I have sat in plenty of meetings where one person does eighty per cent of the talking. Sometimes it is the loudest voice in a sales huddle. Sometimes it is the person who has been there longest and treats every agenda item as a chance to relitigate a decision. Either way, the cost is the same: the three or four people who did not get a word in walk out, and you never find out what they actually thought.

When I ran the turnaround at Total Tools Brendale, I learned this the hard way. We moved an internal audit score from 35 per cent to 95 per cent over two years, and a big part of that was getting honest input from the floor. You cannot fix what you cannot hear. If one person crowds out the room every time you meet, you are effectively running a business on a sample size of one.

Most of the advice online treats this as a soft-skills irritation. The top-ranking pieces I read while thinking this through, from Roberts (n.d.), The HR Digest (n.d.), and Cassidy (n.d.), all give the same broad tips: set ground rules, have a private word. Useful as far as it goes, but they are written for a coworker dealing with a peer. When you are the manager, you have both more leverage and more responsibility. This piece is written for that seat.

First, tell enthusiastic apart from dominating

Not every big talker is a problem. Some people think out loud, and that energy is worth keeping. The distinction I use is simple: is this person adding to the room, or replacing it?

Enthusiasm looks like a person who talks a lot but pulls others in, asks questions, and goes quiet when someone else is mid-thought. Domination looks like a person whose volume of input directly shrinks everyone else’s. The tell is not how much they say. It is what happens to the other voices when they say it. If two staff members have stopped bothering to raise their hand because they know they will be talked over, you have a crowding problem, not an enthusiasm problem.

I keep a rough count in my head across two or three meetings. If the same person is speaking first on nearly every item and the same two people never speak at all, that pattern is the evidence. It is worth being honest with yourself here, because it is easy to tolerate a dominator you happen to agree with.

Structural fixes for the very next meeting

The best first move is not a conversation at all. It is a change to how the meeting runs, applied to everyone. When the fix is procedural, it does not single anyone out, and the dominator cannot read it as a personal attack.

Three changes do most of the work:

Time-box every agenda item. State the limit out loud at the start: “We have got four items and thirty minutes, so roughly seven minutes each.” Now when you move things along, you are enforcing a rule the whole room heard, not cutting one person off.

Run a round-robin before open discussion. On the items that matter, go around the table and get one point from each person before anyone gets a second turn. This single change does more than any script. It guarantees the quiet staff are heard first, while the dominator’s instinct to jump in is held until everyone has had a go.

Put the agenda out in advance with owners. When each item has a named owner who leads it, the floor is not automatically open to whoever speaks loudest. I write more about using structure and data to run tighter meetings in running better team meetings with data, and the same principle applies here: structure carries the load so you do not have to police the room by force of personality.

None of this requires you to name the problem. Often, structure alone is enough to reset the dynamic, and you never need the harder conversation.

Word-for-word redirects for the moment

Structure will not catch everything. You will still need to interrupt in real time, and the trick is doing it without embarrassing the person, because a public dressing-down teaches the whole room to stay quiet. The reliable pattern is: acknowledge the point, then hand the floor to someone specific.

A few I actually use:

Naming the next person by name is the important half. “Anyone else?” gets you silence, because the dominator will fill it. “James, your take?” moves the floor deliberately. The acknowledgement up front matters too. You are not shutting the person down, you are redistributing airtime, and the difference is audible to everyone listening.

The private one-on-one: a full script

If the pattern holds after a couple of meetings, have a private conversation. Do it one on one, not in front of anyone, and do it as coaching rather than a telling-off. The structure I follow: open plainly, name the specific behaviour and its effect, then genuinely ask for their read.

Opening: “I wanted to grab ten minutes because I value what you bring to our meetings, and I have noticed something I want to work on with you.”

Name the behaviour with a concrete example, not a label: “In the last two team meetings, you have led on most items and we have run out of time before a couple of the others got to speak. I do not think it is deliberate, but the effect is that we are not hearing from everyone.”

Then hand it back: “How are you finding those meetings? Is there something that is making you feel you need to carry them?”

That last question matters more than the rest. Sometimes the answer surprises you. I have had people tell me they filled the silence because nobody else would, or because they did not trust a decision would get made otherwise. That is useful information about the meeting, not just the person. Giving difficult feedback without wrecking the relationship is a skill in itself, and the same care applies here as anywhere you have to tell someone something they may not want to hear.

Close with a shared plan: “Here is what I am going to try. On the big items I am going to go around the table first. What I would ask from you is to hold your second point until everyone has had a first. Can we give that a go and check in next fortnight?”

Why the manager’s seat changes things

Here is what the coworker-focused articles miss. When a peer asks a dominator to ease off, they are negotiating. When you do it as the manager, you carry authority and accountability. You set the meeting rules, you own the outcome if good staff disengage, and you are the one who has to act if coaching does not land.

That authority is a tool, and it comes with a duty. Research on team performance, notably Edmondson (1999) on psychological safety, points to the same thing: teams do better when people feel able to speak up without being talked over or shot down. As the manager, protecting that safety is your job, not a favour you do the quiet staff. It also means you cannot let the behaviour run indefinitely out of conflict-avoidance, because the cost lands on the whole team, not just you. I have written more on this in building psychological safety in a small business team.

The escalation ladder

Have a clear sequence in your head so you are never improvising under pressure.

Stage one: informal coaching. The 1:1 above. Most cases end here. You have named it, agreed a plan, and set a check-in.

Stage two: the follow-up. At your agreed check-in, if the pattern has genuinely improved, say so and move on. Positive reinforcement locks in the change. If it has not, name that directly: “I have not seen much shift since we last spoke, so I want to be clearer about what needs to change and by when.” This is still coaching, but the tone is firmer and the expectation is explicit.

Stage three: a documented performance conversation. If the behaviour continues after a genuine, specific warning, move it into your formal process. Write down what was discussed, when, and what you agreed. In Australia, the Fair Work Ombudsman (n.d.) is clear that fair process and documentation matter if performance issues ever escalate toward formal action. You are not being cold by writing it down. You are being fair, to them and to yourself.

What moves you up a rung is not frustration. It is repetition after a clear, specific request. One awkward meeting is a stage-one issue at most. A pattern that survives two direct conversations has earned the paperwork.

Keeping the fix sustainable

The mistake I see managers make is treating this as a one-off. You have the conversation, things improve for a month, and then old habits creep back because the structure quietly lapsed. Meeting dynamics are not solved permanently by a single chat.

Keep the structural fixes running as the default: round-robin on the items that matter, time-boxing, named owners. Revisit them every quarter and ask whether the same voices are still doing all the talking. The behaviour is a symptom of a wider issue, which is whether your quieter staff have any reliable channel to be heard at all. That is the gap Business Review 360 is built to close: a private, low-friction way for team members to raise the friction they will not say out loud in a room, so you hear about it long before it turns into someone quietly checking out. It also lets you track, over time, whether your coaching and your meeting changes are actually landing.

Get this right and the payoff is not a quieter dominator. It is the two or three people who finally start telling you what they really think, which is the whole point of gathering in a room in the first place.

References

Cassidy, K. A. (n.d.). 26 tips for working with domineering coworkers: How to influence. https://kerryannecassidy.com/influence/tips-for-working-with-domineering-coworkers/

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.

Fair Work Ombudsman. (n.d.). Managing performance and warnings. Fair Work Ombudsman.

Roberts, A. (n.d.). How to handle a team member who dominates meetings? https://andiroberts.com/leadership-questions/how-to-handle-a-team-member-who-dominates-meetings

The HR Digest. (n.d.). What to do when an employee talks too much in meetings. https://www.thehrdigest.com/what-to-do-when-an-employee-talks-too-much-in-meetings/

FAQ

How do I know if someone is dominating meetings or just enthusiastic?

Watch what happens to the other voices, not how much the person talks. Enthusiasm pulls others in and leaves room for them. Domination shrinks everyone else’s airtime. If the same two people have stopped contributing because they expect to be talked over, that is your evidence, regardless of how well-meaning the big talker is.

Should I address it in the meeting or privately?

Both, but differently. In the meeting, use structural fixes and gentle real-time redirects that apply to everyone, so nobody is singled out. Save the direct naming of the behaviour for a private one-on-one. Calling someone out publicly usually teaches the whole room to stay quiet, which is the opposite of what you want.

What if the person reacts badly to the private conversation?

Keep it as coaching, stay specific about the behaviour rather than the person, and genuinely ask for their read on why it is happening. If they push back, hold to the concrete example and the effect on the team. You are not attacking them, you are redistributing airtime. If the reaction is defensiveness rather than a refusal to change, give the agreed plan a fair run before deciding anything.

When does this become a formal performance issue?

When the pattern survives a clear, specific request to change, not just one awkward meeting. Stage one is informal coaching. Stage two is a firmer follow-up at your check-in. Stage three, a documented performance conversation, is warranted when the behaviour continues after a genuine warning. In Australia, documenting the steps you took matters if things ever escalate toward formal action.

Can changing the meeting structure fix this without a conversation at all?

Often, yes. Round-robin input, time-boxing each agenda item, and naming an owner for each item frequently reset the dynamic on their own, because they remove the open floor the dominator relies on. Try the structural changes first. If the crowding persists after a couple of meetings, then move to the private conversation.