How to deal with people who dominate the conversation? I have dealt with this so much in my work. I've learned some really clever techniques, I've made some stumbles, blunders and failures and in this video, I'm going to show you 3 of my favorite methods for.
. . in the gentlest, most loving possible way, quieting people down who tend to dominate conversation to create space for all voices to be heard.
This is really good if you have any interest in creating more psychologically safe and inclusive environments in your own educational leadership group context. I'm Chad Littlefield, let's get into it. A big part of my past work experience had led me to creating We and Me, these video tutorials, being invited to speak and facilitate workshops all around the country, was working with this group called World In Conversation where my job was to sit in over 500 dialogues and lead conversations with groups of 6 to 10 people on topics that were fairly contentious, race relations, long-term conflict, gender, politics etc.
Very frequently, somebody would really dominate those conversations and it might be, you know, they might not have bad intentions, they might just like really love to talk and they love to hear the sound of their own voice or they're really passionate about a particular topic and they're just constantly sharing, which is, it's not always bad, but it is bad when it suppresses other voices. To be a little bit vulnerable in this moment, like, I love to share, love to talk and so I'm recognizing that even as I'm recording this video sometimes, I am the monopolizer. And so, I've learned through some deep empathy how to really re-guide and direct traffic toward all voices in a room, not just the monopolizer, not just the person who dominates a conversation.
I'm gonna call my first strategy Flip the Roles. This is so easy to do and it is so powerful. All I do in a group.
. . so let's say we're having a conversation, it could be virtual could be in-person, and noticing that somebody's really dominating the conversation and I'm about to ask for people to participate or share, ask people's perspective, all I'm gonna do is say, "Hey, this time when I ask you the question 'what struck you about those conversations?
' or 'what struck you about that last meeting? ' or 'what do you think about this? '" When I'm about to do that, right before I ask that question, I say, "If you typically are the first person to speak or one of the first 3 people to speak, hold off and be like the 8th person to speak and it's possible you might not get a chance to speak this time, but I'd love to hear some of the voices that don't always get heard.
" And so, did you see what I did there? People who talk a lot, know they talk a lot, and so I just said flip the roles. I didn't say, "We don't want to hear from you," I said, "We'd love to hear from you, but not in a way of like hey if you haven't spoken yet, like hey, like Sandra and Mark and Jamal, I haven't heard from either of the 3 of you, can you like figure this out and share something," right?
No, I'm not putting them on the spot. I'm inviting loud people to be quieter by saying that I'd love to hear from other people. That simple flip the role is so powerful.
Now, related to that is a technique that I would call Creating Space, and like space, like outer space, it's silent. And sometimes if you leave just a little bit of silence, it creates enough of a moment for someone who tends to be a little bit more hesitant to share to actually share. And so, one of the ways that I create space is by saying, you know, and I really think that the best way to avoid awkward silence is to create productive silence, and so one of the ways that I would create space with a group is just to say, "Hey, I'm going to ask you a question.
I'd love to get all of your responses. If you tend to be the first person to speak, hold off and maybe be the 3rd, 4th or 5th person to speak because I'd love to hear from everybody in the group. I'm going to ask you this question and then I would love to just pause in total silence for 5 seconds to wait for everybody to think of their own response before we popcorn out a handful of responses.
" And then I share and in that 5 seconds, you've created enough space for the people that are a little bit more hesitant to say, "Okay, I think this is what I want to say," and they jump in, right? And even if no one shares in that 5 seconds, let that time sit. It is such a good exercise for monopolizers to just sit there and bear through silence and also if it gets really bad, I might reflect back to the monopolizers that they're like, "Well, there's so much silence, I just, I had to jump in and say something.
" I might reflect back to them and was like, "It was actually only 4 seconds of quiet and so let's do this one more time and let's just take 10 seconds of total silence and get everybody a proper chance to think. " Not everybody gets ready to speak as quickly as some. The 2nd technique that I'm going to share with you is inviting you to change the mechanics.
If there's somebody monopolizing conversation or dominating a conversation, it might be because of them, but it also might because of your structure. If you're meeting in a large group of 12 people, you're breaking Amazon's 2 pizza rule which is never have more people at a meeting than 2 pizzas can feed. And so, that structure would be lousy.
If there's too many cooks in the kitchen, you're just asking for somebody to dominate and take over and asking for everybody else to just sit into the role of consumer. And so, when I say "change the mechanics," what I mean by that is split out into groups of 3 to have discussions and then come back and report out what you heard other people in your group say, not what you said. Because when you have people report out what other people said, the monopolizers don't go quite as crazy with other people's words as with their own.
Whereas if you are asking for their opinion, they'll give you that for days on days. 3rd technique here, and we're starting to get down to the wire, we're starting to get down to the place where like if the first 2 ideas or techniques didn't work, the 2nd one is a little bit more of a direct approach, it's very effective, there's a a really gentle kind way to do it and then there's a blunt way that is like kind of my last ditch. Not last ditch effort, it's my strategic way and this is steering into the curve.
So, if you're not familiar with that metaphor, if you're in a car and it's spinning out of control on icy roads or something around a curve, you want to steer into the curve, which is very counterintuitive, right? You're actually going to what feels like toward danger to get yourself realigned. And if that metaphor's not working for you, pointing out the elephant in the room is this idea.
And so, just actually calling out the dynamic privately first. So,, this is a gentle loving way to. .
. if you notice somebody's like really dominating every conversation, to pull somebody aside and use technique number 1 in private one-on-one with the person dominating. And so, actually look at them and say, "Hey, what I'd love for you to do.
. . I'm loving all your contributions and I'm recognizing that your contributions are heavier than other people's and I want to make space for other people's voices.
And so, can you aim to just like bear through a little bit of awkward silence to give space for other people to share for the rest of our day or for the rest of our session etc. ? " That could be done if you have some trust and rapport with them, that can be done in direct message over Zoom, that could be done in a side conversation on a break.
You choose how to do that, but that private check-in, steering to the curve and just pointing out the dynamic because guess what? You're not going to surprise them. It's like, I once worked.
. . I did a this whole team development program with a group of students who were blind and I was like, "Oh my gosh like I'm not blind, this is so not normal.
" And I realized like they taught me, "Oh, this is totally normal for them. " Like me pointing out that they're blind or that they're visually impaired is not news to them. So, pointing out to somebody who's dominating a conversation that they're dominating a conversation isn't news to them, right?
You're not going to shock them, you're not going to like, make them enrage, they're not going to spin off and go crazy because you shared that. And the 2nd way to steer into the curve or point at the elephant in the room is to do that publicly in front of the group and I'd be really mindful of this and I'll share an example of how I did this recently. It was a bit of a risk.
So, I was in a workshop and it was about 80% women and 4 guys, all of them were white and there were a handful of people color on the call as well. I was noticing that me and Will who were facilitating, my co-founder, were talking a bunch and then this one other person who was also a white guy was talking a bunch and what came to me in that moment when he went to speak, and he was kind of dominating the conversation a little bit, not a bad way. It was great contributions, but his voice was heavier and I said, and he wouldn't mind me sharing this, his name's Jason.
I just said, "Hey, Jason. Quick pause. I recognize we're playing white guy ping pong right now.
I'd love to create some space to hear other voices in the group. " After that conversation I had multiple individuals message me and say, "Oh my gosh. I never heard a white guy call out other white guys for playing white guy ping pong like that, that was so awesome.
I felt so heard and seen and it allowed and created a space for my voice. " And so, that's an example of how I might publicly acknowledge that in also a really loving way though. If you love creating awesome conversations, you would love this book and all the tools that we have available for free digital download in the link below I'm Chad Littlefield, have an awesome day.
