Zoom is really challenging, because the latency & diminished facial/body language makes it harder for the listener to break into the conversation. If someone’s off on a tangent, you literally have to talk over them for 5 seconds to indicate you’re taking the baton for a minute. So a lot of people don’t do it, they’ll just let you monologue.
What I do is check for feedback like “does that make sense”, or “so far so good?”, just to give them a chance to break in. Though you also need to be careful with that, because this can sound like “do you understand, are you keeping up, you big slow dummy”.
I heard one in the opposite direction. I’ll probably get all the details wrong, but it was something that started with a speaker asked how much time he needed to prepare to make a 15 minute speech on a particular topic. Two weeks was the answer. How about a 30 minute speech? 3 days. How about an hour speech? Oh, I can do that right now.
It’s hard to make your point concisely, especially on a topic you’re expert on. Easy to go on for hours.
Start with something mundane and trivial to start the communication process. If all that comes to mind is the weather, then comment on the weather. Listen to the response. Smile knowingly or in commiseration, but smile.
Ask questions. Don’t get technical right away. If it suits the circumstances I ask where they live, or where they are from. If they’re local ask what town they’re from. Ask where they went to school. When they tell you try to say something about it, even if it’s how you’ve never been there. If you know something bring that up. Don’t dwell on this part too long. Move on from this point.
Bring up the subject you’re talking about. Ask them something general about the subject. Use that response to slide a little deeper into the subject, but do it by asking questions. “Do you think we need to do something about the latest figures?”. “Is this a problem for you?” “Do you have some plan to proceed”. Maybe you’re just talking movies. Ask “Did you see ____?” Did you like _____ in ________? The key is asking questions and pretending to be interested in the answers. If you’re lucky you might actually be interested.
Now start talking. If they have little to add to the conversation ask more questions.
Yes. No. No. I should definitely asked them if they want the short or long version. Asking more questions is usually good.
A rather impressive amount of wisdom here. It all checks out to me.
Listen really hard for the message, and respond in accordance with the message
Yeah I should probably do that, shouldn’t I?
I have ADHD too and I have been told by a couple SOs that I might be borderline autistic before so yours was the final curiosity straw:
I just took this adult autism test quiz to find out. Turns out autistic traits are slightly above the population average at 13/30 . So you kinda nailed it. I’m impressed and/or amused.
What feels impossible to me is talking without first deciding the key point(s) I want to get across (or talking when I don’t have key points to get across).
It seems to me that [oversimplification] there are two kinds of people: (1) people who can’t talk (or write) without first thinking about what to say and how to say it, and (2) people who can’t think without talking (or writing) to see what they have to say. [/oversimplification]
I’m the first kind of person, and I have difficulty talking enough, especially in situations like real-time conversation. If you’re the second kind of person, your brain works differently from mine, and you’d be better off getting advice from people whose brains work similarly to yours and who have figured out how to deal with it.
Good point. Perhaps I need to be patient and wait for them to ask the question, or if they don’t ask, perhaps let them make their mistakes first and THEN ask the question later. We do learn most from our mistakes afterall.
You can steer them in the right direction by asking them questions, rather than telling them. “We haven’t really touched on the the redundancy interface. Tell me, do you prefer your backups to be server-based or cloud-based?”
It strikes me that although neither the OP and I are in sales, we need to employ a lot of sales techniques to draw out the client, discern their needs, and make them comfortable with our product/service.
Are you the leader on these Zoom calls, or just one of the participants?
I hate to be a pedant but it was still called the Intelegraph back then, almost identical to twitter today, except more expensive.
I’d say it’s 50/50.
Sometimes, things are as they should be, with customers really taking ownership and doing their homework and listening to feedback most of the time. They talk to me early enough to vet their ideas before potentially going down a less efficient road or reinventing a wheel. It’s a beautiful thing and I enjoy my job in those moments.
Just as often, or perhaps more often, I find that the customer leadership hired the lowest bidding company to handle their Data Science/Machine Learning OPS. And how can that company afford such a low bid? By assigning the juniorest of juniors to accounts and seeing if they can get away with it. I lecture more in those cases after I ask questions and no one knows about a topic.
One thing you might try is to get everyone to agree on a clear objective for the call/meeting. Even the lowest junior who got stuck with being your contact doesn’t want to be seen as wasting the company’s money on endless charges from consultants.
Example - Why are we meeting?
a) We have an immediate problem which requires your attention
b) We are considering something and would like your input
c) We have a vague sense of unease because competitor X is doing something.
d) We don’t know but the contract says we have a weekly conference call.
Obviously a and b make for a focused meeting, although with b you might want to do additional research and get back to them later. Likewise, c requires some additional digging on your part. And b and c may solve your inner need to lecture, if you can’t boil it down to bullet points.
As for d, do the check in, ask if there’s anything that’s been on their minds, set a time for the next call and get off ASAP.
I have found systems like Zoom or Teams (we use the latter in our company) better suited to interject something that in-person communication, though, because you can just send the speaker a chat message e.g. Re X-project [that speaker expounds on at length] - customer sent mail 2 minutes ago - project cancelled. Or you can raise a yellow hand in your window if you do not want to immediately cut off the stream.
I am very loth to interrupt people speaking - make that totally unwilling to interrupt people - but the group chat is an ideal tool for that.
Actually, “does that make sense” is my go to. I feel the subtext is a humble “did I do a good job explaining?” vs a negative “are you quick enough to understand me?”.
And indeed I suspect that most people don’t want to hurt my feelings because it is rare for someone to say “Actually, that didn’t make sense to me”.
Props to the OP for self-awareness. I suspect they are not nearly among the worst bores as the bad ones are totally unaware that they are. They think they are good speakers because they can produce an uninterrupted stream of words.
I hope I do not drone on myself, in fact I am the sort of person who when my wife notes that I have not said ‘I love you’ lately, thinks (but in the interest of self-preservation, does not say): I have already said that 14 years ago, and there has been no change since.
Personally I very much suffer in the company of long-winded people.
Two notes that may or may not apply:
It may help to put oneself in the other party’s shoes. For the other party the conversation they are having with me may well be chore #187 out of 500 to be done today, it is already early afternoon, and they may already yearn for, and despair in reaching in time, action items #499 (lights out) and #500 (turn on their side).
Avoid false exits (i.e. giving the vocal signs of finishing your turn, the other party already drawing breath to respond, but then continuing to talk). That is something that drives me up the wall. Especially with questions. After you have got to the question mark, shut up and let the other person answer FFS.
I am both jealous of those characters, and of the characters that converse with them. As noted by @Roderick_Femm above, such dialogue does not occur in reality. More’s the pity.
I enjoy talking with people who state one idea, clearly, then shut up and let it be the others’ turn. Unfortunately verbosity and unstructured speech trains the interlocutor to like behaviour: If people notice that once they have finished their turn they will not get it back for a long time, the lesson learned will be that they need to hold on to their turn as long as possible.
. . Limit the scope of my answer.