Conferences are a wonderful side project for me. I love speaking at them and sharing ideas, but I also love the social side — those moments when you “confer” with others, make new friends, and shoot the breeze with like-minded people.

One summer evening, at a lakeside dinner where the wine flowed and the food was good, I found myself at a table of around 25 attendees and speakers. Around us were locals enjoying their own evenings — families, young people getting ready for a night out, even a group of business types talking mergers.

Among us sat a speaker I already knew. His reputation? He liked to own the room. Loud, boisterous, relentless. I’d already mapped out my exit strategy.

Sure enough, his first booming monologue made an elderly gentleman at the next table jump so violently that he spilt his red wine down his expensive suit jacket. Each time the speaker roared about his own brilliance, the poor man twitched and recoiled, his facing turning paler by the story, until he finally fled. To this day, I half suspect he’s still in therapy.

The performance rolled on. Achievements, travel conquests, “supreme” intellectual feats. Not a pause to invite others in. Not even a flicker of curiosity about anyone else’s story. It was a one-man show.

But here’s the thing:

  • Loudness doesn’t equal competency.
  • Loudness doesn’t equal confidence.
  • Loudness certainly doesn’t equal like-ability.

The businessmen nearby soon left too, one covering his ears, the others shaking their heads, clearly unable to continue their merger talks with this ever loudening monologue around them.

Even at our own table, people were reduced to shouting over the bellowing self-promoting stories just to be heard. At one point, grown adults were standing, shouting across the table in a bizarre contest of who could be loudest. It looked more like a bar-room squabble than a professional gathering.

Meanwhile, groups who tried to sit near us on the empty tables quickly retreated. No one wanted front-row seats for the “Look at me!” show.

As the evening wore on and the stories grew more inappropriate, more people drifted away. Finally — mercifully — after an hour of noise and self-congratulation, our speaker staggered off mid-sentence – the drink taking hold of his balance and stature.

The bar erupted in applause. He waved proudly, mistaking it for admiration. In truth, it was pure relief that the loudness had finally stopped.

Only then did the evening turn into what it should have been from the start: a few of us, talking over food, swapping stories, listening, laughing, reflecting. A real conversation.

And that’s the lesson. True confidence doesn’t shout. It doesn’t dominate. It doesn’t need to. Some of the most confident people I know — one ex-military friend comes to mind — are calm, measured, and understated. He listens more than he talks. When he does speak, people lean in. He leads with empathy, humility, and precision. That’s confidence.

So, when you’re tempted to fill the silence with noise, remember:

  • Loudness is just loudness.
  • True confidence is quieter, deeper, internal and far more powerful.
  • The greatest compliment you can give, and a true sense of confidence, is to truly listen.

Because conversations aren’t performances — they’re shared spaces. And the people who are remembered for the right reasons aren’t the ones who shout the loudest, but the ones who make others feel heard.

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