Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Whether you're at work, having dinner with the family, or sitting on the couch with your significant other, everyone has experienced being interrupted at one time or another. You may even be guilty of it yourself. While an occasional interruption while you're talking might be annoying, it probably doesn't really phase you in the grand scheme of things.
But if you're dealing with a chronic interrupter, that is an entirely different story. The constant interruptions can start to wreak havoc on your relationship—especially if you feel like you never get to finish a thought.
Let's face it. Everyone wants to feel heard. And if you feel like you're not, then it can begin to erode the relationship. After all, consistent interruptions by the same person not only feel like a lack of respect for you and your thoughts, but they also demonstrate apparent self-centeredness.
Interruptions also can make you feel insignificant and unimportant—that what you are trying to say isn't worthy of being listened to. Some tendencies to interrupt stem from cultural differences and family backgrounds.
Interrupting just seems natural to them. Meanwhile, other interrupters are impatient, goal-driven people who like to get straight to the point. And their way of making that happen is to interrupt and usurp the control in the conversation.
Some people interrupt because they are so excited about what you are saying they cannot wait until you finish to contribute their thoughts and feelings. Likewise, many chronic interrupters have no idea they are even doing it. To them, interrupting other people is what makes the conversation interesting and dynamic. Interestingly, men interrupt women more than they interrupt men. According to the researchers, during a three-minute conversation, men interrupted women 2.
By contrast, when speaking with men for the same length of time, they only interrupted 1. Meanwhile, women on average only interrupted men once. But regardless of gender or who is doing the interrupting, the reality is that at the moment when an interruption occurs, the interrupter is communicating that their question—or what they have to say—takes precedence over your thoughts and opinions.
Additionally, whether they are aware of it or not, chronic interrupters are asserting their power, their knowledge, and their ideas at your expense. And in extreme situations, interrupting can be anything but altruistic. In fact, interruption is often a tactic used by emotionally abusive people who use it as a way to assert dominance and control. For this reason, it's important to know how to handle interruptions with grace and dignity and still be able to get your point across.
The reality is that there are only so many interruptions a discussion can take before it ceases to be a discussion. For this reason, chronic interruptions are conversation killers that disrupt a healthy exchange of information. If you imply that a contribution was not valuable, you often end up looking bad.
To avoid this, he interrupts gently, segueing to thank the speaker for sharing, ignoring it when little progress was made. Then Frieman quickly turns the conversation so that the rambler has no chance to resume with the foregone point. She says she spent a large percentage of her time during the project in global conference calls, some starting as early as or as late as Interrupting others was an integral part of leading calls, she says, and it was made easier because the team had taken time up front to define clear roles and responsibilities.
When calls were of an exploratory nature at the beginning of the project, Barta took a more open-ended communication approach. But as project deadlines loomed, she was more willing to jump in. Often, she says she interrupted when she felt she had heard enough arguments for or against a certain point that needed to be decided. It was time to override the chatter and call the matter to vote. You usually have to wait for the real break to speak. On calls, you have to be a bit pushier than in in-person meetings.
Interruptions are complicated by a range of issues, from your gender and style of speaking to the engagement of your listener and your perceived value in the workplace.
The first key to navigating that complexity is to be aware that not every verbal intersection is an interruption. And work on keeping the interruption useful and conversational and not let it get adversarial, he says. Tannen says that both speakers and listeners need to understand that the interruption may not be intended to disrupt the conversation.
In some cases, workplace guidelines about how to indicate when someone is finished speaking or how to manage interruptions when they happen can be helpful. AWS Deloitte Genpact. Events Innovation Festival. Follow us:. By Gwen Moran 4 minute Read. Is it really an interruption? Managing interruptions Interruptions are complicated by a range of issues, from your gender and style of speaking to the engagement of your listener and your perceived value in the workplace.
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