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There's a consultant who comes to give us a quarterly report, and each time, I marvel at their ability to speak and smile at the same time. They also give slight nods when they would like you to agree with a point they are making. It is a class act, especially since I have spent the week noticing how few people seem able to read a room, let alone the person sitting across the table from them.

Some people dominate conversations. Others deliver criticism, bad news, or something plainly hostile while wearing the polished smile they learned was "professional." The smile is not warmth. It is stage direction. They have decided the interaction is pleasant, regardless of what anyone else's face is telling them.

We tend to treat failing to read the room as an innocent personality quirk, but sometimes it is entitlement. It comes from believing our intentions matter more than everyone else's experience of us. The person sucking all the oxygen out of a conversation may believe they are being passionate, helpful, or thorough. Meanwhile, everyone else is quietly suffocating.

Earlier this week, I spoke to a college social studies class. The students had prepared questions about how power is divided in city government, how people get a say, whether their votes really matter, and how an elected official balances political affiliation with representing people who hold different beliefs.

Those questions were ostensibly about government, but underneath them was another question: Who gets heard?

Power is not confined to organizational charts or descriptions in civics textbooks. It moves through relationships, with smiles and tones and timing, but also who allows whom to keep talking. It can be held by the person with the title, but it can also be seized by the person who dominates every conversation until everyone else gives up trying to enter it.

During my time as a guest in the class, there was one student whose eye I would occasionally catch before she quickly looked down. I wasn't going to force her into sustained eye contact or call unwanted attention to her, but as I spoke, I made sure to pass back to her in short spurts so she would know she had not been forgotten. Reading a room does not mean demanding that everyone participate in the same way. It means noticing that other people are having an experience at the same time you are.

Some people struggle with social cues for neurological, cultural, or personal reasons. That is not the same as refusing to notice other people. The real problem is the person so committed to their own performance, grievance, expertise, or charm that they never become curious about its effect.

We teach children not to interrupt, but we do not teach adults how to recognize when they have become the interruption. We teach people how to speak, present, and network, but maybe not how to advocate effectively. We do not teach them to notice when someone else has stopped trying to enter the conversation, or that a question is not necessarily an invitation to deliver everything they know. We do not teach them to recognize when they have overshadowed the point of the meeting.

Reading the room is not about becoming smaller, quieter, or more agreeable. It requires enough humility to notice when our energy has become the atmosphere, when our contribution has stopped being a contribution and become an occupation, or when the air has changed and to wonder whether we changed it.

People should know how to find their voices. It matters. But a room full of people determined to use their voices is not necessarily a conversation. Sometimes wisdom is knowing when to speak. Sometimes it is noticing who has not spoken.

Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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