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The Church of Interruption

sambleckley.com

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Re: The Church of Interruption

#121

Post by fogetti »

marble-drink wrote: post #103
dustinls wrote: post #14

This falls apart when you have an interrupter who thinks they know everything, but really doesn't have a clue. They don't let you explain critical detail about something because 'they got it they got it' and when they inevitably screw up its your fault for not explaining it right.

I have a colleague who regularly interrupts me to say the complete opposite of what I want to say. I'm, of course, in the church of strong civility, so I always continue after the rude interruption. You'll often hear something like: "We're struggling to meet our deadlines so I think we should---" "Rewrite the project." "---Avoid rewrites and do small reactors."

I like your approach and in general I do the same. But some interrupters just never learn.

So in some cases when the interrupter keeps interrupting I simply ask him/her: "Can I finish my sentence?" In this case whatever the interrupter does it's too late for him, because it becomes obvious that his way of communication is not welcome and he was not even aware of this fact (i.e. he lacks self-awareness), and learning self-awareness in a group setting this way makes wonders.

Also I guess you make small refactors instead of reactors :)

Re: The Church of Interruption

#122

Post by fogetti »

dwd wrote: post #77
closeparen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Your view is extremely simplistic and just doesn't reflect the sophistication of any abstract and complex conversation.

Especially if the topic at hand is a new territory with a lot of unknown unknowns. If no-one ever explicitly says that "OK, we covered topic one and now we move on to topic two. Is there anyone who wants to add comments?", then the conversation was not very civil, was not yet over, and whoever organized the meeting was an amateur, and let the worst thing happen: Alice and Bob change topics for no reason, instead of stopping them short.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#123

Post by closeparen »

dwd wrote: post #77
closeparen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

>Is it going to kill you to not say it?

It means a decision will be made without Carol's information that she'll have to live with, potentially hampering her ability to deliver something she's accountable for. If her manager finds out she knew something important and held onto it out of politeness, that'll come up in the leadership/collaboration section of her next review. If her manager doesn't know that she knew, it'll look like a hard skills problem.

>Best thing to do is wait until the end and circle back with a question that leads into discussing topic one.

Maybe this is a quirk of my meeting culture, but the success rate here is approximately zero.

>Does this need to be said by me?

This is a good one keep in mind, I do sometimes find that the point I've been hanging onto eventually gets said by someone else, and it's really satisfying.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#124

Post by entropicdrifter »

Sammi wrote: post #97
quanticle wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

^ This. In my family, the quickest way to find out if you're wrong is to assert something that's false. It may not surprise you to find out that both of my parents were once programmers.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#125

Post by entropicdrifter »

mannykannot wrote: post #114
Bekwnn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to fall under "Barkers"

The distinction between interrupters and barkers is more of a slippery slope than a sharp divide.

You could say that about the distinctions between most groups of humans. There's almost always overlap/normal distribution

Re: The Church of Interruption

#126

Post by fogetti »

alecmg wrote: post #101
lbj wrote: post #99

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.

But at least they show early that they missed the point and let you catch it early and explain better. Instead of politely listening and after you finish ask what does the first thing (vital to understanding the whole speech) even mean.

So basically they are forcing the speaker to explain the same thing as they would have continued anyway, plus they even force the same speakers to fix the interrupters' mistakes in their thinking. Why is that good?

Re: The Church of Interruption

#127

Post by closeparen »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #87
closeparen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think I would try to impose some structure and possibly have an actual moderator. I basically moderate an in person meeting once a month (though my title is chair, not moderator ). I'm supposed to keep things on topic, curtail problematic behavior and try to get us out of there on time. I also take written notes. How you do that depends on a variety of factors, including the personalities involved. So I would think…

This is great. We have written agendas but they're usually, "we will be discussing these three documents in this order" not an itemized list of concerns. The itemized list is dynamic depending on what comes up in the conversation. Do you try to solicit more granularity from participants beforehand to build into the agenda, or how does that work?

Re: The Church of Interruption

#128

Post by beckingz »

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.

Only the shaggy dog jokes.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#129

Post by logfromblammo »

quanticle wrote: post #81
Osiris wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stream of consciousness rambling to be extremely irritating . Normally, I'm very much against interrupting, but I have been known to butt in to stream of consciousness speech, saying, "Okay, and what's your point?"

In my experience, that doesn't help. They don't know what their point is yet; they're just gratuitously holding conversational priority, so they can say what it is the instant they figure it out.

Once I detect stream-of-consciousness, I do a warning signal, like a frown or a yawn, then I make a visual cue that I'm exiting the conversation.

The Church of Interruption and Barker conversational style just doesn't work for me. I expect to be able to speak complete thoughts and listen to complete thoughts--thoughts that have a timely conclusion.

Re: The Church of Interruption

#130

Post by paulsutter »

I’ve noticed this can happen in Slack. I see someone is typing - and because I assume it’s a full duplex channel, I start typing too while I wait for their answer. And they stop typing. When I delete what I began to type, they resume.
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