Hush!
“I really like it when people let me finish.”
That one is the only method that works with my mother, an interrupter who thinks she knows what you wanted to say better than you did and who can talk for hours without breath pauses. Some of the less-nuclear methods (like your own “lifting a finger”) work with lesser interrumpters; when I meet a new one I generally start with lower measures and escalate until I find the lowest-blood method to use with this new interrupter. The Look; lifting my hand as if I was back in school; waiting until they’re done and then “as I was saying,…”
Me too!
Simply stop until they finish. If you are training someone, are you also evaluating them? In that case say that training was impossible because the only person he would listen to was himself.
And what do you expect the OP’s manager to think about the OPs’s effectiveness as a trainer or leader?
The way you deal with an interrupter when you are presenting or leading a discussion is to just start speaking. If they don’t take your lead to stop talking then you can make a motion like raising your finger or whatever. If they still continue, then you simply stop the discussion and politely say something like “that’s a great point, however we have a lot of material to cover, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to continue.”
Is there not a point where, if the behavior continues, you actually tell them about it? Because, add something like that, and I think you have a great idea.
Leave it out, though, and I think you may run into the guy who is completely oblivious. Some people will need to be directly told. They don’t take hints.
I like that approach. It’s hard to forge ahead through the awkwardness, and it’s definitely my impulse to stop talking when someone interrupts me. But I think stopping talking is detrimental. It’s hard to talk simultaneously with someone when you’re socially aware but I think it’s a worthy technique to keep in the arsenal.
YES. That is what I’m dealing with here. He can run his mouth for ten minutes straight without seeming to pause for air, to collect a thought, or give me a chance to respond to anything he’s said.
I love this. It seems to me that interrupters are often rewarded for their behavior. It’s heartening to hear about someone who will acknowledge how crappy it is.
If I hated him I’d do this. I really would. But he’s an enthusiastic volunteer who is genuinely excited to work for free. So I can’t be too aggressive on my approach.
It’s funny to me to think about an HR department supporting my work. I’m doing an entirely different job than what I was hired for without a pay raise or title change. I’m doing it because the tasks look good on my resume. I am basically a project manager, running the digitization of an archive, but when I asked to be recognized for the good work I’ve done with more money and/or a different job title that reflects what I do (rather than “aide”), I was told I could go back to collecting library fines and checking out books if I wasn’t happy working in the archive.
This is a whole separate issue. But yeah - I’m training volunteers, planning and executing digital projects start to finish, keeping the archive website updated with fresh content which I generate and process… It’s a fun job. I make $10.16/hour and feel taken advantage of. I am. The idea of having HR support is so foreign it’s nearly funny to me.
Anyway. /whine
Yeah, if it becomes more than just a communication problem and turns into a constant disruption, you are well within your rights to take them aside and speak to them about their behavior.
Meeting facilitation is a difficult skill that takes time to learn. It’s different from giving a presentation in that as a presenter, you are presumed to be the only one speaking. When facilitating a discussion, other people may engage in the discussion and may get into heated debates. The trick is knowing when to let it continue and when and how to cut it off and steer the discussion back on topic.
But you can be direct.
Can you have a sit down conversation that begins with: “We need to talk about you being able to listen to what others have to say.”?
There are people, some who happen to be very good at things like digitizing data sets and programming and having a large fund of facts, who are notoriously poor at understanding the rules of social interaction such as turn taking skills. He may be one of those people and even be aware that he is one of those people yet still be completely unaware when he is doing it. If directly approached he may share that he knows that it is a problem he has had before and be open to your giving him an agreed upon sign that he doing it again. And if he is not aware that it is a problem then it is long time that someone shared with him that it is.
Johnny Cash handled the inmates at San Quentin pretty well by saying “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you. I was talking.”
I have a similar issue I run into constantly while communicating with my family members, although it’s a little harder to deal with than straight-out interruptions. I would have no trouble telling them off if it were just an interruption. What I get every time I am talking to certain family members is the interrupting noise or sigh and the facial expression that says, “I am no longer listening, I am only thinking about my response.” So I end up rushing and speaking faster, trying to keep them engaged as long as possible in what I am saying but I can always tell they have already tuned out.
I could understand if I were long-winded or the type of person who loved to go on and on with random stories, but I am NOT that guy. When talking to them, if I go on for literally more than FIVE seconds, I lose them.
Somehow they are even able to do this while on the phone, but I am not sure exactly how it happens. There’s just these constant noises and affirmations while I’m talking and the tone is not “cool, go on” but rather “ok I get it, shut up already”. When I get off the phone I am EXHAUSTED from trying to keep their attention and I realize I forgot to communicate half the stuff I was planning to, but no way am I going to bother calling back.
My workplace issue isn’t interrupters…it’s people who talk so much and so fast others can’t get a word in edgewise. This is compounded by the fact that the main talker is a remote employee, so as she’s yakking at us through the phone, she’s missing the myriad nonverbal cues that would tell her that others want their turn to speak.
I’m sure if you were to ask her, she would say she is the one who never gets a word in. People are funny are like that.
“That’s what I was wondering.”
I have one friend who I used to interrupt all the time, and, while I will happily take a hefty share of the blame, it was a least partially because she would try to string together multiple thoughts. So she’d make a fairly lengthy and complicated point, which I would want to respond to, and then she would just go right on to the next fairly lengthy and complicated point. I was sure that by the time she finished the second point anything I wanted to say in response to the first point would already be irrelevant.
I tried to convince her to take is a compliment… if I hadn’t been so interested in what she had to say, and so eager to engage her in intellectual back-and-forth, It wouldn’t have been so important for me to get a chance to make my points. But I realize that was at least partially rationalization on my part…
Hi, my name is Misnomer, and I’m an interrupter.
Like Rachellelogram, I often finish other people’s sentences. With me it’s not impatience, though, and it’s not that I have ADHD or an inability to understand subtler social cues or that I’m not interested in what the other person is saying: I’m paying close attention and am fully engaged in the conversation, I’m simply trying to show that I understand what they’re saying. I don’t then start rambling and never get back to their point, it’s more like I’m guessing their point to show that we’re on the same page.
It’s the normal style of conversation among my immediate family, and it took an embarrasingly long time (almost 40 years) for me to realize that what I’d been chalking up to simply “different communication styles” was actually pretty rude on my part. Every now and then I meet someone with a similar style, and there’s always a sense of relief that we can just talk freely and no one will be insulted or feel that the other person is rude (I never think it’s rude when someone does it to me; in fact, I barely register it). I once had a co-worker with a similar style and we would constantly interrupt each other during our staff meetings: our boss and other co-workers would just start laughing because no one else could follow our conversations, yet she and I were totally fine with each other. Heh.
Anyway, since I became aware of actually being rude – which was a difficult realization, because I like to think of myself as a thoughtful and considerate person – I’ve been making a conscious effort to let others finish their sentences/thoughts. Especially recently, because I’ve started working with two people who not only speak slowly but who I hardly ever “guess” correctly: I’m often incorrect when I try to predict what they mean. They are both very smart and worth listening to, so I double my efforts (at letting them finish) when I talk with them.
My G/F does this constantly, with me and everyone else. She says, out loud, things that other people would normally just be thinking. If she thinks it, she says it. No sifting. Or when someone has the floor and is telling a story she just jumps in with her own tangentially related story. Its embarrassing when she does this around strangers. When I call her on it she claims its something all women do and the girls don’t mind it when they are talking with other girls. “Multi-tasking” she says. I’ve tried everything. If I’m subtle, she doesn’t pick up on it. If I’m blunt, I’m being rude. For the most part, I just stop talking in mid-sentence and, when she appears to be finished, I ask "Now, may I continue? And I do. Until the next interruption. Sometimes I get really angry and say, “Will you PLEASE shut the fuck up and let me finish?!” That usually work for about five minutes. In the end she simply refuses to believe there is anything wrong with it. For the most part, I’ve just learned to live with it. Maybe a shock collar of some sort?