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The Church of Interruption

sambleckley.com

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Re: The Church of Interruption

#91

Post by Cthulhu_ »

alex_young wrote: post #74

I'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 re…

That's a really important skill to have really; in software development there's a huge ego culture going on, people having their own opinions and clinging to them. But the path to maturity and / or seniority involves opening up to other people's opinions, truly understanding them instead of just pushing your own through. Active listening (which is what you're describing there) is a huge part of it. You can't argue with someone if you're not willing to listen in the first place.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#92

Post by Cthulhu_ »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #43

Some people keep talking for a long time unless interrupted. They might even go in an infinite loop, reconfirming what they already said! For such people, while normally meek I force myself to interrupt!

Yup, and it's absolutely fine to do so - however, you also need them to understand what they're doing themselves, give them some advice on how to communicate more effectively. As another commenter pointed out, some people talk a lot because they're nervous, because they are afraid if they stop talking they won't get another say in a matter. They need coaching, reassurance, etc as well.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#93

Post by fenomas »

sgentle wrote: post #70

I'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…

Of course, in real-world discourse delaying the high-order bits often just means they're never reached.

> A: There's a thing I don't like. It's coarse, rough, and it gets...

> B: Many coarse and rough things are vitally important though, why for example there's...

Re: The Church of Interruption

#94

Post by draugadrotten »

dpc_pw wrote: post #79

When 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.

Interrupting when talking is simply the human equivalent of XON/XOFF flow control in RS232. Some humans are not capable of such software flow control and need the human RTS / CTS handshake which is probably body language. And then other humans simply don't have flow control enabled. At all.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#95

Post by Cthulhu_ »

joosters wrote: post #64

The article talks about interrupters, but I think it confuses two types of them: People who interrupt to say their piece, and people who interrupt to complete the other person’s sentence. Both are annoying, but people who complete others’ sentences are IMO worse: it’s a way of showing that you don’t care what the other person thinks, especially when the interrupter guesses wrong and the speaker has to out-talk them i…

That's definitely a distinction to make. The person completing the sentence will feel - or emit the feeling - that they get what you mean already but the speaker is being too slow. In a case like that it's important for the speaker to be assertive and raise their hand, mention the other person's behaviour and finish the sentence themselves. Like a sharp callout of the other person's behaviour, a meta-statement about what is happening. Just pointing it out is already enough for a lot of people. That will cost some extra energy though, because you're not just talking about subject x, but you're also mindful of your own and others' behaviour in a conversation.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#96

Post by the_pwner224 »

mbar84 wrote: post #76
sgentle wrote: post #70

I'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.

So I guess that means one thing that is little-endian is a joke.

FTFY :)

Re: The Church of Interruption

#97

Post by Sammi »

quanticle wrote: post #82
jacobolus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> thinks they know everything, but really doesn't have a clue This is a somewhat separate problem from whether someone is an interrupter or not, though conversational style can have an influence on when miscommunication is likely to happen. > They don't let you explain critical detail about something because 'they got it they got it' Well-meaning non-interrupters who “think they know everything but really don’t have…

It seems like it would be a separate problem, but in my experience, the two are linked. The person who is interrupting is interrupting because they're highly confident in their own viewpoint. We like to think that confidence must necessarily be correlated with how true our view is, but that isn't the case. There are some people who are equally confident of all of their views, no matter how much or how little evidence…

You're describing a barker not an interrupter. A barker will insist on continuing their own rant to their own end, so they cannot be corrected. The interrupter will let themselves be interrupted in turn, so they can always be corrected.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#98

Post by quickthrower2 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #92
quickthrower2 wrote: post #43

Some people keep talking for a long time unless interrupted. They might even go in an infinite loop, reconfirming what they already said! For such people, while normally meek I force myself to interrupt!

Yup, and it's absolutely fine to do so - however, you also need them to understand what they're doing themselves, give them some advice on how to communicate more effectively. As another commenter pointed out, some people talk a lot because they're nervous, because they are afraid if they stop talking they won't get another say in a matter. They need coaching, reassurance, etc as well.

Absolutely. I should also mention I don’t get angry with them, I appreciate they have a different style of communication.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#99

Post by lbj »

I'll be honest, I disengage from interrupters almost immediately. They consistently miss the point in their eager to hear their own shallow thoughts. Its boring.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#100

Post by bartread »

otikik wrote: post #80

I'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…

This is a valid approach, but it does have a problem: it can lead to long back and forth messaging/email exchanges, including lengthy messages.

I don't, generally, have time to write long messages, nor (often) to read them, so as soon as I see this happening I've started to point out the behaviour and set up a short meeting to resolve whatever the issues are.

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