Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you guess that?
Because license to interrupt often gets applied unequally WRT gender. Smart women go where their career isn’t impacted by boorish behavior.
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The Church of Interruption
71–80 of 151 posts
Re: The Church of Interruption
#72I've noticed a pretty heinous conversational pattern develop out of interruption sometimes. In theory, the best way to conduct a church-of-interruption exchange of ideas is big-endian: you begin by summarising your idea and only then flesh out the details. That way if your conclusion is understood you find out as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, if your conversational partner tends to interrupt incorrectly or in b…
That's an interesting approach.
For me, the issue with that, is that I'm more of a "stream of consciousness" conversationalist, where I say things as they come to mind and rarely have time to parse them in the way you suggest.
Maybe it's a matter of practice.
Re: The Church of Interruption
#73Sounds like 2 cultures, and the adaptive person realizes who they are speaking to, and adapts to that culture to have better conversations. I was raised as a 'civil' person, but learned that in some groups, you get a better result & energy as an interrupter. Another dynamic is high overt conflict & emotions vs low overt conflict & emotions cultures. High overt will seem like they are arguing passionately about someth…
Haha, true. And I've had it where we would only dare do this over "safe" topics, like some branching strategy or library implementation detail or whatever. But we would never do the high-overt thing about politics or family life or something "real". :)
Re: The Church of Interruption
#74I'm more interested in the Cult of Listening.
First you listen and really try to understand not only the what but why from the person you're having a conversation with.
Then you paraphrase what you heard back to make sure you understand and that they can hear it back and agree.
If you do these two things you'll find that most people are actually pretty reasonable and you can in turn have a reasoned and listened to response and, shockingly, a real conversation.
Re: The Church of Interruption
#75I feel like I'm getting worse at communicating as I get older. My former partner kept telling me I don't listen. Which resulted in my thinking "What, what does that even mean?". To this day I am still trying to learn how to listen. I am also very much aware I am an interrupter. I know how bad this is and even so it is still hard to stop. I also interrupt when I am excited and enthusiastic and when I like the person I…
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Re: The Church of Interruption
#76I've noticed a pretty heinous conversational pattern develop out of interruption sometimes. In theory, the best way to conduct a church-of-interruption exchange of ideas is big-endian: you begin by summarising your idea and only then flesh out the details. That way if your conclusion is understood you find out as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, if your conversational partner tends to interrupt incorrectly or in b…
So jokes are Little-endian I guess.
Re: The Church of Interruption
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
And just hazarding a guess, I suspect women transfer out of the group at the first opportunity.
Alice makes a multipart statement about topics one and two. Bob replies to topic two and starts to segue to topic three. Carol has something important to say about topic one. What is Carol supposed to do? Let the entire chain play out, then transition back to topic one when there's an opening? I know people can be bitter about interruption, but in my experience you get a prompt and decisive smackdown for trying to ba…
Carol has to let it go. Worst thing to do is interrupt the current flow. She will come across as a "Barker" like she had sat there not listening to what Alice or Bob had to say and was just thinking about what she wanted to say about topic one the whole time.
Best thing to do is wait until the end and circle back with a question that leads into discussing topic one. Doing this you immediately relinquish control of the conversation, and when appropriate say your thoughts.
Otherwise, just let it go. Is it going to kill you to not say it?
I read a good summary once of analysing the thought process:
- Does this need to be said?
- Does this need to be said by me?
- Does this need to be said by me now?
Which are good questions to ask when interrupting the flow of a conversation.
Re: The Church of Interruption
#78I've noticed a pretty heinous conversational pattern develop out of interruption sometimes. In theory, the best way to conduct a church-of-interruption exchange of ideas is big-endian: you begin by summarising your idea and only then flesh out the details. That way if your conclusion is understood you find out as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, if your conversational partner tends to interrupt incorrectly or in b…
That's an interesting approach. For me, the issue with that, is that I'm more of a "stream of consciousness" conversationalist, where I say things as they come to mind and rarely have time to parse them in the way you suggest. Maybe it's a matter of practice.
I find this most irritating. It is much more polite to the listener if you do your homework first and then start talking. It vastly increases the chances of being able to capture and hold and audience's attention.
Re: The Church of Interruption
#79When talking, I feel like a CPU waiting for DRAM reads all the time. "Gee... why is this going so slow?!" Anything that can speed things up is appreciated. Talk fast, interrupt me, let me interrupt, fill the gaps, ask what you don't understand, point what I got wrong, and lets complete this data transmission as soon as possible.
Re: The Church of Interruption
#80I'm a Meek and one of the strategies I have developed for dealing with more interrupt-based communicators is to rely on an asynchronous, written medium. Be it slack, a shared google drive doc, whatever. "Hey, can we have a meeting to discuss X" will often be answered by "here's my written opinion on X and the different options I see. If you still think we need to meet, here's my availability". If this doesn't remove the meeting completely, it allows you to prepare and state your opinion in advance.
Some people don't like it. It's easier to do when you are remote with a significant time difference.