How to Navigate Being the Only Woman on Your Team
builtincolorado.com
builtincolorado.com
This is exactly what I find useful. When men interrupt women, it's usually not because of an intention to discriminate, to devalue what the women are about to say, or to express disapproval of the women. It's simply an unconscious action. There is no ill will. This is the reason why women can prevent the interruption just by saying "let me finish my thought" or even just by ignoring the interruption and keep on talking.
I wish more women did this. This will subconsciously let everyone know interrupting is not okay.
Not sure how to let that tie into getting around complex issues, though the idea of other team members having to yield their time to the speaker to continue is probably relevant (I mean let's face it: international diplomacy formalities exist for a reason, to solve problems with significantly higher stakes).
https://www.virginialawreview.org/sites/virginialawreview.or...
> Finally, we considered the possibility that seniority may be at play and that gender simply coincides with seniority. We recognized that two of the three female Justices, Justice Kagan and Justice Sotomayor, are more junior on the Court and that each is interrupted far more frequently than Justice Ginsburg. In addition, Table 1 provides some provisional support for the seniority hypothesis because of the most senior Justices - Ginsburg, Kennedy, Scalia, and Breyer — only Ginsburg and Breyer are interrupted at high rates. In contrast, the more junior Justices — Kagan, Sotomayor, and Alito — account for the other seven high interruption rates.
And yes, there is much nuance in the article, and they do consider and analyze confounding factors, but your cherry-picked quotation seems to indicate a lack of genuine curiosity on your part.
It's a "total dataset" of the most narrow and small sample size possible. You are being very deceptive here by trying to dismiss the guy's concern over small sample size with "total dataset" as if that compensates for a minuscule sample size. The supreme court ( all nine or so members ) and the oral arguments isn't a sample size worth drawing any objective general conclusions from. You might as well draw general physical conditions of americans based solely on the los angeles lakers.
> And yes, there is much nuance in the article, and they do consider and analyze confounding factors, but your cherry-picked quotation seems to indicate a lack of genuine curiosity on your part.
You are projecting here. The only one who cherrypicked here is you. The guy responded to your cherrypicked data.
> not actually a small sample size, but a total dataset
Guess I didn't articulate super well. That dataset only covers a very small number of people in a very artificial environment - top lawyers dissecting legal matters from opposite sides of almost every spectrum is hardly an environment representative of e.g. general conversation. Sure, there's a lot of observations made over a period of time, but it's observations of only 9 people, which is a really tiny group when you're trying to make any extrapolation at all to the general population, even if the circumstances had been anything approaching normal.
> your cherry-picked quotation seems to indicate a lack of genuine curiosity on your part
Are you trying to make a personal jab, or was that just accidental? Maybe 'interrupting' isn't the only interpersonal (systemic?) abrasion that might need fixing in society...
One reason that this study exists is that it's a deliberative body with excellent records. It would be great if longitudinal studies of huge populations existed, but that would require ridiculously expensive (and highly invasive) data acquisition.
That's the problem, isn't it. There's so many things we would know if only we had better data. However, until we actually have useful data, we have to simply acknowledge that there is insufficient data to say anything worth saying. To do otherwise is unscientific.
But we're no longer on single gender hunting teams or war parties. I think it's good that life has gotten so easy that progress today means dealing with feelings related issues as a society.
1) Does interrupting generally increase or decrease communication efficiency.
2) Do males interrupt more? (I believe you are right about this as I recall some studies)
3) Should we optimize for dealing with feelings rather than efficiency? For example: Will the decreased efficiency result in more lost lives due to a delayed cure for cancer or heart disease?
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/no-such-thing-alpha-male-...
It gets better heading towards Central and Northern Europe where it seems like culturally, people interrupt each other less. However then personality plays a bigger role and there are people who just need to insert their opinion right then and there - a pretty annoying trait in either sex, imo.
Usually I like to wait for a brief pause in the conversation, but with some groups of people such pauses either never come or are so brief I can hardly react fast enough to catch it.
(Not in the talk, as the talk wasn't actually about any of this, despite how much time I dedicated to it... it was about working from home.) I do feel like there is a real problem here in that we have a systemic issue (in addition to some people who are just directly assholes who don't want to hear women speak; I 100% appreciate that these people, unfortunately, exist) where we have taught women to be subservient and to not speak up for themselves in lots of contexts, even if the pervading culture of the men around them involves a very short short turn delay, and one aspect of this is "they don't interrupt people"... men do interrupt people, as part of simply being taught that our new information is de facto valuable, and we thereby have an advantage over women. It isn't because we are rude: it is because we have a different dynamic ingrained in us by our (joint) surrounding culture and it is absolutely unfair and biased against women. And so we need to be cognizant of this and do it less with women and even actively "make space" for women to speak. But, at the same time, we should be training women that interruption is ok and that not only will they do better if they interrupt but the entire team might benefit from their interruption, and that being good at the predictive modeling is a conversational skill everyone must have anyway and for which there is general value if you get better.
On the other hand, I agree with you. I see some people saying "interruption is ok". I disagree. It has to be an exception reserved for keeping the meeting on track. The normal course of things should be that everyone gets their turn to say their bit or to "pass". People who aren't able to wait for their turn or take too long typically will understand if you/the-manager have/has a brief chat with them later (or the person who called for the meeting should bring them back on track).
You do need to time it right to get the word in, but you can’t wait for a silent moment.
It’s like merging on the highway. You can’t wait for all cars to stop. Have to time the merge correctly and force your way in, even if nobody is letting you in.
Person A: "If the system's going to be configured with option X-"
Person B: "We just heard we're definitely going with option Y"
Person A: "Oh thanks, so.."
Nobody is served by person A going on that tangent with a false assumption, so a quick interruption is fine.
Of course needless or rude interruptions are bad. Maybe part of this should be that women should be made to feel more comfortable giving necessary interruptions like in my example.
So when she concluded her explanation I had to go "sorry, what I actually meant to ask was ...".
The interruptions for clarification and false assumption are not the interruptions OP is talking about. In the example given, person B does not try to actively take control of the conversation, just quickly inserts a correction and allows person A to continue. So there's no need for persona A to say "let me finish my thought".
It's not that women should be made to feel more comfortable giving these soft types of interruptions... it isn't that hard to correct someone's factual mistakes. It's that interruptions are used by dominant people as a political tool to assert hierarchies and for control. Women do it too, it's not a gender issue but I can imagine it more difficult in gender imbalanced teams and with gender stereotypes in play.
In my opinion if a person has to say "can you let me finish my thought" the interruption is never justified. Even if someone is rambling or mistaken, there are better ways to deal with that - for instance, asking them to be more concise in their presentation of their point. Being proud of a culture of interruption is admitting politics is how you make your decisions and how your team works together.
Why not the interrupter? Why not somebody else?
It's the interrupted's job to correct the behaviour because they're the one who wants it corrected.
It could be someone else's job as well, but its still going to be the interrupted's job.
I'm in this situation a lot, I'm trans and my voice really does not match my appearance. People get confused, I understand, but beyond the first "please address me this way" I am in no way responsible for the difficulty people have in going through with the request. Do note that I personally really don't go out of my way to confront people if they keep doing it, I just avoid them as much as I can, because in current corporate cultures, you cannot win a confrontation like this if the person you're complaining to has issues relating to you. And for most people pronouns and honorifics are not a big deal. As I'd expect that sexism is not for men. But ideally anyone in my situation would be entirely justified to make a fuss about it.
It is not the fault or responsibility of anyone negatively affected to treat you with gloves. You should know better than taking it as a personal insult when someone pulls you aside and tells you "you're are possibly having this common bias, please be mindful of it".
Ultimately meetings become more equitable as the median level of insight and eloquence increases.
Interruptions on video calls are also significantly worse than those that happen in-person, because the presence of a louder person's audio will often completely erase the audio of anyone who was trying to speak at the same time. At least in real-life, you can still catch what the quiet person said amongst the noise if you were paying attention.
You should not assume malice on the part of your co-workers. Just because someone interrupted you doesn't mean they don't value your input. In the case when it's obvious that they don't, don't hesitate to push back, but in most cases it's not going to be anything of the sort. It's just someone else being socially awkward while trying to wedge themselves into the conversation.
And every single time she gets interrupted, she is forced to make a choice: is this the time I'm going to insist and risk getting a reputation for being unpleasant, or am I just going to let it slide because they don't mean it unkindly.
Try this: the next time you see a woman being interrupted, you say, "Hang on, I wanted to hear the rest of that." That not only sends the message that interrupting isn't ok, but it also saves her the effort of making that decision yet again. It's no surprise that they often end up choosing not to, solely as a matter of picking their battles. Ending that unconscious sexism shouldn't just be on them.
Now don't get me wrong, interrupting can be one way of telling someone that they are inadequate and you already know what they're going to say, or that what they say doesn't matter. But it doesn't always mean that. Sometimes it can mean excited agreement. But when it doesn't, it can be really painful, since it feels like you don't want to have an argument every time you open your mouth, or get cut off mid-sentence every time.
I think in the end what it really comes down to is do you feel respected? A lot of this gets back to imposter syndrome as the root (not communication style, although they may be correlated), and toxic people.
On the other hand, I can also not be interrupted and still be disrespected. Just because someone waits until you are finished doesn't mean they are listening.
(And yes, I am a woman, and I do feel that it's harder to feel respected than it should, but it's not always about interruptions)
TLDR: sarcasm
Actually, it works for guys, too.