One of the most demoralizing experiences at work is getting cut off in a meeting, getting interrupted, having the floor stolen from you. You get talked over. Someone else starts speaking while you are speaking. In this episode, we’re going to uncover the real reasons this might be happening to you, and it has nothing to do with you developing a thicker skin or just out-talk the talkers.

I wanna set the scene first because this may sound familiar. Just imagine you are in a meeting, you are making your point, and someone just steamrolls talks right over you, like what you were saying doesn’t matter. Or maybe you’re in a quarterly planning session, there’s a half dozen people on the call, including your vp, two other directors from different departments.

You’ve been listening. You’ve been waiting for that right moment to chime in, and you finally jump in with a recommendation you’ve been thinking about for a week. You get maybe two sentences out, and then one of the other directors chimes in and says, yeah, but I think the real issue is, and suddenly the whole conversation pivots to their point.

The attention is gone. Another situation is you may be running the meeting. You are walking through a project update and before you even finish your second update, three people start firing off questions and concerns, half of which you were about to address if they would just let you get there. And now your agenda is completely blown up.

You are playing defense. You spend the next 24 hours answering follow up questions. About things you had already covered on the call. When this happens, your confidence obviously takes a hit, and in that moment you may feel completely taken off guard or even disrespected. You feel that heat rise in your body.

Your stomach drops, your jaw cle. You have to fight the urge to say what the heck, because you know, that would make you look emotional and maybe petty. Or in the moment, maybe you go the opposite direction. You just retreat. You go silent when you are talked over and you completely stop contributing. The thing about the confidence knock is that it stays with you.

You replay that moment on your commute in the shower when you’re at dinner with your family, pretending to listen to your kids, tell you about their day. You think about what you should have said, how you should have handled it, why you didn’t just hold your ground. And the next time you are in a meeting, you hesitate before you speak.

You wait just a little too long. You tiptoe when you should be the one leading. And that’s where the real damage is done. It, yes, in the moment, but it’s all the moments afterwards after the, the initial getting talked over where you start showing up as a lesser version of yourself because of it. It. The other side of this that we don’t talk about enough though, is the perception that it can create to constantly let yourself get interrupted.

Because when you get talked over, especially in front of more senior leaders, what they are registering consciously or not is that. Maybe this person can’t hold a conversation. They can’t facilitate a tough situation where there is complexity. They get easily steamrolled by their peers. So how are they going to hold their own when it’s an even more higher stakes conversation with our clients, with our board members, with regulators?

And when you are on your back foot, when you are the one trying to interject, trying to reclaim the conversation, trying to get back to the point you were making before someone else hijacked it, that’s not necessarily a position of strength. You are not leading anymore. You are chasing, you are behind the eight ball, and people can sense that It’s the difference between someone who is steering the discussion and someone who is scrambling to get back into it.

It, and this matters more and more as you advance, because the higher you go, the bigger settings you are in, where there’s more people opinions, more stakeholders who are used to getting what they want and aren’t just going to sit back while you work your way to a point, you’re going to encounter more personalities who will absolutely jump in with their questions or concerns as soon as it pops into their head.

Not necessarily to be disrespectful, but that’s just how they operate. So the cost of this isn’t that you just get talked over in one meeting or conversation. It’s that the people watching you are making calculations about what you can and can’t handle because of that. Here’s the good news in all of this, and the reason I wanted to do this episode is because most people assume getting talked over is something that happens to them.

That it is about other people being rude, being disrespectful, and sometimes, yeah, I’ll be honest, that is a part of it. There are bulldozers in every organization that is reality. But it is not the whole story. There are things within your control that make you significantly less interruptible and less likely to lose people’s attention in the first place.

When I look at the clients I’ve worked with over nearly 15 years now, especially those who go through our Speak Like a Senior Leader program, and the ones who come out the other side with the promotion, the credibility that they want. What I see over and over again is that the personalities of the people around them did not change, but our clients make tweaks to their own delivery, their structure, their pacing.

They stop creating openings for others to jump in and capitalize on. And that changes the way you are able to steer and lead the discussion. That changes how other people respond to you. And it signals you are worth being listened to. So with that, let’s get into some of the real reasons you may be being talked over.

Starting with number one, and this is the most common. I call it the, and so, and then problem. Usually how this plays out is you just start talking and it comes out as a narration. It is a play by play of what happened in the order. It happened with no clear point or destination in sight. So it can sound like something like this.

Well, what happened is we started exploring this new area and so we ran some initial tests and then we got that data back. So we regrouped with the team and then we realized there might be a bigger issue. And so we started looking into that and. Do you notice? And so, and then, and so, and then you’re just telling this ongoing story.

You may know where it’s going, but nobody else does. They are not going to wait around to find out this. And so, and then pattern, it just invites questions and course corrections. Because someone is going to cut in and ask, okay, so what was the result? Are you saying we should change directions here? Is this on track or not?

And you are sitting there thinking, I was getting there. Just give me 30 seconds and I would’ve told you. But you have to understand, nobody knew where you were going. For all they knew you were just going to narrate for another five minutes. Executives in particular have no patience for this. If they are in a meeting, they expect it to be efficient.

They are not going to sit through this winding story hoping you get to the point eventually that it eventually reveals itself. They are going to pull the point out of you, which to you can feel like getting talked over. But from their perspective, they are just trying to keep things moving. And that’s just one version of how this happens.

The other is that a colleague may use your open-ended narration as an opening. So while you’re saying, and so, and then, and this and that, your colleague jumps in with, yeah, my team actually helped with the evaluation and what we found was, and then suddenly they have taken the conversation in a completely different direction.

You never got your point in and the conversation moves on. This and so, and then pattern is probably the most deeply ingrained habit we work on with clients inside Speak, like a senior leader. You are burying the lead, the decision makers you’re dealing with. They need to know the so what and they need to know it fast.

So we teach you how do you get to that essence quickly. We show you how to structure your message simply so it signals right up front, here’s what I’m going to cover, here’s why it matters. Here’s how long I will need. So people know where you are going. They know the destination. They know what to listen for. They know when you will be done. And that certainty, keeps them from interrupting you, it keeps them with you instead of jumping into redirect.

I was actually inspired to do this episode because of a story. One of our Speak Like a Senior Leader clients, told me, I’ll call him Simon. He is a senior account director at an advertising agency and he was dealing with this exact problem with people talking over him in meetings.

Especially and often meetings he was running, people were just derailing him mid update. So inside the program he applied a simple structural technique we teach. It takes a few seconds to implement. It’s very simple. And that completely changed how people tracked with his thinking. So instead of having to follow this winding narrative to guess where he was headed, they could see the roadmap from the very first sentence.

And he said the interruptions have decreased. They have basically stopped. And the bigger result was that this projected more authority. From the moment the meeting started, from the moment that everyone dialed in or stepped in the room, Simon was showing, I have a direction. I am leading us somewhere, and people responded to that. They respected that more because he was confident and in command of his message, all because he changed the first 10, 20 seconds of how he delivered information.

All right. Number two on the list of real reasons why you keep getting talked over. Circling the wagons. Circling the wagons is when you have made your point and then you keep going.

You add a caveat, a clarification, a supporting example. You restate the original point in slightly different words just to make sure it got through. And then you add one more thought that occurred to you. Do you know when someone is telling you a story and they say, anyway, long story short, and then the story just keeps getting longer.

That’s kind of what circling the wagons is. The irony is that the more you keep adding, the less people here ’cause they start to tune out. And your original point, which was probably strong, it now gets buried under a pile of other information that’s stacked on top of it.

It, and a lot of times this circling behavior, it comes from a discomfort with silence. You make your point, and then there’s this awkward pause that feels unbearable, so you just, you keep filling it. So of course people jump in and begin talking over you. You are just repeating yourself at a certain point, and other people believe that they can add different value. So this is why in Speak Like a Senior Leader, we teach you how to catch yourself when you start rambling, and how to recover and redirect when that happens.

And second, more importantly, we work on making your thinking so clear and crisp before you even open your mouth, even when you are speaking off the cuff, that your urge to just keep restating yourself, to keep re-saying the same idea slightly differently, that doesn’t happen. Here’s a quick tip I want to give you right now though, so you can use this today.

Instead of circling the wagons after you have made your point end on a question, invite input. So for example, you might say, okay, that is where we stand today. What questions does this raise for everyone? Or those are the key takeaways from our side. Is there anything else I should be thinking about that I’m not? I am convinced this is the approach that will get us to our goal. What am I missing, if anything? And last example for you here. I think this would solve the bottleneck. What would need to be true in order for this to work? People talking over you puts you in a weaker position, but when you are intentionally inviting dialogue, that’s a much better place to be.

You are opening the floor from a position of strength and the outcome. Yes, it might look similar on the surface. Other people start talking and chiming in, but the dynamic is completely different. You are in control.

The third reason you are being talked over, you’re misreading the conversational arc, or you’re out of sync with the needs of the moment.

Every meeting and conversation has a context. There is a reason why people are gathered. There is a purpose, even if it is poorly defined. There are people in attendance who have specific priorities, pressures, expectations about what should be happening in this time you have together. And the conversation itself, it has a cadence. It has a vibe that shifts depending on what is being discussed, who is driving it, what the group needs right now. The energy is high. People are excited. They’re batting around big ideas about some new initiative. They’re building on each other’s thinking, yeah, what if we do this? We could try that. They’re imagining possibilities. And then it’s your turn and you say, I just want to flag a few risks we should consider before we go too far down this path. Don’t be surprised, then when someone cuts off your spiel. You are not wrong. The risks may be very real. They may be very important, but right now the group is in creative mode and your contribution, it was just like slamming on the brakes. Someone may talk right over you to get the energy back to where it was, you know? Oh, building on what Sarah said, I think we could also do this.

Or another way this shows up is, let’s say the group has been debating a certain decision for 20, 30 minutes. Everyone is tired. People are getting antsy. People are starting to say things like, all right, so are we good with option B? I think we have enough to move forward here. The conversation is clearly converging toward a decision.

And then you say, well, there’s really another angle we haven’t explored yet.

Again, maybe you are right. Maybe there is another option that is worth considering, but the group has already moved on. They are in closing mode and they can experience what you are doing as pulling the conversation backward that it’s an obstacle. So they redirect, they talk over you because they want to keep the decision moving forward.

They want the meeting to end. And so someone may jump in and say, you know what, I think we’re good here. Let’s move on to the next item. This one is tricky because your instincts are telling you to contribute the thing that is on your mind, which may be very important and valid. But at your level, situational awareness is everything. The ability to read the dynamics in a specific moment, understand what the emotional need is, or the stage of the conversation and calibrate your contribution to match that.

That is a very critical leadership skill you can develop and it’s one that is the least taught. I’m gonna give you a big secret to mastering this though. You have to stop asking yourself. What do I want to get across? You have to start asking yourself, what does this audience need from me right now?

Those are two very different questions, and the answer to the second one might be they need my risk assessment, but not right now. They need an alternative option, but in a follow-up, not in this very moment. The idea of what does my audience need versus what am I trying to get across? This is something we are constantly coming back to inside of a Speak Like a Senior Leader. Because it applies to everything, all the ways you communicate, how you write an email, how you frame a recommendation for your skip level, how you deliver an update. Every single interaction becomes more effective when you stop leading with what you want to say and you start leading with what the other person needs to hear.

Number four in terms of the real reasons why you’re getting interrupted. This is about what to do when interruptions happen anyway, because they will, no matter how well you structure your message, how perfectly you interpret the moment, no matter how crisp and confident your delivery is. At some point you are going to get talked over.

You know, you may have a colleague who is very excited about an idea and they can’t help themselves. You have a VP who just thinks out loud and they don’t even realize, they just cut you off mid-sentence. You have a person who genuinely doesn’t care and does just steamroll anyone in their path. You’re in a meeting with a dozen other people, everyone’s fighting for the limited airtime.

Usually when these situations happen again, they inevitably will. We go to one of two extremes, like I mentioned earlier. Extreme one is you fold, someone cuts in and you just stop talking. You pull back, you let them take over. You maybe tell yourself it’s fine, I’ll just, I’ll bring it up later. And you don’t.

Or you tell yourself, well, people clearly didn’t want to hear what I had to say. Which probably isn’t true either. But no matter what, you have seeded the conversation. And this reinforces a perception you do not want, which is that you are someone who can be easily overridden.

The other extreme is you get visibly frustrated. Someone talks over you and you snap back. The whole meeting is now tense and awkward, and you are eventually labeled hard to work with.

The most respected leaders I have worked with, they have mastered a third path, which is being able to calmly, diplomatically, and firmly reclaim the conversation without making it a confrontation.

There is an art to this. It goes way beyond what we can unpack here today, but I do want to give you some simple phrases you can use. So number one, you can say, I want to make sure I finish this thought. Then I would welcome your perspective on this. Or hold that thought for just a second. I’m almost there. You can also say, great point. I want to come back to that. Let me finish my idea first.

When you handle an interruption with that type of composure, you gain credibility. You show you have grace under pressure. So let’s bring this all together.

Today we talked about the four real reasons you might be getting talked over in meetings.

Number one is the, and so, and then problem, you are narrating instead of leading with a point, no one knows where you’re going, so they jump in to try to get you there faster, or they take the conversation somewhere else entirely.

Number two, circling the wagons. You made your point, but then you just keep going.

You had a caveat, a clarification. You restate it in a hundred different ways, which just creates an opening for someone to talk right over you. Number three, misreading the moment. Your contribution doesn’t match where the conversation is at or where it’s headed. People can feel like you’re slowing things down. People can feel like your timing is creating problems, so they override you.

And number four, defaulting to one of two extremes. When inevitably you do get interrupted. Folding completely or snapping back, instead, I want you focused on calmly and diplomatically reclaiming the conversation to build your credibility.

Every single one of these is fixable. None of them require you to become louder, more aggressive to just change and overhaul who you are. They require a communication system, structures you can rely on so that when the pressure is on, when there are lots of people in the room, when everyone is jockeying for airtime, when the executives are watching, you’re not winging it.

You have a way to organize your thinking, to deliver it with authority and to handle whatever should come at you.

My bestselling programs Speak Like a Senior Leader, gives you just that and the doors open to the public for the first time this year on May 5th, everything kicks off with the free training. I’m hosting that same day, May 5th, 2026 3:00 PM Eastern Effortless Executive Presence. There I’ll be sharing the roadmap that has helped hundreds of our clients do things like, cut their meeting prep down from six hours to just one or two to land roles. They had been almost ready for, for a year or more. We had one client who recently went from years of being in promotion purgatory to a director in 10 weeks. We’ve had people earn surprise bonuses. We had an HR leader who went from being told I, I think you’re incompetent in this role, to getting a bonus worth over six figures.

We’ve had people receive unsolicited kudos from their C-suite and get tapped by those very same people for opportunities before. Anyone else.

The link to RSVP for that free training, Effortless Executive Presence.

It’s in the show notes. Like I said, it is completely free and if anything in today’s episode, hit a nerve. If you recognize yourself in any of those four patterns, this training is the next best step. So I will see you there on May 5th, and I will catch you in the next episode.