Advanced Leadership Communication: Manage the Rambler

How do you help that person who can't stop talking? Imagine a deep expert you work with who feels misunderstood. When you ask a question, the person speaks for 7 minutes straight. You try interrupting, and they say, "let me finish." The rest of you are forced out of politeness to be quiet and no one is listening.

How to intervene when things go wrong.

Let’s assume you’ve done all the preventative tools. You...

1. Sent agenda in advance

2. Spoke to the ramblers upfront about the goals of the meeting

3. Set ground rules, clarified outcomes, and the scope of the meeting with all participants

4. Limited the size of the audience to keep it manageable

5. Assigned a colleague to help you manage a known disrupter

6. Consolidated the known objections or hot buttons into concise orderly buckets for you to represent to the room upfront vs. allowing those most upset to share.

Yet, someone is still going off-topic, negative, or taking too much airtime.

1. The first time a person speaks for more than 2 minutes, interrupt them with a question.

2. The second time a person speaks for more than 2 minutes, remind them of the ground rules.
   

3. Pull your eye contact toward the other people in the meeting who have not shared yet. Call on them by name.
   

Great phrases:

1. I am hearing a lot about alignment on this topic. Before we move on to <next topic>,

is there anything further we need to discuss on x? pause and then move on

2. There have been obstacles. Wouldn’t you agree that we have made some progress?

3. Betsy thinks this idea won’t fly. What do the rest of you think?

4. Mike, you’re absolutely right. Is it ok if we hold that topic for after lunch?

5. We will go into any level of detail on that topic when we get to Q&A. Is that ok?

6. Let’s pause for a moment here and acknowledge the time. We have 30 minutes left

and three more topics. (Look at the decision maker or a person you want to talk)

Should we stay on this topic or move on to <insert topic>?

7. Caution the group. The goal of this part of the meeting is to hear all the options,

and we are starting to grab onto a position. Let’s move off of this point for a moment

Neil and we can return after we feel we have grabbed all the options.

8. Carol is very passionate about this topic. Thank you for being so open and candid.

Let’s hear from a few others and then work on synthesizing some options to ponder.

How about you, Mike? What thoughts do you have?

9. We’ve just had two strong ideas emerge. Let’s pause and acknowledge the great

thing that just happened. This is a safe place to share different viewpoints and it is

encouraged. Does anyone see a third idea? Let’s grab another idea or two before we

dig into these.

10. Mike, thank you for sharing that. As I was listening, I couldn’t help worrying that people

in this room may feel bad about the project. Is it fair to say that you know everyone was

doing their best with the resources and knowledge available at that time, and that

there is no group to be blamed in this?

Great facilitation tools:

1. Use Your Eyes: Look at a person you want to talk to. Don’t look at the ramblers.

2. Use People’s Names: Call on the quiet people. Steer discussion with names. Help the

rambler(s) feel heard by using their names.

3. Match & Lead: Agree with a portion of what the negative person says before shifting

to a question or ask for other opinions

4. Give equal weight to positive and negative views. If people are only being positive,

others will be afraid to share concerns. If people are only being negative, the meeting

can turn into complaints, and everyone feeling defeated. Look for ways to keep the

meeting balanced.

5. Be open: Remind people that we value all ideas in the room and have a learning

mindset.

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