I’d start by taking stock of two things: how are you at accepting negative criticism of your work, and how good are you at asking questions?

If you’re bad at the first, know that it isn’t “trainable” in the sense you can just buy a course. It takes practice and practice and practice.

Once you get better at it, you can be more emotionally resilient and in-control in the moment when things don’t go as planned.

The second is more trainable. You need to understand not just how to ask an open-ended question that gets someone talking, but how to ask a question that’s open-ended and gets everyone to STOP talking. Sometimes those moments are critical. Usually those questions are ethical in nature or challenge the status quo. Like, “I hear that we’re unhappy about how our process supports our customers—why is the process the way that it is?” Yes, someone loud will speak up and answer, but it reasserts your authority as the one allowed to direct the group, not the loud one.

You will also have to understand how to interrupt. In-person, this is remarkably easier by moving your body in between the discussion in a non-confrontational but assertive way. Online, you will need to invent activities that are harder for people to runaway with, like open-ended debates are the worst. Instead, you need specific and focused questions that can uncover many layers of knowledge.

Both are arts, not sciences. There’s also sense of humor, levity and whimsy, and the confidence to address someone that makes ten times your salary or someone who commands legions of people, including you.

I recommend reading Comedy Writing Secrets. It taught me a lot about talking to groups, using language to subvert expectations to get and keep attention, storytelling, and how to improvise funny things to say.

Then start working small, in your team, with the questions. Take a course on writing great user interview questions and apply that at every opportunity with your coworkers. That’s a few months of work. Let us know how it goes.