Two different problems get treated as one. Staying quiet too often makes you invisible. Talking too often makes you background noise. Both cost you the same thing: nobody actually listens when you finally say something important.
If you've spent years as an individual contributor, the instinct to hang back in meetings until you're sure you're right is understandable, it feels safer to wait until your point is fully formed than to say something half-baked out loud. But waiting for certainty means you often speak last, after the conversation has already settled, which makes your contribution look like a footnote instead of an input. The goal isn't to talk more. It's to talk at the right moment, with less throat-clearing around it.
The most useful shift is timing your contribution to when it can still change the outcome, not after the group has already converged. If a decision is forming and you have a concern, that's the moment, not five minutes later once everyone's already nodding along.
"Before we lock this in, I think we're underestimating how long the migration piece will take. Last time something similar took us three weeks, not one. Worth double-checking before we commit to the date publicly?"
Notice the structure: a short flag, one piece of evidence, and a question that invites the room to check the assumption rather than a flat declaration that you're right. That framing gets your point taken seriously without turning it into a confrontation, and it's short enough that it doesn't eat the meeting.
For the opposite problem, talking too much, the fix is almost mechanical: say your point once, in two or three sentences, and stop. Resist the urge to restate it a different way "just to make sure it landed." If it didn't land the first time, a longer version rarely fixes that; it usually just makes people tune out sooner next time you speak. A good habit is building on what someone just said instead of starting a new thread, "adding to what Sam said" signals you were actually listening, which itself builds more credibility than a well-formed independent point.
If you're naturally quiet in groups, one practical trick: decide before the meeting on the one thing you actually want to say, and commit to saying it in the first half of the meeting, before the conversation moves past the point where it's relevant. Waiting for a perfect opening usually means the opening never comes.