🙋 "Excuse me, I have something to say!"
POV: You're in a meeting and someone interrupts the speaker rudely. How can we avoid this situation?
It is truly a fine line between asserting yourself in a meeting and interrupting. Maybe you feel like people are talking over you, or you get left out in the conversation, so you try to regain control by interrupting.
But when it’s done repetitively, and when it doesn’t come from a place of purpose, interrupting can be damaging not only to the productivity of the meeting, but also the image of the interrupter.
The real culprits of interruption
Before we go to the strategies of how to deal with interrupters, let’s first get informed on what counts as interruption. According to new research from Stanford’s doctoral candidate for linguistics, Katherine Hilton, our perceptions of what ‘interruption’ is differ depending on conversational styles and gender.
Conversational Styles
High-Intensity: Generally uncomfortable with moments of silence in conversation and consider talking at the same time, especially when expressing agreement, a sign of engagement instead of interruption.
Low-Intensity: Find any amount of simultaneous chitchat as a rude interruption, regardless of what the speakers were saying, and prefer people speak one at a time in conversation.
Gender
Katherine’s research shows that there are systematic gender disparities in how we interpret interruptions.
Male listeners are more likely to view a female speaker who interrupted as ruder, less friendly and less intelligent than if the interrupter were male.
Female listeners did not show a significant bias in favor of female or male speakers.
Read the full The Guardian article + more insights from Katherine’s research here.
Understanding interrupters
From the POV of a bystander, there are a few ways we can deal with an interrupter, depending on why they do it in the first place. Some common reasons interrupters arise in a conversation are:
They are processing. Some people get excited as they begin to understand your point, and tend to process their ideas out loud.
They interrupt to help. They’re not trying to be rude with their comments, but rather trying to put you at ease during silent moments.
They are in a hurry. A person could interrupt because they’re trying to get you to speed up. They might be clueless on how rude and selfish they come across.
They are upset. When someone is feeling frustrated because they feel like they aren’t being heard, they interrupt. The facilitator of the discussion might be to blame for not giving everyone an opportunity to speak.
When dealing with an interrupter, the goal is to be firm but kind as to not escalate the situation. You can try:
Ignoring the interruption. Especially when the person is just processing their thoughts out loud, it’s best to ignore the interruption and keep talking.
Setting communication rules. Avoid people feeling frustrated and talking over one another, by setting communications rules at the onset of the conversation—like “Please hold your thoughts until the end of the presentation”.
Ask questions. A facilitator could stop the speaker and allow the audience an outlet to ask questions, especially for those lacking self-control to wait.
Confront the interrupter. If while you or someone else is speaking, the interrupter blurbs out their thoughts, you could say something like, “I want to hear what you have to say, but could you let me finish my thoughts first?”.
Learn more about dealing with interrupters in the full article here.
Guilty as charged
If you’ve been told before to lessen your interruptions in conversations, or you feel that you might fall in the category of interrupting—instead of just speaking up or cooperating with the speaker, you might need to keep these tips in mind to stay away from the toxic habit of interrupting:
Treat the conversation as an opportunity to learn. It’s hard to learn anything unless you stop talking and start listening.
Use meditation techniques → use a breathing technique to keep your focus → process the other person’s point better by allowing things to pass in and out of the body and mind more smoothly.
Repeat the other person’s points → use a reflective listening technique → either repeat or paraphrase what people are saying every once in a while in the conversation.
Be transparent. If chronic interruption has become part of your communication style, it might even help to tell people that you’re trying to improve. Address the elephant in the room and ask people to call you out.
Once you’ve learned to listen better in conversations, you should now be able to manage your interruptions better. At times when you really think that you need to interrupt in a conversation, you can do it politely by:
Asking for permission to jump in
What to say: “Can I interrupt for a moment?”
Apologize for the interruption
What to say: “I’m really sorry for interrupting, but…”
Chime in with a relevant point
What to say: “While we’re on that topic…”
Lay ground rules from the beginning
What to say: “Would you prefer that we hold our questions and suggestions until the end?”
Find more details regarding the ways to quit a toxic interruption habit here, and dive deeper into the examples of polite interruptions in the Inc article here.
Are you a chronic interrupter, or knows someone who is?
Share this Monday Mavens edition to your friends and colleagues, so that your next meetings will be even more productive—with less awkward moments.
‘Till next week!