241–250 of 311 posts
I feel like a forum-style system like HN for discussion will always work better than real-time voice. That's the ultimate solution.
It's a bit "kid-ish", but I've seen it work effectively at combating what you're talking about. Have some kind of object that a person holds while they're talking. While the person is holding the object no one else is allowed to speak. Once they're finished speaking the object is passed to the next person and they get their turn (if they want). The object can be anything, but when I've seen this strategy used it was…
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_ring) in Networks.
Two things work. First is if I start a sentence I finish it. If you start talking then stop, you implicitly give permission to someone else to interrupt you when they interject. Get over the awkwardness of two people talking at once. They now (mostly) let me finish my thoughts -- after I started doing this.
This one is sneaky, but I do it when someone is especially obnoxious. They'll interrupt (on a call) and Ill say "Hey (name), are you there? We can't hear you." They freak out and beseechingly yell into their mic like Sandra Bullock in Gravity and then Ill calmly say "oh there you are, as I was saying..." and complete my thoughts. It's a pattern interrupt. Not the most honorable method, but it works.
I find I interrupting people while they speak to be terribly rude. I judge people pretty harshly who do so, which is probably my own hang up. These two methods have worked for me.
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 both parties keep talking it will get awkward for everyone in the conversation. This is what you want, as it will lead to immediate understanding that an interruption happened and that it's not OK. You can calmly discuss afterwards that you were interrupted, and after a few occurrences even those with only a modicum of social awareness will get the message and change behaviour. And peer pressure can then help those stragglers.
Lately, I've been doing the opposite. If I have a thought, I wait until the end up what's being said. If they barrel into another topic without waiting, I'll simply start talking and tell them my thoughts on the last topic that they so hastily abandoned.
Occasionally I'll forget what I was going to say because there was so much going on. In those instances, I simply don't worry about it. No matter how important it was, it'll either come up later or we'll deal with it eventually somehow.
That all said, there's one thing I will interrupt. When a person says the same thing repeatedly, even in different ways, I feel compelled to stop them and keep the conversation moving. Anyone that doesn't understand can ask for clarification. There's no need to repeat things.
Speakers tend to prefer either a high considerateness or high involvement style of conversation. Considerate speakers prefer conversations where parties wait for each other to finish and take turns speaking, while involved speakers prefer those where parties jump in when they have something to add. [0] High considerateness style is getting too much credit in this thread. The two styles are similar in the relevant res…
This way you just name what they did without giving it too much weight or judgement.