How to stop feeling embarrassed at work

Imagine this: You’re working for a new company and for the first few weeks, you listen a lot and don’t say much to anyone. Then, at an all-hands meeting, you are asked to say a few words. You start out with a short joke, and it immediately falls flat. You feel your cheeks flush and stare at the floor in embarrassment, and ultimately find it hard to continue speaking.

What you experience in that moment is one of the several inter-related negative emotions that people experience after doing something wrong. These are: shame, guilt, and embarrassment. Shame and guilt are stronger emotions than embarrassment, and generally involve actions that have a strong moral component. Embarrassment is usually experienced as a result of public situations. It reflects a feeling that you are being judged negatively.

Even though it feels bad in the moment, there can be a lot of value in embarrassment. Success at work is affected by how well you do your job, but it’s also influenced by what other people think of you. An emotion that makes you more sensitive to the reactions other people have can help you to be aware of things you have done that may have lowered your standing in the group. So, if you do something every once in a while that leads to embarrassment, that’s healthy.

However, there are two signals that embarrassment is not helping you. First, if you find yourself feeling embarrassed in lots of situations, you need to recalibrate. Second, if you shy away from contributing anything in group situations because you’re afraid you will be embarrassed, that’s also a problem.

If you want to reduce your feelings of embarrassment, there are three things you can do.

Phone a friend

Your feeling of embarrassment is a reflection of your belief about how your actions are being perceived by others. But you are often a poor judge of how other people see you. You believe that all of your insecurities and limitations are visible to everyone. Luckily, they are not. 

The best way to know how other people are evaluating your actions is to ask. Start by finding a colleague you get along with. Ask them to give you feedback on things you have said in group meetings. Chances are, you’ll discover that they think you make important contributions and that anxieties about the way you phrased something or small mistakes you made are overblown.

Learning to see yourself as others actually see you—rather than how you fear that they see you—can give you more confidence moving forward.

Thicken your skin

Of course, every once in a while you may say or do something that does lead to a negative reaction by others. In fact, the higher up you move in the food chain at work, the more likely it is that there will be some other folks at work who just don’t like you or don’t like an action you have taken.

One of the Big Five personality characteristics is agreeableness, which reflects your motivation to be liked by others. If you happen to be highly agreeable, then knowing that there are people out there who don’t like you and are judging you harshly can be difficult and embarrassing.

You may need to practice accepting that you will do a few things that others will judge negatively. There are two steps to arriving at this acceptance. First, emotions create energy that leads you to want to take actions. When you’re embarrassed, you will either spend a lot of time thinking about what you did wrong or you will try to reach out to others to change the way they are thinking about you.

If your action is one you probably ought not really be embarrassed about, then you have to resist the urge to reach out to others. You also need to calm the tendency to ruminate about the action. Doing a healthy distracting thing like exercising can help. Engaging in mindfulness meditation techniques can also be effective for quieting these thoughts.

Then, you need be aware of the actual consequences of your action. Chances are, there won’t be any long-term impact of something you did that you were embarrassed about. That will help you to recalibrate when you should be embarrassed and when you just did something that annoyed other people in the moment.

Do the actual cost-benefit calculation

More generally, when you stop yourself from acting out of fear of embarrassment, you need to think about the benefits of the action you are going to take. Then compare that to the cost of inaction that avoids embarrassment.

In some situations, the fear of embarrassment wins. If you’re thinking of making a risqué joke at work, the benefits of people finding it humorous are small. The costs of failure are high. So, you should probably skip the joke.

Often, though, the calculation favors action. If you have been asked to give a talk to the group, then there are lots of benefits to success. You will get credit for the ideas you present. You will be more visible to decision-makers who may keep you in mind later for additional work or a promotion. And the costs of giving a mediocre talk are small. You may be worried about embarrassment, but in general people just forget a poorly delivered talk rather than holding it against someone forever.

Finally, even if you do overcome feelings of embarrassment that hold you back, that doesn’t mean that you should continue to learn from mistakes. Definitely give that talk at work. But, if it goes badly, then get some advice from a colleague and find ways to give better talks in the future.