When our relatives sit together talking, I have noticed two different styles of an adult and her son. One of my sisters habitually expresses herself in an assertive manner, zero tolerance of opposing voice, showing your typical dominant personality.
Her son appears to be the opposite. He cares more about maintaining harmony with others, not to provoke or rub someone the wrong way. So he is gentle and quiet, seldom talks without being asked, never raising different voices.
This resembles the scene in one of my former work places where one colleague talked in similar fashion, making others quiet.
I used to think perhaps others don’t have much meaningful to share. Actually this pattern is the result of interactions between them over the course of a long period of time.
Very often, in our fervor to express ourselves, we forget to consider the impacts of our manner on our listeners, that our forceful manner of speaking and reacting to different voices could sound intimidating and discouraging to others to talk. We are so dominant that we forget to give others opportunities to speak, especially in a family. The consequences of this dominant style may include raising a child who prefers to be quiet and bury his voice.
A Chinese saying describes this style 一人独断 (yì rén dú duàn), meaning: one person makes decisions disregarding others, the opposite of being democratic.