Why Am I Talking? When One Voice Fills the Room

russellsmichalak

11 minutes ago

4 min read

Every organization has at least one. The person who arrives at a meeting with genuinely good ideas, who cares about getting things right, and who, without quite meaning to, ends up talking for most of the hour. They are not malicious. Sometimes they are among the most capable people in the room. But the effect on everyone else is the same regardless of intent: less room to think out loud, less room to disagree, and eventually, less reason to show up at all.

I have experienced this dynamic frequently over the years, in library and institutional leadership meetings, in cross-functional committees, and in my own moments of catching myself talking longer than the topic warranted. The research on this is fairly consistent. Leigh Plunkett Tost and colleagues at the University of Michigan, Harvard, and Duke found that when people in formal positions of authority talk a great deal in a group, the rest of the team perceives them as dominating the conversation, and group performance suffers as a result (Tost et al., as reported by the Association for Psychological Science, 2013). Interestingly, the same talkativeness from someone without formal authority does not produce the same effect, because peers naturally push back. Authority changes the physics of the room. When the dominant voice also has positional power, silence from everyone else is not agreement. It is often just the path of least resistance.

That is the real cost of meeting dominance. It is not simply that other people get less airtime. Good ideas quietly stop arriving. Someone who has tried twice to add a thought and been talked over will, on the third occasion, decide it is not worth the effort. Given the choice, they may stop attending altogether, or attend and mentally check out, contributing nothing and absorbing little. The organization loses access to perspectives it needs, and it often does not notice the loss, because withdrawal is quiet. Nobody files a complaint about being talked over. They just go quiet, or they stop coming.

What colleagues in the room can do

If you are not the one running the meeting, interrupting a colleague, especially a senior one, can feel risky. It does not have to be confrontational. A few approaches that tend to work well:

Use a bridging phrase rather than a correction. Something like, "That's a helpful point, and I want to build on it," or "Picking up on what you just said," lets you take the floor without implying the other person overstepped.
Redirect toward someone else by name. "I'd like to hear what Maria thinks about this before we move on" does two things at once: it interrupts gracefully, and it signals to the quieter person that their input is expected, not just welcome.
Use time and structure as cover. "We have about ten minutes left and three more items, so let me pause here and come back to you if there's time," relies on the clock rather than on judgment, which makes it easier to say and easier to hear.
Ask a direct, narrow question. Open-ended interruptions can turn into another monologue. A specific question, such as "What would that look like for the timeline we discussed last week?", tends to produce a shorter, more focused answer.
If it is a recurring pattern, raise it outside the meeting. A private, low-stakes conversation, framed around shared goals rather than personal criticism, is usually more effective than trying to manage the dynamic live, in front of the group.

None of these require confrontation. They require a plan, and a willingness to use it more than once, since one polite interruption rarely changes an ingrained habit.

What the person who dominates meetings can do

Most people who talk too much in meetings are not trying to crowd anyone out. They are enthusiastic, thinking out loud, or they have simply never received reliable feedback that the pattern exists. A few practices can help build that self-awareness.

The simplest is WAIT, an acronym for "Why Am I Talking?" Before adding a comment, especially a second or third one on the same topic, the question forces a brief pause: does this genuinely move the conversation forward, or am I filling space because I am comfortable filling space? Jo Ilfeld describes WAIT as a way to keep contributions purposeful and stay aware of how much room one takes up relative to others (Ilfeld, 2024). It is a small habit, but it works because it interrupts the impulse before the words do.

A few other practices pair well with it. Counting contributions, literally noticing how many times you have spoken versus how many times a colleague has, can be a useful gut check. Deliberately asking a question and then waiting through the silence, rather than filling it, gives others room to respond; the instinct to rescue an awkward pause is exactly what you need to resist. And after a meeting, it is worth asking a trusted colleague directly: did I leave enough space today? Most people will not volunteer that feedback unprompted, but they will usually answer honestly if asked.

None of this is about talking less for its own sake. It is about making sure the room reflects the thinking of everyone in it, not just the person most comfortable speaking first and longest. Good ideas do not sort themselves by seniority or confidence. They show up in people who need an actual opening to say them out loud. Creating that opening, whether you are the one who talks too much or the one trying to get a word in, is a small act with an outsized effect on whether a team functions as a team at all.

Why Am I Talking? When One Voice Fills the Room

What colleagues in the room can do

What the person who dominates meetings can do

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