We’ve all been in meetings where The Talker won’t shut up.
Lovely for them, of course. But not so lovely for us. Other people don’t get to speak. We don’t cover the whole agenda. We might finish late. Which means we start our next meeting by apologising for being late … all because of The Talker.
It’s therefore essential we know how to stop them talking. Or they might … well, not.
One effective way to do this is:
- Interrupt them
- With a question, that needs answering
- Using very few words
- Maybe raising our voice slightly, to cut across them
For example, you could just say their name as a question – “John?”
John will reply “what?” And you now have control of the meeting.
Or you could say “quick question?”
He’ll reply “what is it?” And, again, you now have control.
But, now that you have control, what will you say?
Well, here are three useful phrases that help accelerate things:
- “I’m conscious of time” – something like “I’m enjoying this discussion. But I’m conscious of time. Please could we move onto the next agenda item soon?”
- “Hard stop” – usually, I hate corporate phrases like this. But this one is a belter for speeding things up: “I know we all have a hard stop in 15 minutes, and we still have a couple of agenda items to cover”.
- “Offline” – we’ve all heard this before: “We’re going into a lot of detail. Let’s take the detail offline”. People always agree with this – even though “offline” is a polite way of saying “shut up”!
You could use any one of these three. Or put them all together – like this:
“I’m enjoying this discussion. But I’m conscious of time – I’m aware many of us have a hard stop in 15 minutes. So, let’s take the detail of this item offline, and move onto the next one – ok?”
Nice.
You’ll be in a meeting today. And one of the attendees might be The Talker. You now know what to do…
… unless it’s your boss’s boss – in which case, maybe just stay silent!
Action Point
Next meeting, when it’s appropriate, use the steps above:
- “Quick question”, and when they reply “what is it?”, say …
- … one/more of “I’m conscious of time”. “Hard stop” and/or “offline”
- Unless it’s your boss’s boss!