I was mid-conversation with my wife when she stopped me. “For ten years, you’ve been talking over me and calling it a conversation.”
She was right. I thought I was engaged – fast, responsive, in the flow. What I was actually doing was controlling the space. And that’s a pattern I’ve seen everywhere, especially at work. Meetings aren’t conversations, they’re competitions. People interrupt, push, perform. Not always intentionally, but it happens. The loudest voice often shapes the outcome, and everyone else adjusts around it.
That’s the problem. Good ideas don’t get lost because they’re weak, they get lost because the environment doesn’t let them surface.
We mistake pressure for progress. We reward speed over thought. And over time, people stop contributing properly. Not because they don’t care, but because it’s easier not to fight for space. The job isn’t to win the room. It’s to make room.
If you want better thinking, you have to create the conditions for it. Let people speak. Let them finish.
You might actually learn something.