{"id":133,"date":"2011-07-07T08:59:24","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T08:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjaminmitchell.wordpress.com\/2011\/07\/07\/handling-a-team-member-who-talks-too-much\/"},"modified":"2011-07-07T08:59:24","modified_gmt":"2011-07-07T08:59:24","slug":"handling-a-team-member-who-talks-too-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/handling-a-team-member-who-talks-too-much\/","title":{"rendered":"Handling a team member who “talks too much”"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do you handle a situation as a team manager or coach where one member of the team seems to dominate the conversation? The scenario below is based on several experiences where team members think \u201cthat person\u2019s talking rubbish!\u201d but don\u2019t know how to address it. This blog shows how the Ladder of Inference<\/a> can be used to deal with these  difficult or complex issues productively.<\/p>\n

\"listen <\/p>\n

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Mike, the Development Team Manager, sat in on one of his team\u2019s retrospectives. During the meeting he noticed that one member of the team, James, was taking more turns speaking than other members of the team and often speaking for a long time about how he wanted to solve problems he saw. Mike noticed that the rest of the team had stopped talking.  While James was talking the others were like \u2018frozen statues\u2019 looking at the ceiling or their shoes. <\/p>\n

After the meeting, Mike went up to one of the team members who had leaned back in their chair so much that they were almost lying horizontal and asked \u201cCan you tell me how useful you thought that meeting was?\u201d The team member said \u201cIt wasn\u2019t very good; James spent most of the time talking utter rubbish!\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike approached James later in the day \u201cJames, I had some observations about how you acted during that meeting that I wanted to check with you. Would you be interested in talking about this?\u201d James said he was interested in hearing more about it.<\/p>\n

Mike continued \u201cI noticed that you took more turns speaking than others in the group and often spoke for longer than other people. Did you notice that or did you see it differently?\u201d James said that he\u2019d thought that might have been the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cI observed that when you were speaking others in the team weren\u2019t looking at you. In fact one person was leaning back to the point of being horizontal and the others were often looking at the ceiling. How does that match your experience?\u201d<\/p>\n

James said that he was aware he might have been talking for too long, but that this was because he was trying to avoid being too \u201cblack and white\u201d when describing his views. <\/p>\n

Mike agreed that he had seen James be less extreme in his description of the issues in the meeting, then said \u201cFrom my point of view, if people weren\u2019t looking at you then this suggested they were probably not listening to you, so it would have been unlikely that you were communicating effectively with them.  Can you understand how I\u2019ve arrived at that view?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI agree, I\u2019m just struggling to know what to do \u2013 on the one hand I can bee too extreme with my views and that stops people talking, but when I try and be less extreme I talk for too long and they also stop listening\u201d said James.<\/p>\n

Mike was pleased to have found out more about what James was struggling with. They talked a bit more about what lead James to experience this bind before going on to design options so that James could act more effectively in future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were in this situation again, is there some help that you could ask for from me or the team to help you recognise that you were starting to speak for too long?\u201d asked Mike<\/p>\n

After that they had a discussion that James would start the next retrospective describing the bind that he was in to the group and asking someone on the team to give him a visual signal, such as raising their hand, if they thought James was starting to lose people\u2019s interest.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are several points I wanted to highlight in this scenario:<\/p>\n