VP-Education, my mentor and the President of the club asked me to take his place as President. At this point I was growing more comfortable in the club setting, even though I didn’t see myself as a leader I knew that it was the next step I needed to make to be able to get rid of my social anxiety.

I was president of the club for a six-month term. It was a great but challenging experience for me and I learned a lot about myself.

Leading a team
It was my first time leading a team, but since I was already part of the executive team for a year I had seen how the past President had led the team which gave me ideas on how I wanted to lead my team.
As someone with social anxiety, all my life I would always try to find a way to do what I wanted to do without having to rely on other people or asking for help. Leading the team made me realize that I could not continue with this avoidance strategy. Even though I would have wanted to do everything myself that was not possible and I needed to trust and rely on the team to accomplish our goals.

Lead by example
The most important quality as a leader for me was to lead by example. I invested a lot of my time to make sure that the members of the club had the best experience in the club and I was there to take roles at each meeting. I went to other clubs with a member of my team. To show our support for one of our members, we surprised her when she was giving a speech in another club.

Consensus decision-making
It was important to me that everyone in the team felt comfortable sharing their ideas. When we made a decision as a team I wanted to rely on consensus. I never wanted to make a decision that went against the rest of the team.
I also realized that it’s important to make decisions that you are comfortable with and not because you want to make everyone happy. No matter what decision you make, some people are not going to agree with you, so it is necessary to look at every aspect of the problem and seek the opinion of everyone before committing to one decision.
I already knew that I like working in collaboration with a team, but it made me realize I don’t like telling people what to do. Well, there goes my dream of being the president of a big corporation. I am used to being autonomous and most of the time I don’t need people to tell me what to do, so having to tell people what to do was not something that I enjoyed.

Asking for feedback
Something that I would recommend to everyone, is to ask for feedback whenever you can. There’s always something that we can work on to become a better leader.
When I asked my colleagues what they thought of me as a president, some of my strong points according to them was that I was always available for them and that we can work as a team to overcome our challenges.

Some things that I could improve was to be quicker to make a decision, be more assertive, and more daring in my actions. That is something that I had to work on because I was such a perfectionist.
Communication

Probably a few names come to your mind when you think of a good communicator. Warren Buffett is the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. Most people who hear him speak today would not guess that he was a very shy young man. He used the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” to overcome his more shy and reserved self. He tells young people that their most valuable asset is investing in themselves.

Before joining Toastmasters, I would have described my style of communication as ‘’How can I say what I want to say with as few words as possible’’.
I would say that my predominant style was analytical. I like when everything is well organized. I like to use logic instead of emotions, but people kept telling me that I needed to show more emotions. Emotions, ew, what are those? One of my colleagues even told me that he never knew if I was happy or mad. I guess I needed to work on that.
Toastmasters has really helped me be more confident in my communication style. I was able to use more emotions in my speeches and find my unique style of communication after experimenting and doing one speech a month for the last 3 years.

Humility
It is important to know that you do not know everything as a leader and do not have all the answers. Humility enables you to admit your mistakes and weaknesses and to be more open to other opinions.

Learn to be a leader
Just a few years ago, I thought that leaders were born this way and that I could never be a leader. I was wrong, nobody is born a leader and everyone has the possibility to become one. On this road, I had to get so far away from my comfort zone. I had to set myself goals in order to stop procrastinating. It was not easy, there were many times where I wanted to quit everything, but I persevered and I am so grateful for the opportunity that I had to lead a team. I learned so much about leadership and teamwork. The kindness and support of everyone in my club helped me realize that I can do anything that I want in my life. If I can do it, then anyone can do it.

What are you waiting for? Nobody’s going to do it for you.