You can be prepared. You can be competent. You can be kind. You can even be right.

And still, a single power move can shut you down so fast your body reacts before your mind has words.

If that’s happened to you, this post will help. You’ll walk away with a few grounded phrases and practices you can use the next time someone grabs the floor, performs dominance, or shuts you down in a way that crosses the line. Most of us were never taught what to do in real time. We can learn it and build professional resilience.

I’m writing as someone who’s been there, and as someone who studies what actually improves culture and staffing in our industry. I don’t have a perfect answer. I do have a set of moves you can practice so you’re not alone inside the moment.

The moment that made this personal

At a well-attended executive breakfast, one man at my table launched into a familiar rant: the labor pool is terrible, people are lazy, no one wants to work. It went on and on.

When he finally paused, I asked a fair question, the kind of question that makes a room more useful:

“What have you upgraded in your recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, or review practices in the last three to five years to meet today’s workforce?”

He said he does what he’s always done because it worked in the past. I asked if refusing to try something new might be part of the problem. He glared and shut down. The table got quiet. Our table moderator calmly smoothed the energy and moved the conversation forward.

Then the man started again. I tried to speak, not to fight, but to ask a constructive question.

Before a single word came out, his hand flew up inches from my face in a hard STOP gesture, and he made an abrupt “EH” sound. Not a word. The sound you use to silence a child.

My throat tightened and heat rose fast, the kind of rage that shows up when power is being performed instead of earned. Time fractured. I saw shock on faces around the table. And still, no one named it out loud. No one checked on me after.

That’s the moment. Because the hardest part isn’t the interruption. It’s the isolation that follows.

I’m sharing it because moments like this are common, and the cost of not knowing what to do is real. The nervous system takes the hit. The mind starts second-guessing. The room learns, again, that dominance works.

So let’s train for it.

1) Name what’s happening inside you

Recovery starts before you say anything out loud. It starts with staying with yourself.

When someone shuts you down, your system often does two things at once: it feels the surge (heat, shock, grief, disbelief) and it tries to “be appropriate.” That split is where you lose your footing.

A small practice helps: name the experience internally in plain language. Something like: I just got cut off. That crossed a line. My body is reacting. I can slow down.

This isn’t self-help fluff. Naming brings you back into agency. It keeps the moment from turning into a spiral of self-doubt.

If your body spikes quickly, pair the naming with one physical cue that is easy to do at a table: feel your feet on the ground, drop your shoulders, and let your exhale be a little longer. You’re giving yourself three seconds of choice.

2) Restore the floor with one steady sentence

You don’t need the perfect comeback. You need a sentence that restores your right to speak.

This is worth deciding ahead of time. When your nervous system is lit up, language is harder to find. So choose a line now.

If you’re the one being interrupted, keep it clean:

• “Hold on, I wasn’t finished.”
• “I’d like to finish my thought.”
• “Give me ten seconds to land this.”

If you’re a bystander who wants to help without escalating, you can restore the floor with even less effort:

• “I’d like to hear her finish.”
• “Monique, what were you about to say?”
• “Let’s pause. I want to hear that question answered.”

That move changes everything. A room shifts when someone besides the targeted person restores the floor. It turns a private moment of humiliation into a shared standard.

If you have the capacity to name the action without shaming:

• “Before we move on, you cut her off. I want to hear her perspective.”

It’s steady. It’s specific. It keeps the room intact.

3) Choose your level of engagement

A lot of smart people assume there are only two options: swallow it, or explode.

There’s a third option: choose your level of engagement based on the moment, your safety, and your goal for the room.

A quick internal triage helps:

• Is this person reachable right now?
• Is the room reachable even if the person isn’t?
• What do I want the room to learn?

Sometimes the right move is a single sentence and continuing the conversation. Sometimes it’s disengaging from the person and addressing the group. Sometimes it’s stepping away briefly, regulating, and coming back.

As a few of us talked this through, one shared distinction rose to the top: conflict skills are what to say, and emotional regulation is the capacity to say it while you’re activated. You can have the right words and still freeze. Practice builds both muscles.

Anxiety is often a signal that trust is missing. Trust in yourself. Trust in the people around you. Trust that the room will protect basic respect. When that trust is thin, your nervous system treats the moment as danger and the words disappear.

That’s why moderators matter. They don’t just manage time. They build trust by naming the standard, restoring the floor, and making repair normal. Even one opening line can change the room:

“This is a shared room. No one has to fight for airtime. If you tend to talk a lot, I’ll help you land your point and make space for others. If you tend to stay quiet, I’ll help bring you in.”

So if you freeze, the path forward is still available. You can recover your voice in the next minute, the next break, or the follow-up conversation that comes after.

4) Return later when your nervous system is back online

Some of the most meaningful culture shifts don’t happen in the instant. They happen after.

If you couldn’t speak in the moment, or you chose not to, returning later can be powerful. Calm, direct follow-up has repaired relationships for people I respect. It also reveals who is willing to grow and who is not.

Returning later can sound like this:

• “I want to come back to something from our meeting. When you put your hand up to stop me, that wasn’t okay.”
• “I’m open to disagreement. I’m not open to being silenced.”
• “If we want productive conversations, we need basic respect in how we speak to each other.”

If you’re the organizer or moderator, follow-up matters too. It’s one of the quiet ways culture is built:

• “I noticed an interruption that crossed the line. Next time, I’m going to intervene sooner.”
• “If anyone felt shut down today, I want to hear from you.”

One of the strongest stories shared with me included a planned, principled follow-up in a later meeting: the person named the incident plainly, named the bystander silence, asked the group to imagine being the target, and anchored it to principle. It didn’t produce instant apologies. It did produce a measurable shift over time.

That’s a real path: clear, grounded, and direct.

5) Build better rooms so it isn’t on you alone

This is where recovering your voice becomes leadership.

If you want these moments to happen less, we need fewer heroic individuals and more shared standards. Many industries lag because there’s little HR structure, no shared norms, and no practiced intervention scripts. That’s a design problem, and design can be improved.

Small moves build better rooms:

• Set expectations up front: “We’re here for respectful dialogue and mutual contribution.”
• Equip moderators with two interruption scripts and permission to use them.
• Normalize repair: “If something lands poorly, we address it.”
• Teach a simple ladder of intervention: restore the floor, name the action, connect it back to group purpose.

Culture isn’t a vibe. It’s practiced behavior.

And one more truth that matters if we want real change: power-over behavior isn’t exclusive to men. Any gender can perform dominance, dismissal, or contempt. Many of these moves are rooted in a patriarchal distortion of leadership, and that distortion damages everyone. The way out is skill, standards, and solidarity.

A simple close

If you’ve been silenced in a meeting, you’re human. You felt the impact. You’re allowed to want a better room.

Pick one line from this post and practice it once, out loud. Put it in your notes app. Let it become familiar. That’s how the muscle gets built before you need it.

If you want, reply and tell me which role you tend to be in most often: moderator, bystander, organizer, the one targeted, or the one who needs to repair. I’m collecting real language from real leaders so the next room goes differently.

And yes, this is exactly the kind of lived leadership we practice inside ReRooted. Nervous system skill, real-time courage, and better rooms.