21–30 of 311 posts
Took me years to painfully wean myself from the habit when talking with my wife, who objected strongly (as she should).
Check out this YouTube video titled: How to stop people from talking over you.
The YouTube channel Charisma on Command have a bunch of great videos on EQ.
People who ask questions tend not to be cut off as often as speakers who don't. If you get the floor and are still sounding out an idea in front of a group, consider whether contributing is a valuable use of everyone's time. There are of course people who talk forever and interrupt everyone else to make it about them, and it's because they need personal development. It's on the senior-most person there to interrupt t…
There should also probably be a time limit as well.
I worked at a place like that. I wasn't even aware of the problem. It was just how things were. One day our director called a meeting and announced that our whole department had a serious issue with interrupting. He noted the results of interrupting each other (not hearing each other out, drifting off topic, just being seen by the rest of the company as jerks). He laid out a bunch of rules for meetings, discussions,…
What do you do when the director / manager is actually the one doing the interrupting?
People who ask questions tend not to be cut off as often as speakers who don't. If you get the floor and are still sounding out an idea in front of a group, consider whether contributing is a valuable use of everyone's time. There are of course people who talk forever and interrupt everyone else to make it about them, and it's because they need personal development. It's on the senior-most person there to interrupt t…
Seniority is a matter of job description. My job as a senior engineer involves driving alignment on the design and implementation of features. When I run meetings, they have an agenda and concrete outputs. If someone derails the meeting, I will politely but forcefully run them over. When that bubbles up into an interpersonal conflict, as it sometimes does, I'm again, polite but forceful.
I know what my job is, and I hold myself accountable for getting it done.
The only time I've been openly rude to someone was a Senior Principal at AWS who thought derailing 12+ engineer meetings to rant about unrelated topics was an acceptable use of time. The rudeness was probably uncalled for, but it got the job done and was (surprisingly) well received.
Try a "hacky sack." Only the person who has it may speak. If interruptions continue, introduce an airhorn, and hit it when they happen. ;) There should also probably be a time limit as well.
– Guess culture: Doesn't name needs. There's an expectation that people guess each other's needs from clues/context/intuition.
– Ask culture: Names needs as an ask.
– Tell culture: Names needs. No specific kind of response is required or expected.
These aren't normative categories, but I think in any workplace, being collectively aware that these different styles exist and that communication will be improved by each person knowing their own styles and the styles of others can improve things.
– Guessers can work to name their needs.
– Askers can learn to interpret Guessers and gently help them articulate their needs, and likewise can gently ask questions of Tellers to determine their asks.
– Tellers can likewise learn to interpret Guessers and gently help them articulate their needs, and for Tellers, invite questions about their asks.
A LessWrong post, with another take on the subject: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rEBXN3x6kXgD4pLxs/tell-cultu...