Over-explaining is an anxiety response. People explain too much to cover every angle, to prove competence, and to reduce the chance of being criticised. Photo. firstsun.com.
Catherine Mattice examines some of the reasons people are prone to give long-winded explanations of their points at workplace meetings, often going over the same ground time and again.
We’ve all been there — sitting in a meeting where someone spends five minutes on an explanation that could have taken 30 seconds.
Or maybe you’ve caught yourself doing it, adding just one more clarification, one more justification, one more “Does that make sense?”
Over-explaining at work isn’t just a ‘’female thing’’, nor is a condescending explanation (often called mansplaining) solely a ‘’male thing’’.
Both sets of behaviour are symptoms of something deeper: patterns of insecurity, imbalance, and power that live inside workplace cultures.
Research consistently shows that people experience interruptions and condescension at work along gender lines.
A 2024 Forbes report found that 56 per cent of women have experienced mansplaining at work, often leaving them feeling undervalued and less likely to speak up.
Other studies, from Cambridge University and Michigan State University, have shown this dynamic decreases confidence and increases burnout.
Anyone can fall into these patterns. Men over-explain when they feel the need to assert authority. Women over-explain when they fear being misunderstood or dismissed.
Nonbinary and marginalised employees may over-explain as a strategy for being taken seriously in spaces that question their legitimacy.
Over-explaining, then, isn’t about gender. It’s about power and psychological safety. It’s what happens when people don’t feel they are being heard and trusted.
At its root, over-explaining is an anxiety response. When people don’t feel safe emotionally, socially, or professionally, they compensate.
They explain too much to cover every angle, to prove competence, and to reduce the chance of being criticised. It’s the verbal equivalent of walking on eggshells.
Some of it stems from self-doubt and low self-esteem. Some of it comes from organisational cultures that reward perfectionism, penalise mistakes, or quietly reinforce hierarchy.
In workplaces where interrupting is normalised or where some voices carry more weight than others, over-explaining becomes a survival mechanism.
Think of the engineer who over-justifies her design decision in a meeting because she’s used to being challenged. Or the new manager who explains every action to prove he deserves the role. Or the quiet team member who rehearses every word to avoid being misunderstood.
When everyone is trying either to prove or protect themselves, communication stops being collaborative and starts being performative.
Over-explaining may seem harmless and annoying, but it’s expensive, not just in meeting time but also in morale.
It signals a culture where people feel they must justify their value, where every contribution must be defended rather than simply heard.
Employees in those environments experience higher cognitive load, lower confidence, and more burnout. Innovation slows because people spend more energy preparing to speak than on what they have to say.
The loudest voices, not necessarily the best ideas, dominate the conversation. Similar to leaders who engage in bullying behaviour due to lack of self-confidence and the need to show their value, ‘’splainers’’ are exerting their authority in unhealthy ways.
These are often people who don’t recognise the impact of their behaviour. They believe they’re being helpful, thorough, or simply passionate about their expertise.
That’s where coaching becomes critical. Repeat offenders rarely change through feedback alone, because the behaviour is rooted in mindset and habit.
Coaching helps uncover what’s driving the over-explaining. Once awareness is built, coaching can replace over-explaining with more productive communication habits, such as curiosity, active listening, and brevity with impact.
When people understand how their behaviour lands, they can shift from defending their value to demonstrating it through respect, clarity, and collaboration.
The solution isn’t to tell people to “just be confident”. It’s to build environments where they can be confident, where listening is active, respect is mutual, and mistakes aren’t punished but learned from.
To start, you need to understand what’s really happening in your culture by uncovering the causes of communication breakdowns, trust issues, employee engagement, job satisfaction, and psychological safety gaps.
Once you know what’s wrong, you can intervene intentionally. That means going beyond communication tips and focusing on training programs that reshape habits and norms.
This should include respectful communication training, psychological safety workshops, and manager coaching on how to model curiosity and empathy instead of authority and control.
Over-explaining is the cultural smoke that signals a deeper fire. Healthy workplaces don’t require anyone to take up more space than they need or to shrink to make others comfortable.
They create space that belongs to everyone, equally.
Catherine Mattice is the president of Civility Partners, which has been successfully providing programs on workplace bullying and building positive workplaces since 2007. This article first appeared on the Civility Partners website.
