Question:
One of my coworkers shares deeply personal details about her life in meetings. Divorce updates, medical procedures, and how she’s navigating all of it. She’s always so excited to tell us and expects the rest of us to be interested and happy for her.
At first, I tried to be supportive. So did everyone else. Now we exchange uncomfortable looks when she starts talking, like we’re all bracing for impact and want to find the quickest exit.
I feel bad for her. I know she has a lot going on and just needs someone to listen, but I dread when she says, “I’d like to share something.” While I like her, I just don’t have the time, the interest or the bandwidth, to take part in conversations like this at work.
Lately she’s taken to coming into my office, and while I want to be kind, she doesn’t get subtle hints, like my saying “I don’t have time” or “I need to finish this project” and turning away from her. The only thing that seems to work is saying, “I need to leave for a meeting,” and then leaving.
We’re too small to have an HR officer, and when I’ve talked about this with our branch manager, he’s said, “Be nice. Work it out among yourselves.”
Ideas, please.
Answer:
Kindness doesn’t require listening on demand, and over-sharers show up in many workplaces. In a recent survey, sixty-five percent of employees reported their colleagues as too honest when oversharing personal details, https://www.worklife.news/talent/oversharing-vs-inauthentic-honesty-problems-hit-workplaces/. For a deeper look at this dynamic, please see my earlier column, “Can you please stop with your TMI?” https://workplacecoachblog.com/2025/02/oversharing-can-you-please-curb-your-tmi/.
Here’s how to stop emotional spillage:
Don’t reward it.
When you listen for an extended period, nod or say, “that sounds hard,” you signal you’re interested and reinforce her behavior. To her, that reads as: keep going. The next time she veers into personal territory, gently steer it back with, “I need to focus on work; is there a task you need help with?” Keep your tone warm, and your words clear.
Hints don’t work.
When you tell her, “I don’t have time,” she interprets that as a scheduling issue and hears “try again later.” When she ignores your turning away to focus on a project, it reveals she doesn’t pick up on subtle clues. You need to reset the boundary back to a work-focus in a way that can’t be misinterpreted.
Gentle honesty
She likely needs more support than she’s getting—real support, not fake listening. You can signal both care and limits at the same time by saying, “I like you as a teammate but need to keep my workday focused.” You’ll find additional strategies on how to bring up touchy subjects like this in chapter 12 of Navigating Conflict: Tools for Difficult Conversations, https://amzn.to/3rCKoWj.
If you have a reasonably good relationship with her, a private, respectful conversation can go a long way. Consider saying, “you deserve people who can really show up for these conversations, and work isn’t always the best place for that.”
Tackle the meeting issue.
Your team needs simple meeting norms:
Stay on agenda
Keep comments relevant to the work
Take personal or political conversations offline
Once your team sets norms, you can say, “can we stick to the agenda, so we get through everything?” Framed this way, you’re supporting the group, not singling her out.
You’re not her outlet.
This is the uncomfortable truth underneath your question: she may be looking for support, she’s not getting elsewhere. Real support. When one person consistently uses work colleagues for emotional support, it creates fatigue for the coworkers, and still doesn’t the person what they actually need.
The bottom line:
Compassion doesn’t require participation. You can care about her, and still not have the capacity for her stories at work. You can be kind while setting clear boundaries and steering the conversation back to work.
If all else fails, when your coworker next says, “I’d like to share something,” smile and say, “I’m all in, as long as it helps us get our work done.”
© 2026 Lynne Curry, PhD, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, authored “Navigating Conflict” (Business Experts Press, 2022); “Managing for Accountability (BEP, 2021); “Beating the Workplace Bully,” AMACOM 2016, and “Solutions 911/411.”
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Another possibility would be to tell her you need to keep your workday focused, but you’d enjoy going to lunch or for coffee. I would probably do this, even if I didn’t really like the person that much. It wouldn’t be a huge investment of time. Coffee could be 15-20 minutes. It sounds like the person really needs someone to just listen.
Your responses, Dee, are kind without totally getting your own work off track, and this is genius. I’ve been the listener to some over-sharers, though, and another problem with some is that they have a complete lack of sense of time. The coffee break could end up being 30-40 minutes, and lunch could go on for more than an hour. Or there could be an invitation to come home with the over-sharer and take on something. I’m catastrophizing here, I know. The solution isn’t easy or quick, as you and Lynne show in your thoughts on this.
The over-sharer at work is a problem we all may have experienced. Some of us, if we are honest and self-aware, may at times have been the over-sharer. The examples get to the gist. Try to keep the conversation about work. In meetings, insist on sticking to the agenda, in conversation, agree to listen only if the story will help get the work done, if the person doesn’t get the hint, say if there’s a task the [over-sharer] needs help with, please ask, otherwise, you need to get back to what’s in front of you on your desk. These are great. Needy people at work complicate relationships and being at work.