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And I think there’s a correlation between people who have a constant desire to assert dominance over others, and people who often interrupt. It’s like the earliest red flag for me. I know because I used to be a COI member a long time ago.
One thing that always bothers me about this is that interrupters are often seen as bad, while non-interrupters are seen as good. You hear this a lot in the context of engineering meetings - there's Tommy the interrupter who always shouts his thoughts, while Grace the quiet one has lots of intelligent things to say but never gets a chance because people are talking over her. It's always portrayed as the interrupter's…
What makes you sure that your reserved counterpart isn’t asked to change their behavior as well? In a healthy work environment, suggestions made to both types of people are usually done privately.
I've seen some amazing pushback. A researcher who bellowed "I HAVE NOT FINISHED" so loud, it was like the MTV man-in-a-chair reaction from everyone else. I wasn't the guilty party that time but I could have been.
It's often said people believe women do most interrupting when the stats are very good 75% or more in mixed dialogue, is men's speaking time. (or used to be. maybe there's been a shift but I doubt it)
I do think its a combination of things. Well meaning engagement/reflection signals, "me-too" and also the tangents being struck, fleeting moments in the interupters stack of ideas. But also dominance asserting.
As an offendor, I don't mean to minimise the impact it has. I know it's not good. But I want to interrupt and intrude another one I can't handle:
"correct"
If you say this to me as I speak, you're dead to me. You aren't the arbiter of right and wrong, you aren't the teacher, you aren't the prover. If you want to assert agreement, find another way.
One thing that always bothers me about this is that interrupters are often seen as bad, while non-interrupters are seen as good. You hear this a lot in the context of engineering meetings - there's Tommy the interrupter who always shouts his thoughts, while Grace the quiet one has lots of intelligent things to say but never gets a chance because people are talking over her. It's always portrayed as the interrupter's…
There are easy, non-offensive, non-interrupting methods of communicating while another person is talking. Signal yes/no, dissent, agreement? Thumbs up or down, Nod or shake head. Applause? Deaf people's clap (raise both hands, oscillate quickly around z-axis). Want to say something? Raise one hand. Want the speaker to get on with it? Circular motion with the tip of the index finger around the y-axis. Strongly disagre…
If I am lecturing on a familliar subject with 1:1 or greater preparation time : lecture time ratio, maybe I do.
If, on the other hand, I’m retelling a paper I’ve banged my head against for the last couple of days and probably still don’t get a good part of, then sorry—I’m barely holding on here, I have to sort dependencies and not miss anything and remember to bring attention onto subtle points or the whole thing will apart and I have to backtrack and lose everyone because nobody can apply a verbal diff that goes half an hour back.
Again, I’m so sorry, but I don’t have the brain time to process your visual cues. Wait for the nearest syntactic boundary and shout over me. Please. I can suspend my flow—I can’t work out of it.
(From the other end, the problem vanishes assuming I’m either taking prodigious notes or already know half of what you’re saying, because people only poll for nonverbal interrupt requests once per logical point, so 2—7 minutes, and at best I’ll forget half of what I wanted to ask, at worst you lost me at the very beginning and you’ll have to spend the 5 minutes all over again, in addition to the two or so minutes it’s going to take us to negotiate an understanding of the question. And how do I deal with a presenter who mistook my simple question for a similarly-sounding advanced question? Interrupt their long advanced explanation?.. Right.)
I have a friend who is a Barker, who I am always annoyed at because I am a Meek type and I more often than not cannot finish making my points to her. I do not feel that she listens to me. Why do I still like her? This article, to me, pairs very well with the other top post on HN right now [1]. Thanks to that article I learned that we feel more connected towards someone the quicker they reply to us [2]. There's no con…
If you wait for them to finish, and begin your response by commenting on their earlier point, they'll immediately interrupt you and accuse you of avoiding their final point.
edit: you end up forced to argue with conclusions rather than premises or steps. Instead of arguing e.g. "maybe Mrs. X didn't notice Y was missing, we both missed it the first time," instead you're forced to argue whether Mrs. X is a good person or not, and being accused of going out of your way to defend Mrs. X.
One thing that always bothers me about this is that interrupters are often seen as bad, while non-interrupters are seen as good. You hear this a lot in the context of engineering meetings - there's Tommy the interrupter who always shouts his thoughts, while Grace the quiet one has lots of intelligent things to say but never gets a chance because people are talking over her. It's always portrayed as the interrupter's…
Moreover, this arrogance can easily mark you as "problematic" and "argumentative" by other arrogant people. I'm sure having quiet people speak up sounds great to you until you realize this means getting into more arguments over everything. We need people like Grace that are competent but let louder, more arrogant people run the show because at the end of the day, we'll be more productive that way.