231–240 of 311 posts
I am prone to cutting off slow thinkers. The type that you know exactly what they are going to say for the next minute - yep I got that so can we move on to your next point. It is a bad habit and I try to control it, but sometimes I slip up.
This takes some amount of guts, but I am yet to experience anyone not allowing me to finish my point.
I am prone to cutting off slow thinkers. The type that you know exactly what they are going to say for the next minute - yep I got that so can we move on to your next point. It is a bad habit and I try to control it, but sometimes I slip up.
What do you do with all the time you save interrupting the slow thinkers?
I’ve been witnessing a masterclass in this at work lately. One of the faculty I work with has a habit of jumping in on people when they’re talking. One of our new faculty simple refuses to spot when the other person jumps in—-just simply keeps taking over the interrupter. Doesn’t speak up, doesn’t alter their cadence, simply continues to talk. It’s amazing.
"If you're being interrupted, it's because you're interruptible"
I wonder why a big SV company is not following this already ?
One way that has worked well for me is saying politely, 'please let me finish'. And then continuing with my contribution to the conversation. This takes some amount of guts, but I am yet to experience anyone not allowing me to finish my point.
Others have suggested a talking stick, and I'll improve on that - a talking stick + timer. Because you need to enforce both 1 person talking at time, and time box them. Even better, you make the timer be the talking stick. Every time you hand off the timer, you reset it for the next person. They say their piece and reset/handoff to the next person. I've done this for daily standups/sprint meetings where things were g…
I have a problem cutting people off- I get way to excited about what I want to say and jump in. I really appreciate when people call me out and don't take it personally. I also try to work on it and try to help steer the conversation to other people who have been cut off when I see it happen. So IMO don't be afraid to politely just let someone know! If you don't feel comfortable during the meeting, maybe speak with t…
A lot of the time I’m like you, or I see that the person is starting a long train of thoughts based on a faulty premise... why would you let someone catastrophize or take everyone in a magic carpet ride that is based on bad information? But that is unfortunately not always why. Some people take a very, very long time to get to a point they’ve already telegraphed long before. In a conversation that’s about problem sol…
> and I will absolutely shove you out of the spotlight and without compunction
Just to be really clear: this makes you toxic.
I started using a whiteboard for all our meetings. For whatever issue we were discussing, I would first write it down. I then proceeded to function as a moderator. Whenever one of my colleagues wanted to interrupt, I made sure to keep him/her at bay by pointing out that I wanted to let other colleague finish first. Whenever one of them would drift away from the main issue, I would point out to the topic on the whiteboard and emphasize that we needed to keep the conversation focused on that issue.
It worked wonders.
In general, I've noticed that having a "meeting leader" that keeps the meeting on track with the agenda and functions as a moderator really improves the quality of the meetings and even makes them shorter.
High considerateness style is getting too much credit in this thread. The two styles are similar in the relevant respect: more dominant speakers get more airtime. Conversations in high considerateness style don't dictate a turn order, so when someone finishes speaking, there's a competition for who gets the floor, and dominant speakers will win more often, and then get to keep talking for as long as they want. Effectively, high considerateness style just increases the packet size, without changing the bandwidth distribution.
High considerateness probably does have the advantage over high involvement in problem solving conversations, since it makes it easier to communicate more complex thoughts, but it's not the best. These two styles describe organic conversations, but it's possible to impose a rule-based structure that makes problem solving conversations more productive by dictating a turn-order (not necessarily in a static way). A structured conversation style that biases the competition for the floor in favor of those who have insights rather than dominance will outperform high considerateness style.
Neither of the organic styles are optimized for problem solving. High considerateness is optimized for preventing speakers from abusing the ability to jump in while someone else is speaking to silence people for political reasons. High involvement is optimized for making conversations enjoyable so that people actually want to have them.
In an ideal world, we would use high involvement style as a default, high considerateness in politically tense company, and various kinds of structured conversations when work needs to get done.
[0] https://linguistextraordinaire.com/2018/01/07/conversational...