How to quiet a talkative team member?
Step by step solution
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Q: I'm dealing with a situation where one team member consistently dominates our Scrum ceremonies, especially Daily Standups and Sprint Planning. This sometimes discourages quieter team members from sharing their thoughts. How do I stop this person from talking too much? I'm not sure how to address this without making him feel singled out. Can you provide some ideas that worked for you in the past?
Absolutely!
Thank you for the question.
Let me start by bringing the focus to your core question:
“How do I stop this person from talking too much?”
This question is making your problem sound more tactical.
It is not!
Under the surface, it is a systemic problem that touches on the foundations of Scrum and team psychology.
Surface symptoms
One developer is dominating airtime
Quieter members are staying silent
This is the observable behaviour… what we can see and measure.
Under the surface
There is a lack of psychological safety
Matthew Effect is in play, i.e. the more someone talks, the more people assume they are the expert, so the loop reinforces itself
There are some facilitation gaps
The vocal person might be a senior engineer, an ex-tech lead, or simply an extroverted individual. Title or personality can overshadow role equality within the Scrum teams
So the question is not merely “how to quiet a talkative teammate?”
Doing that would be rude!
The question is, “how to restore balanced participation so Scrum can work?”
With that in mind, let’s see how we can achieve this.