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In the past week, I had “conversations” with two leaders who talked too much. They were good people with interesting stories to share. But they went on for far too long while I just sat and listened. Characteristically, they asked few questions and, when they did, didn’t seem to be interested in my responses. These two leaders were engaged but seemingly not curious or fully present. These encounters crystallized something I’ve observed repeatedly in my decades of executive coaching: A damaging leadership blind spot is the simple inability to stop talking. I call this a “leadership trap” because it ensnares otherwise effective executives in a paradox: The same verbal fluency that may have helped them rise through organizational ranks becomes a liability once they arrive in positions of authority. What got them noticed now gets in their way. The drivers of excessive talking As I reflected on these two leaders, I realized they reflected a pattern I’ve seen many times. Contrary to what many might assume, their excessive talking wasn’t rooted in narcissism or self-absorption. Instead, it flowed from more complex motivations they likely didn’t even recognize. The first executive, a fast-moving consumer goods leader, seemed driven by an underlying insecurity. Despite his considerable achievements, his need to recount every detail of his company’s growth story suggested he was still seeking validation. His monologues were attempts to prove his wortha verbal résumé delivered even when no one had questioned his credentials. The second leader, a newly promoted senior vice president in healthcare, displayed what I’ve come to recognize as “the silence phobia.” Whenever our conversation reached a natural pause, she would quickly fill the gap with another anecdote. This discomfort with silence is not uncommon among leaders, who often experience momentary quiet as a vacuum that must be filled. Why leaders often talk too much In my coaching practice, I’ve identified several other drivers that cause well-intentioned leaders to monopolize conversations: Some leaders talk excessively due to underdeveloped self-awareness. They genuinely don’t realize they’re dominating discussions. Without deliberate attention to their communication patterns, these leaders never notice the subtle signs of disengagement around themthe avoided eye contact, the phones checked under the table, the contributions that gradually diminish. Others feel intense pressure to appear intelligent and in control, especially those promoted based on technical prowess rather than leadership ability. They may dive into excessive detail, not realizing that their desire to impress often achieves the opposite effect, frustrating employees who prefer clear, concise direction. The organizational cost When leaders don’t create space for others’ voices, organizations pay a steep priceoften without realizing the source of their struggles. Both leaders I met last week lead sizable teams. I couldn’t help wondering how their communication styles were affecting their organizations. Were team members experiencing the same one-sided conversations? Were valuable insights going unshared because there was simply no space to offer them? This pattern creates what I think of as “conversational quicksand.” The more leaders talk, the less others contribute. The less others contribute, the more leaders feel compelled to fill the silence. Each interaction reinforces the dynamic, gradually pulling teams deeper into passivity. The business consequences extend beyond frustrating meetings. When employee engagement diminishes, team members feel their input is neither valued nor necessary. Innovation suffers as people become less inclined to voice their opinions, knowing they’ll struggle to find space in the conversation. Perhaps most damaging, leaders who talk too much paradoxically undermine their own influence. When someone speaks at length, their key messages get lost in the verbal deluge important signals drowning in noise. Team members start tuning out, missing crucial information as they struggle to maintain focus through lengthy monologues. In exit interviews, feeling “not listened to” consistently ranks among the top reasons talented people leave organizations. The efficiency of team operations also suffers, with long-winded explanations making meetings feel like endurance exercises rather than productive gatherings. Breaking the pattern One of the most difficult challenges in helping verbose leaders change their approach is that many don’t recognize the problem. The first step toward change is typically a wake-up callobjective feedback that makes the pattern impossible to ignore. A structured 360-degree feedback process often provides this necessary reality check. One leader I worked with was genuinely shocked when his feedback revealed that team members felt “steamrolled” in meetings. For leaders ready to address this challenge, I recommend a simple but powerful practice: the “talk time” journal. After each significant meeting, they estimate the percentage of time they spent talking. One executive I coached was stunned to discover he was talking 7080% of the time in meetings explicitly called to get input from his team. The “WAIT principle”asking oneself “Why Am I Talking?” before continuing to speakoffers another practical checkpoint. This simple internal question helps leaders assess whether their contribution adds value or merely takes up space. Today’s technology offers additional support. AI-driven meeting analytics tools can monitor speaking patterns, providing objective data on who speaks and for how longa communication fitness tracker where numbers tell the truth when perception might not. Many leaders benefit from enlisting a “communication buddy”someone they trust to provide honest feedback with subtle real-time cues during meetings when the leader begins to dominate. Perhaps the most powerful technique is practicing strategic silence. By consciously pausing after asking questions and resisting the urge to fill quiet moments, leaders create space for reflection and encourage more thoughtful contributions from others. An increase in influence After my encounters last week, I reflected on a leader I’d coached several years ago. He had initially displayed the same pattern of dominating conversations but had committed to changing his approach. After six months of deliberate practice, he had reduced his talking time from approximately 60% to 30% of team meetings. The results were transformativenot just more engaged employees but also better decisions, faster execution, and ultimately stronger business results. “I used to think leadership was about having all the answers,” he told me. “Now I understand it’s about asking the right questions.” This paradoxicalresultincreased influence through decreased talkingemerges consistently in my work with leaders. When they create space for others’ voices, they not only access more diverse thinking but also elevate the significance of their own contributions. The goal isn’t to make leaders talk less just for the sake of it. Instead, it’s about helping them become more effective communicators who create environments where every voice contributes to success. When leaders master this balance, their influence increases even as their word count decreases. As I left my meetings with those two leaders last week, I wished I could offer them this insight: Your greatest impact as a leader often comes not from what you say, but from what you enable others to say. Leadership communication isn’t about holding the floorit’s about creating the conditions for collective intelligence to flourish. The next time you find yourself dominating a discussion, ask yourself: Am I talking because it’s necessary, or simply because I can? Your leadership effectiveness may depend on your answer.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Since ChatGPTs launch in 2022, it feels like artificial intelligence is finally going mainstream. From Fortune 500 board rooms to dinner tables, everyone is talking about AI, its applications, and its promise. With more than $500 billion flowing into AI infrastructure investments, many investors predict the AI wave is just gaining momentum. Those investors are right, AI still has a long way to go before it is truly ubiquitous. But more importantly, we have to tread carefully when we talk about AI going mainstream. The reality is that while many reading this article are already using AI in our daily lives, there are billions of people around the world who are a long way away from feeling AIs impacts and opportunities. So how do we truly change the world with AI? The opportunity isnt just about reach, but about the underlying data and infrastructure that will be needed to make AI a truly global technology revolution. Lessons from mobile phone adoption We can learn a lot about the promises and pitfalls of technology revolutions by looking to the past. Today, 70.5% of the worlds population uses a cellphone. Yet, its taken nearly 50 years for cellphones to gain worldwide adoption since the first mobile phone call was made in 1973 by Martin Cooper, a Motorola executive, using a prototype mobile phone. While mobile phone technology has improved significantly, with phones getting smaller and smarter over the years, the real power of mobile phones took hold with the cellular networks evolution. The 2G cellular network introduction in 2000 catapulted mobile phone usage forward and made it possible for companies like Apple to imagine the first iPhone, launched in 2007. Without significant investment and expansion in global cellular networksthe foundational infrastructure required to bring cell phone technology to every corner of the worldits possible that cell phones would never have gained popularity or market share. Biases and blind spots So, what hurdle does AI need to overcome to truly become a global technology? While many investors are looking towards power and chipsthe critical GPUs that allow AI to performthey are missing a much more important foundation: data. Large language models (LLMs)the backbone of todays AIare only as good as the data they are trained on. Unfortunately, data often comes with built-in biases and blind spots. Consider for a moment that many of the most popular LLMs have been built by U.S. companies and are trained on large, publicly available datasets using online sources like literature, news, social media, and Wikipedia. While expansive, this data is inherently influenced by Western cultural norms, political ideologies, and historical viewpoints. This is a problem if the AI product is meant to be used globally. Its a simple truth: Online data tends to reflect wealthier, tech-savvy populations that represent a very small percentage of the world population. As a result, the LLMs powering the most exciting AI are only relevant and working for English-speaking users with regular internet access, but are failing to account for the experiences and realities of the global majority. The path forward One solution is stronger AI governanceimplementing policies and procedures that actively mitigate biases in AI models and the underlying data they depend on. This has become a growing focus for policymakers and industry leaders alike, aiming to make training data more inclusive and models more reflective of diverse perspectives. Auditing systems for algorithmic fairness is one way to address this. However, relying on a handful of AI companies to self-regulate has its limitations. Arriving at an industry standard consensus can be difficult, policy adoption can be slow, and enforcement is often inconsistent. We need a broader approach. Another way forward is for companies to take matters into their own hands by pairing the depth of their own proprietary datasets and domain expertise with the breadth and processing power of existing AI models. By making a commitment to their own data management, companies across industries and regions present a huge opportunity to help improve and expand available data sets. Leveraging new, alternative sources of customer data is core to my company Talas thesis on reaching true global scaleand has enabled Tala to efficiently implement AI in its financial infrastructure. A truly global revolution One thing is clear: AI is here to stay, and its pace of development will only accelerate. But if we do not address its biases and blind spots now, we risk leaving billions of people out of the equation. There is hope that the AI industryfrom incumbents to disruptorswill recognize the global opportunity to implement AI. Companies must take proactive steps by adopting forward-thinking AI governance, while also leveraging proprietary data to fill in the gaps of the first generation of LLMs. The opportunity starts with global data and infrastructure. We are early enough in the lifecycle of AI to make sure we are building products to revolutionize the entire world, not just parts of it. Shivani Siroya is founder and CEO of Tala.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. The economy is something of a rollercoaster and consumer behavior is shifting just as fast. From fluctuating costs to changing shopping habits, todays market represents a real opportunity to support transformation for brands. As trusted marketing partners, our role isnt to predict whats next but to help clients confidently navigate the complexity, adapt with agility, and stay closely attuned to what their customers need right now. The evolving climate requires media and marketing professionals to develop a deeper understanding of how macroeconomic forces directly impact their clients’ decision-making processes. For example, when tariffs increase for say, a tequila producer targeting the U.S. market, the ripple effects are immediate. Those costs must be accounted for, either through increased pricing, which affects consumer purchasing patterns, or adjusting allocations elsewhere, including ad and marketing budgets. It is imperative to maintain client-centricity. So how can we, as agency leaders, support clients during unpredictable economic times and show up as more strategic business partners? Stay informed Every business is dealing with unprecedented shifts in how people shop, plus inconsistency in the market and supply chain. Everything is moving faster, and agencies need to move with agility, forecasting marketing plans for clients in real time. Theres HUGE opportunity out there, but also high risks. Clients consistently tell us they value partners who adapt quickly to changing circumstances and who not only keep pace with the changing tides, but anticipate the shifts. Earlier this year, one of our retail clients faced potential sales losses when a major publication was ending print circulation in a key market. We responded with a proposal to shift advertising based on data insights that could potentially exceed the lost sales. The ability to respond to shifts in real time can provide a competitive edge in client service. Instead of resisting this uncertainty, embrace it. Stay informed and stay current in the newsready to adapt, innovate, and lead the conversation. While we cant control market fluctuations, we can control our response. Focus on human, not just machine While businesses race towards AI adoption and automation, its easy to get swept up in the speed and scale of technology. Its important to remember that while these tools offer insights and efficiency, they dont provide the creativity, intuition, and strategic thinking that only human connection and emotional intelligence can provide. At Havas, we show up with a mindful understanding of what our clients are going through on a day-to-day basis. The heart of our approach is a commitment to people-centricity. Professionals are seeking environments where they feel genuinely valued, where personal and professional growth are nurtured, and contributions recognized in meaningful ways. Creating a culture where employees feel heard, supported, and empowered is essential in this market. This same value extends to client partnerships; our strategy emphasizes human expertise and technological capabilities working in harmony. Technology and automation are a means to an end (not the end itself!). Clients want more diagnostic data tools and increased media data optimization so their reporting can be more accessible and actionable. However, these tools enhance but dont replace the creativity, intuition, and strategic thinking that forge meaningful connections. Our clients are real humans, looking at data points of real customers. This requires their agency partner to go beyond the numbers, partnering with real people at the helm to interpret customers needs with empathy and humility. As businesses face constant recalibration with every news alert, they need their partners to care about the things they care about. By gaining a deeper understanding of their unique challenges and daily nuances, we can offer better visualizations, data granularity, collaborative insights, and recommendations, ultimately turning numbers into stories, patterns into strategy, and clicks into brand affinity. Act in real time Speed is currency in today’s market. By staying informed and monitoring the market, youll be able to quickly recognize and respond to organic waves of market conversation. Success lies in agility. For one fashion client, this meant accelerating planning cycles from weeks to days to capitalize on a products viral moment, leading to increased budgets and stronger future campaigns. Because we spent the time building a trusted and collaborative partnership with this client, we understood their audiences, objectives, and goals. We established media and culture monitoring processes to better react in real time which allowed us to swiftly activate because of our shared understanding. Spot the trend and seize the momentum because in a world that moves fast, the brands that act in real time to consumers wants and needs gain consumer share. When wildfires hit Los Angeles earlier this year, the combination of global media attention, celebrity-driven social coverage, and AI-generated images of Hollywood in flames exacerbated the problem and led tourists to believe the cityand maybe even the statewas closed for business, sparking a wave of misinformation. For Visit California, a nonprofit 501(c) corporation with a mission to market the state as a premier travel destination, speed was essential to deliver a powerful message of hope, resilience, and community during the Oscars. We were able to produce a meaningful moment for our client in several weeks. Leveraging agency connections, the campaign coordinated a strategic integration with award season, providing an empowering message that California is open for business, rolling out the red carpet for visitors from around the world. Activating celebrity ambassadors, strategic media buys, and perfectly timed messaging helped negate misinformation and bolster the state’s tourism and the livelihoods of countless workers who depend on visitors. By staying informed about market conditions, not shying away from client pressures, demonstrating adaptability, and maintaining empathy, you can deliver better, stronger results for your clients. Tomorrows successful media agencies will embrace this and build meaningful partnerships that last longer than any economic turbulence. We only exist because our clients trust us. Understanding their business is our business and agile actions in times that are changing faster than ever before, is how we win together. Greg James is North America CEO of Havas Media Network.
Category:
E-Commerce
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