Wait vs. Interrupt Culture
benjaminrosshoffman.com
benjaminrosshoffman.com
A) Anticipate up front what other person needs to hear and say it all
B) Rapid adjustment to ideal info requirements as your model of their knowledge/interest is live-updated.
But the trick people seem to miss is that interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts make the whole thing possible.
When I'm talking with someone for whom this style is natural, there can be many very rapid small gestures to interrupt, which sometimes are accepted and sometimes are rejected by a small "just let me keep going, you'll see why" gesture. Each of those gestures takes a fraction of a second (and generally does not actually break flow of speech, just eye contact + a little head motion), and conversations employing them are far more enjoyable because information flow is near optimal.
On the other hand, when speaking with anti-interrupt people, I often get so bored it's hard to pay attention because either 1) they left something out that I wanted to ask about so I can't follow what they are saying, or 2) I already had a thorough understanding of something they insist on giving a long explanation of.
But here is the thing. Not everyone is well versed in how those semantics play out. And even those that are, have well agreed "cards" that can be done in different situations. To argue that all things should be "instant" playable is a tough sell.
That is, this all only works if you know what "plays" each side can do, and you agree on when each one can be played. Card games with instants captures this remarkably well. In that you have a finite number of "interrupt" cards, and are often limited to how many times you can play each one.
All of this hinges on and ends up being managed by each person giving the other a certain amount of benefit of the doubt, that any of these interrupt-related actions are being done out of a genuine desire to communicate effectively (vs someone trying to make some kind of power play). With that trust in place you don't need to know any "rules", this all emerges quite naturally.
In terms of knowing when/whether you can interrupt the interrupter/counter-interrupt/etc., see my other post in this thread about how the time of interrupters talking over each other is a signal to both that's constantly evolving (because the increasing time is an increasingly strong signal).
Now, I fully grant that the largest poison in all of this is the transactional view of conversation. The interrupt style is still predicated on an open transaction that will eventually commit.
You are right, at least for people who have poor social skills, are emotionally unstable or immature in some way, including people with autism, ADHD, dementia, children, etc.
With such people arround, it may be better to have clearly defined rules for who speaks when. The same goes in situations where people come from very different background or there are very low levels of trust to start with.
The better a group of people are at communicating in a cooperative manner, the fewer hard rules are needed.
As far the actual signaling goes, AFAICT it's pretty built-in (though I can imagine in other countries for instance there are likely enough differences that you'd have to take time to learn specific signals): I can go into this style of conversation immediately with strangers as long as we're at least giving each other a little benefit of the doubt.
My concern is more in the ones that aren't quite as stark. Role play that you are talking to someone that doesn't feel safe enough to tell you that they don't feel perfectly safe. Now, how do you know this? If they felt safe, you could ask. But, we have established that they don't, per the role play.
And this is a large part of why the conversation around "privilege" is so tough. At large, what we call "privilege" can be easily recast to more subtle dynamics of folks that are allowed to give voice without as much interruptions. Note, not none. Just fewer. (Note that there are obviously other aspects to this that don't necessarily make the recasting.)
What I'm describing is founded on both participants being well-intentioned. If one person interrupts another to ask for a clarification, or to let them know they are already aware of something, and the original speaker is threatened by it, I would say this is an unusual circumstance: someone with a preoccupation about being interrupted may feel that way and may need special treatment, sure. If they are uncomfortable about it, hopefully the well-intentioned interrupter is able to perceive that. If there is a combo of someone with this preoccupation + someone who is bad at reading body language, that would be unfortunate.
As far as that recasting of privilege, it's an insightful metaphor imo, but at the end of the day still just a metaphor: the dynamics of not having your voice heard in society are in practice just a separate matter from this communication style.
My brain (maybe this is arrogant but here we go) works faster than conversation so I have to work harder in wait cultures, but after years of this I'm 100% on board. I _super hate_ to be interrupted: I don't go on and on and I'm generally saying things I want others to hear. People think they know what I'm going to say, they almost never do. People want to interrogate a minor thing I just said, but it derails us all and wasn't the overarching point I was trying to make. On and on.
I'm not saying "don't ever ever interrupt"; sometimes it's critical to stop--respectfully--and clarify something important, like "aha that's what we're misunderstanding here" or whatever. But it should be like, "I know interrupting is disrespectful, but I feel like we could solve this right now, so bear with me." I think what most people in this thread are talking about isn't the occasional interruption, but the constant interrupt/overtalk style.
Anyway, maybe there are others with experiences in diverse workplaces (genders, races, backgrounds, etc.) where interrupt culture works, but I'm skeptical. I think in those situations you're always building mutual respect and team trust, and as such interrupt culture is out of reach. I disagree that these issues are separate from communication style--the medium is the message here and interrupt culture benefits people who haven't experienced barriers to interrupting/overtalking others--largely not women, but also not introverts or people with anxiety, etc. I think if you're "well-intentioned", you're taking those factors into consideration as well.
Eh, my impression is that he's extremely arrogant and doesn't care what anyone else thinks. He's deeply uncurious and consequently relatively ignorant. He rarely engages in good faith with the facts and merits, and frequently misconstrues them to suit his own ideology. These are not the acts of an active listener who wants to learn and be shaped by what they learn. They're the acts of someone who believes they've got it all figured out.
> Not everyone is well versed in how those semantics play out
I would argue that this is not necessary: just watch younger people who are friendly with each other discuss something: what I'm describing is a natural mode of communication. AFAICT it's just overridden in certain cases when people are taught "never interrupt someone speaking" or something along those lines.
But I would be curious if you could lay out the tradeoffs with instant plays in the card game semantics you mentioned.
The article does cover this. They have moderators that would keep things on track. Most of your interactions on a daily basis don't have moderators.
However, I'd also argue that in most cases these social group hierarchical roles aren't going to end up having a large influence on communication style: typically it's only if there's something pressing going on. (Or, as I've already described elsewhere, if someone is unfairly taking advantage, the negation of which is a condition for cooperative interrupting to work.)
Magic: The Gathering works like a computer (quite literally it's Turing complete). When you play a card or ability, it is put on a stack. After you're done, you need to yield - then the other player may play things on the stack too (but, they can only play "instants" - most other cards can only be played if the stack is empty). Then they must yield, and so on.
(In the 90s, instants meant to interrupt other spells were called "interrupts", but this name was dropped)
After everyone is done, things are popped from the stack in the reverse order they were played (like any stack). So if your opponent played something in response to what you played, their card resolves first, then yours. But if you played something in response to their response, your card resolves first, then theirs, then yours.
This would be very tedious, but in fact most decks have few instants and little interaction with the stack, so most of time you play a card I will just wait it to resolve and generally wait my turn to play. And famously, no card of MtG is allowed to mention the stack in their printed text: while the concept itself is intuitive, talking about the stack is a sure way to make a card overly complicated.
And I'm fairly confident these semantics exist in many card games. Unstable Unicorns has the neigh card. Uno has the rule of declaring uno. (Where you can interrupt the next play by calling uno to force the last player to draw a card. Note that this is a very specific time you can interrupt play.)
Nit: The Split Second keyword ability is usually accompanied by reminder text which mentions the stack
> Split second (As long as this spell is on the stack, players can't cast spells or activate abilities that aren't mana abilities.)
https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...
https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?actio...
Note how the waterhouse's link - https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?actio... - contains a bunch of cards that were playtested but eventually rejected (they are the black-and-white cards with just a rough sketch in place of art), presumably because of the high bar that stack-fiddling cards should meet
Final aside: I used the phrase twice, so it should be clear that the history of said game (again, Yu-Gi-Oh) is plagued with degenerate combos.
EDIT: Editing in this edit to acknowledge that there is a sibling comment with a valid nit that invalidates the reason I responded. In my defense, my slow phone-based composition took me so long I did not see it until this edit. I'm leaving it for the sake of hopefully any nascent game designer getting any insight, I suppose. Or hey, card game players getting their kicks thinking about card game mechanics.
This is actually my single least favorite part of magic compared to yugioh, and I've played both a ton. Instead of a stack, yugioh has a similar first-in-first-out concept called the chain, with two major differences:
1) Every time you place a card on the stack, you yield to your opponent, who can either play a response or yield back to you, and this goes on forever until both of you have yielded without taking an action
2) cards have "spell speeds" of 1, 2, or 3 , where you can only chain an equivalent or higher speed card - this means unlike magic, you can pile up multiple sorceries/spell speed 1 cards into the same resolution queue
Both of these encourage a ton of interaction on the stack/chain, and often times yugioh games are won or lost as the result of a resolution or 5 or more cards and effects piling up and resolving, which is a relative rarity in magic outside of a few combo decks or infinites. Conversely, yugioh also presents a lot of powerful defensive options for interrupting degenerate combos, usually at a high cost.
The difference is that packet has max length and therefore can be mixed with other senders, not be infinite monologue that chokes whole traffic in the network
As for interrupts, you just need to queue them instead of them causing collision. Notice the need for question and let the other side finish the sentence, as what they say next might be answer to question
It cam also be efficient to non-verbally signal a request for interrupt via hand or face gestures.
The real skill is on the fly protocol identification and adaption.
Exactly. Interrupting when you want to talk but being unwilling to yield in return, or unwilling to let them continue if they insist, isn’t an efficient conversational technique, it’s just bulldozing.
I also draw a distinction between interrupting (and then monopolising the floor) and interjecting with a quick addition before handing back to the speaker.
What’s interesting about your preference—that’s what it is, none of this is objective—is how much it reinforces my own interruption aversion, and how much that reflects your preconditions. I just generally prefer communicating with the yields being the prevailing assumption and that the interruption signals deviate to make them more rare.
It’s not, to me, a question of efficiency but with the question posed, I find communication much more efficient when there aren’t N+1 speakers (the interruption queue being the additional participant), particularly when N queues get saturated.
Granted all of this, either approach or any blend of both, takes patience and active effort when preferences don’t match. And granted my preference is also just that, it’s not objective. But I definitely have better communication with people who generally agree to yield communication space without prompting and who generally agree that not yielding automatically is a good indicator that their thoughts are more complex than fit in a tiny contained space.
In contrast to your last paragraph, I get frustrated until I let myself get bored when I’ve got a stack of interruption-paused thoughts that might have addressed any dozens of things said, but which I’ve lost track of entirely by the time the stack unwinds.
And… that was a lot of words, sorry about that. I yield both implicitly and explicitly.
I may be misunderstanding but in what I describe in my post above, yields are the prevailing assumption: I describe them as a critical component that makes this kind of interrupting possible.
> ... and that the interruption signals deviate to make them more rare.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. (This is a point where I would've attempted an "interrupt-request" to get clarification, if we were speaking in person.)
> I get frustrated until I let myself get bored when I’ve got a stack of interruption-paused thoughts that might have addressed any dozens of things said, but which I’ve lost track of entirely by the time the stack unwinds.
It sounds like this may be central to why your preference is interrupt-averse: it sounds like your model of What Needs To Be Said is not updating in response to interruptions, which could be because A) you planned out everything you want to say before, so regardless of the content of interruptions you still think it needs to be said, or B) you find in your experience that the content of interruptions is typically independent of what you're saying, so of course your model of What Needs To Be Said doesn't update, and you have to keep queuing things.
In the case of B, you are communicating with someone who is not cooperatively interrupting to expedite communication; you are dealing with someone interrupting for their own benefit.
In the case of A, you may be pre-deciding that interruptions are useless and won't affect your model of What Needs To Be Said, so you queue things up and say what you were originally going to say anyway.
I don't know which case you are dealing with. I can say in my own experience though that a queue beyond 1 or 2 items is rarely necessary because cooperative interrupts tend to modify what I was going to say as my understanding of our shared informational context evolves, so things I previously was going to say are more frequently discarded rather than queued.
The distinction is that I prefer communicating when the yielding itself is the prevailing assumption, that it doesn’t need to be requested or accepted. That’s what the article describes too. Not yielding to interruption, yielding to other participants and their participation.
> I'm not sure what you mean by this. (This is a point where I would've attempted an "interrupt-request" to get clarification, if we were speaking in person.)
I mean that if a conversation already leaves places for people to enter and yield without interruption, interruption itself is a correction but one you don’t need often. And that’s my preference.
> It sounds like this may be central to why your preference is interrupt-averse: it sounds like your model of What Needs To Be Said is not updating in response to interruptions
I can see why you might think so, but it’s actually the opposite. It’s reacting to too many dangling threads which gets hard to track. Each thread produces a new subqueue of things which could have been addressed in turn if the conversation wasn’t a stack of competing What Needs To Be Said. Sometimes I had something to say that wasn’t readily discarded and sometimes the pile of interruption tangents produces more unsaid things which all could be addressed by just not being interrupted in the first place, or by having a fellow conversation partner inviting me to remain uninterrupted. Even the most cooperative interruption conversations I’ve had tend to pace ahead of that and create related tendrils of topic which can’t be connected at the same pace and produce fractals or misunderstanding.
Ah I think I might see what you're getting at here. I have seen a certain dynamic in group conversations where a subset of the group kinda gets locked into making exchanges, then other participants can't get a word in, so they'd be forced into interrupting as the only recourse. Maybe? In that case I agree, it's good to keep an eye out and make sure everyone is able to participate through a certain amount of conscious turn-taking.
> It’s reacting to too many dangling threads which gets hard to track.
> sometimes the pile of interruption tangents produces more unsaid things
I think we are talking about two different things. You seem to be referring to topic-switching interruptions; I'm specifically referring to interruptions which engage with what the speaker is saying, requesting info that's needed to make any sense of what's being said (e.g. they are talking about Zoikbugs but you don't know what a Zoikbug is, and they thought you did, so you need to ask for a quick definition and then let them resume), or, to let them know it's unneeded to continue on a particular strand because you already have the info (in this second case it's possible for the would-be interrupter to be incorrect, but that's why "interrupt-denies" are so critical: in less then a second, via eyes, hands, posture etc. you can have one person communicate, "Gotcha, I see where you're going, now lemme respond" and for the other person to reply "I know why you think that, but just hang on", with no actual, or extremely brief, interruption to speech; or there can just be a light confirmation: you, as the original speaker, yield to your interlocutor and allow them to speak and for the conversation to move along its natural course; if it turns out they didn't anticipate you correctly after all, you counter-interrupt and if they're "playing fair", they should desist).
If someone is interrupting to talk about something different, adding tangents or disallowing you from completing an idea, that's another matter entirely.
Yep! And it’s what the article was getting at too. I probably wouldn’t have been able to articulate it as well without that.
> I think we are talking about two different things.
I could go into the details of the rest of what you said here, but I’m going to yield because we’ve both perfectly demonstrated one another’s points without either intending to do so. :)
In particular, people not used to get interrupted don't structure their talk in the same ways, and that makes is difficult to ad-hoc switch from one style to the other.
IMO talking in small bursts and checking on the listener to see how they receive it could be seen as the best of both worlds and work with less coordination than either style.
Once I entered the professional world, I found that people (especially managers) would interrupt me all the time. I was a bit shocked - it felt animalistic, as though people were just not interested in having a "real" conversation.
Instead of becoming bitter about it, I just tried to adapt. I figured "ok, I need to express my thought in about 3 seconds or else I'll get interrupted". This seems to have worked quite well. It's forced me to think hard about what the crux of my argument is and then get it out as fast as possible. I never really thought about it much until seeing this article, but I think being interrupted has made me a better communicator.
I was working with a client based in another country (which made me a little less certain about customs/etiquette), and our relationship was a little similar to manager/subordinate (esp. because I had a peer in meetings which he would somewhat direct).
For the first several months we were actually pretty strictly non-interrupting in conversation, but there was a transition at some point because a lot needed to be communicated and everyone involved was very interested/engaged. I think he was a bit taken aback at my first interrupts (which were e.g. to let him know I'd already heard about something he was trying to tell me), but once he saw that I also very readily yielded if he ever wanted to interject, our style of speaking morphed so that cooperative interrupting became commonplace (and our conversations became more fun :).
I think in a situation like that it's inherently a bit risky because it can signal things about power dynamics, but if you actually play nicely with it, don't use it for your own benefit, just for efficiency, it can also be a way of upping trust level (specifically because it was something risky, they had to trust you some, but it turned out fine, you didn't take advantage).
This is a super interesting topic and also cool because everyone has a slightly different take. I had not really considered that people who interrupt may do so because they actually like it and think it's beneficial. I just (probably prematurely) assumed it was a bit of a personal flaw based on how it made me feel.
However in an educational context like described in the article, if think that waiting for the other to finish is better as it allow a better analysis and criticism of the whole argument development.
Interrupt based communication for me is indeed natural when you’re brainstorming and want to solve a really hard problem where everybody is on board and solving it is the most important thing. Like a startup refinement session.
The thing is most human interaction is not like that.
People generally have their position set, and are looking for allies - the words themselves don’t matter much, its the communication of emotions that people are after. Looking for understanding, support, approval etc.
In those scenarios, when communicating information would involve telling people they are actually wrong (communicating disapproval) interrupting would not be considered “nice” as solving the issue is not actually what’s driving the conversation, its the sending and receiving of emotional signals that’s important.
Kinda like some game’s rendition of conversations with just some emojis. Its silly I know but I think the metaphor is actually quite apt.
It took me a while to realize this, as I imagined most conversations were about finding the truth (interrupting). But when I accepted that most of the time its about seeking understanding or alies (waiting). People around me suddenly started saying I became a _much_ better person to talk to… And the thing is, _after_ people put you in the emotional ally bucket mentally for whatever you were discussing, then you can sometimes actually start interrupting each other and solving the problem together.
- Those who ask for help after exhausting other avenues. These people grow more productive over time.
- Those who ask for help at the first sign of trouble every time. These people take you for granted, use you as a door mat, and often make for incompetent teammates or toxic managers.
The post didn't ever explicitly say this, but part of the power of wait culture is that fact that it forces you to listen. Even when you think someone is wrong.
Of course, if what the other person is saying is not worth your time, then there's no reason to be a good listener.
As for an objective look at the mechanics of interrupt culture that you described, it works perfectly if everyone can agree on the relative importances. But if someone never lets you interrupt or ALWAYS interrupts, then... it just breaks down. It's almost like you're taking an economist's stance of "all humans are rational actors". If that's the case, then your arguments for interrupt culture are an nice proof detailing how - in any situation, the person that needs to talk more has the ability and permission to immediately gain the floor without listening to the other person waste time explaining an irrelevant detail or counterargument to a misunderstood point.
I like the way you're thinking, and I know that you would act in good faith under this system you see and have explained so well. Together, I would converse with you like that. And just hope that one of us doesn't get frustrated that the other person keeps interrupting with boring stuff.
But thank you more generally and I’m sure we’d have a good conversation!
Sometimes though it's not useful and it's them explaining poorly or, even worse, pointless simplification. They'll get interrupted fast if either of those is the case.
Sometimes you listen just as a gesture, though. To show respect and appreciation. Or you could listen so that you can ensure that the OTHER person will listen to you after.
It all depends on the context.
Obviously this doesn’t work on all circumstances, but it works well on work zoom meetings.
West Coast America (at least, and possibly elsewhere) is pretty big on the do-not-interrupt culture, though, and I felt a little ashamed whenever I did it. But then I found not all people are like that and realized I have so much more fun with people who interrupt me and permit me to interrupt.
And it feels so natural. A slightly louder tone, a hand gesture, enough to say "hang on, here comes something"; but also enough of a signifier to you to move things along. I'm with you, man.
Similarly put your self in the position of someone who is more attuned to a 'wait' mode who just had a conversation with you.
Only from your description above, they might walk away from it feeling you did not listen very well, rather one-sidedly just wanted to be listened to, and took the conversation all over the place.
In the end they might also walk away thinking how boring and wasteful of time and energy it had been
I guess to clarify, it's not that 'wait mode' people are always boring, it's just much more likely to be boring because:
1) You don't feel their engagement if they aren't interrupting you to dig deeper, clarify, respond to points etc.—that's what's fun (for me and many others anyway), when you are interacting live like that, quick back and forth. By contrast waiting and storing everything up and then trying to say it all in your turn, feels very slow and unnatural.
2) If I'm missing information and the other person keeps talking and I can't interrupt them to ask for clarification, then everything they're saying is meaningless to me, information free, boring. Same if they think I don't know about topic X, try explaining it to me, but I do know topic X, but I can't quickly let them know I already know it so we can move on, so I have to listen to an explanation of something that needs no explaining—also devoid of any new information, hence boring.
But granted, sometimes a non-interrupter has very practiced speech and will string together something that's nice to listen to as long as they don't hit the above obstacles.
Being more of a 'wait' mode my self, I sure have had very long, slow and 'boring' conversations with other 'wait' oriented people before.
In those instances I have usually suggested to change the subject matter by way of 'I'm sorry but would you mind if we shift the conversation over to x?'.
Usually to great success.
In attempt to say it with absolute clarity: interruptions that shift topic are rude and I would not advocate for them
Not mid sentance, nor mid explanation that has not reached some settled point.
There is nothing rude about directing a topic of discussion if done with tact and respect.
What I've noticed is that my habit of interruption is received wildly differently by different kinds of people. It drives some people absolutely crazy, and in these settings I've learned to be a little more mindful and try to restrain myself from interjecting so frequently. However, for other people, it works wonderfully and we'll get into a really fast-moving conversation where less redundant information is shared.
My theory is that two well-intentioned interrupters can have a pleasant conversation, and two well-intentioned waiters can have a pleasant conversation, but any pairing of an interrupter and a waiter will be disastrous unless both are very mindful of how they participate in the conversation.
I think it hugely depends on which of the cultures you grew up in. I grew up in an interrupting culture family - interrupting was just the norm, nobody considered it rude. My wife grew up in a wait culture family. If I interrupt her she can get really mad. Over the years I've had to learn to use the wait-method when talking to her and it's made me more mindful of the two different cultures. I try to do more waiting than interrupting anymore since I now realize there's a large percentage of the population that considers interrupting to be rude.
There's also another thing that the waiters can consider an interruption, but I guess I never considered an interruption - saying something in agreement with the speaker as sort of an affirmation of what they're saying. My wife considers that an interruption, I consider it just participating in the conversation.
Instead I change my wording on the fly - I'm not actually sure he knows he is subvocalising and I've never had any indication he knows I am toying with his quirk (good naturedly - I like the guy).
I find that most gains from this style are unwound when you discover 10 minutes later that there was a critically missed assumption and you have to redo parts of the conversation. (Or worse you never realize and then build a whole project with different ideas in mind)
I definitely fall into the interrupter camp. With some of my friends in particular, conversation seems to form one long sentence being picked up by different people as it meanders along. It feels less like a dialogue and more like a melding of minds. Occasionally I'll meet someone though who I really struggle to communicate with. I find myself either frustrating them by interrupting, or I end up feeling like I'm getting lost with all of the clarifying questions and comments I'm trying to keep queued up in my head for whenever they finish.
I guess it's just one of those things where you need to get to know the person you're speaking with before leaning too far one way or the other. And of course it's challenging since the safe default to start with is the one that does not come naturally to me.
https://www.psychmechanics.com/psychology-of-interrupting/
Interrupting someone can say "I am more important than you". This can also cause failures to communicate since the boss can change the subject and the interrupted speaker may never get to finish their thought. I've seen projects fail because a boss intentionally interrupted people who were trending in a direction they did not want to go, squashing anyone who was pointing out a major flaw in the bosses plans, which resulted in building things in a bad way and then having the flaw manifest and cause the project to fail.
There are other types of interruption though that can be more supportive or more like parallel conversations. The efficiency of those often depends on the quality of the participants memory and ability to follow multiple threads simultaneously.
Information exchange is always the bottleneck in larger organizations, so efficiency of meetings is really important.
I will interrupt someone if I understood their point, and we have different, more pressing items on the agenda. It's not a power play, not psychological warfare or bullying. I just want to get shit done on time.
It's also less stressful. And I almost never hear the kind of skeptical sarcasm you're using here. Both of which are nice.
There are pros and cons to both approaches. My personal experience has been that waiting cultures are more efficient at communication and get more work done. It would be interesting to see what actual instead of anecdotal data would show.
I'm having a hard time believing that a e.g. a high-level manager/exec with 20 meetings per day, and a 60 hour work week is able to be on time with a purely waiting approach.
There are so many people that you need to align with this culture. If it worked for you, wherever you are, I respect that a lot.
I'll suggest that it's the interruption culture itself that is motivating the tendency for monologues.
When an executive regularly says "John please let Mary finish, I wanted to hear the rest of her thoughts" it sends at least two signals:
1. The obvious that interrupting is not welcome here. 2. The less obvious but easy enough to figure out that listening is valued. The vast majority of folks are smart enough to figure out that a monologue is just as unwelcome as interruptions in a culture where listening is valued.
At the the end of the day what everyone wants is a dialog. In a non-interupting culture folks tend to pass the baton far quicker which takes the place that interruptions used to serve. Once people understand that they will get uninterrupted time to speak, they relax and aren't so desperate to get everything out all at once before someone interrupts and shuts them down.
Imagine a manager who tells you that she can give you 30m max, no interruptions. That's a lot of trust and responsibility they've put on you. You pretty quickly figure out how to make effective use of that time, and it's for sure not a monologue.
And it's also manageable over a series of meetings. It's easy enough for a manager to start a meeting with "Kevin, please hold off your thoughts until the end of the meeting because we heard mostly from you last meeting".
People catch on very quickly if it's coming from the top. Which it almost always has to.
Obviously there ARE dynamics there, but they're not nearly that solid.
Especially if the boss came by the role as boss BECAUSE he/she is a good communicator.
Similarly with parents and small children, teachers and pupils or other situations with large asymmetries in competencies.
So like everything it depends on the context.
Interrupting to keep meetings from getting too long is an essential skill. Especially with someone who has grown up with the blab-until-interrupted protocol!
Speech is on the speaker's flow primarily. Listeners are expected to keep up not just in vocabulary, but speed among others.
Writing is far friendlier to the reader, being able to set their own pace.
Interruptions allow listeners to shift the balance at the cost of potentially destroying the pace. And sometimes destroying the pace is necessary (e.g. endless discussions).
That may also be why I was able to walk away and experiment with not doing it. Writers, for instance, seem to be notoriously bad at finding flow state. And if I told one to abandon it mid-stream I’d probably get hurt.
This is very important in say a business setting where decisions need to be made while evaluating all the aspects of the task at hand. If useful information is not discussed because the only way it could’ve happened is by interrupting the speaker, then everyone loses out.
The private school culture only works in the artificial setting of a school or another formal setting and is the equivalent of written comment threads, like this one
On high-latency, low-bandwidth channels (Google Voice, I'm looking in your direction...), you choose between long, confusing silent waiting and constant infuriating interruption.
In the same city with a good connection, video is often about as good.
I think it'd be extremely interesting to see how it compares to real life, vid calls and other alternatives.
I'm more of a waiter than interrupter, who lives with a strong interrupter. If we're having a debate or discussing the newest silly thing in the news or whatever, it's not a big deal -- the topic was never _that_ important that I care about getting interrupted.
However, I find it very rude and annoying to get interrupted while telling a story. Like, event XYZ happened on the drive home, or something that happened with others in our mutual friend group. It's only going to take a minute or two for me to tell the whole story, but 15 seconds in it's been hijacked and the interrupter is off on their own tangent.
The interrupters can only be fought on their terms. Fight fire with fire. Interrupt back and just keep telling the story.
I’m not hard line on “no interrupting”, but if I ask someone to stop, then I expect them to stop. Or I’ll just leave. I have other things I could be doing.
As a few others have noted, it's not an absolute, and some interruptions --- for clarifying questions or corrections, say --- are welcomed. But to interrupt continuously, to do so in a way that disrupts rather than promotes the conversation, to not catch the nonverbal cues that this is annoying, and then to ignore multiple spoken requests to please not do that ... is beyond frustrating.
I've expereinced this with friends and coworkers I otherwise respect and admire their knowledge and capabilities. But in spoken interactions they're unbearable.
Message-based comms, where there's a discrete comment-and-response cycle, as on HN, email (lists or exchanges), and many message boards, though not quite so much text-based chat, is interesting in that it's possible to say (or write) one's piece without interruption. Of course, whether or not that's read is another question....
One of the people I'm thinking of specifically in this case actually does communicate quite well in written form. Verbal, interactively, again, not so much.
I think both "wait" and "interrupt" culture etiquettes involve supporting the current conversation, not ignoring the other person's input. The latter is frustrating in both styles.
I don't mind in a work setting or with acquaintances as I know lot of people are interrupters, but now I realize I do expect my friends and partner to let me finish uninterrupted. So it's clearly still a rudeness flag for me.
The only two people from wait culture I've met were from management (they were just my friends, I had no professional relationship with them).
I think wait style must have been pretty natural for them because they are used to nobody saying anything to them while they are talking and maybe even untill explicitly asked. And since they are nice people they mirrored that in their behavior.
When people listen to you talk, you feel like they're not listening?
Where do you think that stems from? It seems peculiar that as someone more actively listens to you, you feel just the opposite.
I'm curious if this is the case if the other party is giving other visual indications of focus. (Making intent eye contact, nodding, etc.)
Obviously it may still be uncomfortable because it's not your preferred communication/feedback style, but I'm curious if that mitigates the feeling of not being listened to or not.
I feel that constant feedback is useful to keep the conversation going in a productive direction.
Interrupting is much easier in person though, you can just look like you're going to say something and the other person will pause. It can even be just an intake of breath. Over Zoom it's much harder.
Sometimes when someone's speaking over Zoom I find myself about to say something, but then I don't, because the other person couldn't pick up the cues and pause. I only realised I do this because someone in a meeting room with me (with other participants on Zoom) actually picked up the cues and asked me if I wanted to say something.
I now find myself signaling I want to interrupt (breathing in, cocking my head) during a Zoom call very often, only to catch myself. I can't bring myself to actually interrupt someone, but in person they would've stopped and I would've interjected. I wonder how often I was doing that.
Possibly a post-hoc rationalization because I prefer put my energy into what I want to say, not fighting bad conversation flow control. It's just too much of a hassle.
That might sound insane to non-interrupters, and even for interrupters it's a quick, natural assessment, but if you listen to two interrupters talk for a while, especially about something they're both passionate about, you can pick up on what's happening.
That said, there are also some interrupters who just do not stop speaking once they've interrupted no matter what. They're a minority, but they drive me nuts. So it's all relative, I suppose.
I have a similar thought pattern with who's thoughts are more valuable - but my perception is that the person butting in knows what I am saying and what they want to say, whereas I only know what I'm saying. Therefore, they are in a much better position to determine which thought is more valuable, so my best course of action is probably to pass the baton.
But yeah, 100% agree with what you're saying, but the part I'd add is that if I think that they think they know what I'm saying but are likely to be wrong, that's when I'll keep talking over them as they try to interrupt. That might happen if I'm about to make a point that's counterintuitive, so they've likely misjudged where I'm going.
My mom (from whom I definitely learned to be an interrupter) and I do this to each other in more direct fashion with a "no no, shush, I haven't made my point yet," or something along those lines. But that obviously only works because it's just a normal conversational paradigm for us, and neither of us would ever get offended.
I also agree with your analysis of us interrupters having a secret system—that's totally the case in my experience as well. I think a lot of it comes down to whether you instinctually view the act of interruption as inherently disrespectful or not.
Luckily, most people I interact with seem to not be put off by it, and I make an effort to make it obvious that my interjections are supposed to come across as encouraging. In situations where it's best for me to remain silent, I often struggle to keep from losing interest. My retention rate for Zoom calls is close to zero as a result!
To expand on why this can be so frustrating for me at least:
* If I have something significant or impactful to say, and someone interrupts midway through, the effect is diminished.
* If I'm saying something which I intend to follow with a qualification, e.g. "Elegant code is a priority, but we need to actually deliver code too", and someone interrupts before I add my qualification to dispute my claim or add their own qualification, then now we have pointless conflict, and I appear silly as though my statement wasn't thought through.
* If someone interrupts to complete my thought for me, and they get it wrong, suddenly I have to navigate the social implications of gently shutting them down and possibly returning to their comment later, and I'm now focusing on that instead of the topic.
* One can engage in active listening without interjecting at every opportunity, but admittedly it takes practice to learn the cues of each person you're speaking to and when is an appropriate time to jump in. I'm sure that I've been interrupted by many people many times in my life so far, but there's only 2 that I remember as having made a habit of it. Probably because they did it regularly, never caught themselves and apologised, and frustrated me which I imagine imprinted on me in some way as emotional events tend to.
mkaic, I don't mean to liken you to these people. I obviously don't know you or the way you converse so please take these only as anecdotes about the experiences of someone on the other end of the interruption spectrum. I've also just seen another comment of yours relating to "good" and "bad" interrupters and that seems like a reasonable distinction. I think my experience is with the bad ones, and maybe the good ones just fly under the radar because it feels like a natural interaction.
Obviously people can change communication styles over time (see the article for an example), but sometimes people prefer things a certain way. And that's fine!
If someone's obviously not an interrupter, I try to consciously pause for questions and avoid interrupting. Learning about different communication styles and trying not to dominate is crucial too.
---
A: We just got a new shipment of XYZs, we need to --
B: Woa woa sorry, what's a XYZ again?
A: It's a type of ABC.
B: Right, okay.
A: Anyway, we need to ...
---
In that exchange, it's still implicitly A's turn even when B is speaking; B is just "borrowing" the turn and has to give it back quickly. I wouldn't find this rude; B just did it so he wouldn't be bamboozled by the unfamiliar term in the rest of the conversation. But if B had interrupted and started off down on his own topic, like how in his opinion it's a bad idea to buy XYZs and we should make our own instead, that would be rude. That's stealing A's turn, not borrowing.
> fighting bad conversation flow control
> hassle
Something to keep in mind on topics like this is that neither of these two styles is bad or wrong - they are merely different; your perfectly-valid communication style can be just as irritating and off-putting to someone else as theirs is to you.
Heads isn't better than tails, you know?
In general, in debates where you don’t interrupt, people can just gish gallop all over the place.
And furthermore, verbal conversations aren’t the best way to solve things. Better to break what you say into written claims, and each one can have a community upvote arguments for and against the claim, hyperlinking to other claims.
Most conversations on social networks are totally useless wastes of time where people pretend they know more than they do, and repeat the same thing 3000 other people said in other similar conversations. And nothing gets solved anyway because they have no power to do so LMAO
The older I got the more I realized how much of a waste of time most activities are, unless you are enjoying yourself or building something over time, or raising children. Having a conversation about politics has just as much effect as having one about astronomy, and you may as well just read wikipedia, to get a far more balanced and broad view.
One of my friend groups has established a nose touch as a similar (though perhaps less...rude) signal. If you have a point you'd like to make while someone else is speaking, touch your finger to your nose and keep it there. The speaking party is expected to relinquish the conversation soon so the nose toucher can speak their point while it's still relevant.
This is a great idea, although of course it relies on agreement and understanding (of the meaning of the gesture). Which you have in a friend group, but can't necessarily be relied upon in, say, a meeting with a large group.
I think absolute pronouncements of what is better or what is worse will always be wrong for someone. For me, I am perfectly capable of waiting a moment after speaking to see if someone wants to respond, and hate having to shout over someone who is interrupting me "a little". But of course it's as unreasonable for me to expect other people always to adapt to my preferences as it is for other people to expect me always to adapt to theirs.
Interrupting "a little" also doesn't work if you have an interrupt-ee who expects just to talk louder, and an interrupt-er who does not intend to be put off: that can, and in my experience usually does, just lead to each of them talking a little louder in turn, until they are both practically shouting, often without noticing that they're doing so.
I'm actually not quite so sure about this. Admittedly, as a lifelong member of the waiters, I find "interrupt culture" incredibly frustrating. But I also think there's a framework by which we can establish interrupt culture as ostensibly more rude, even if that's the custom you're used to and expect. Consider children at recess, all wanting to use the same toy. The children could
1. take the toy from whoever is using now when they want it, or
2. use the toy for a short while before returning it so someone else can use it.
You could cast the second a little differently,
3. use the toy until they're done with it before returning it
Assuming the kids can't simply prevent each other from playing and there's some moderation effect to ensure other kids can play at the next recess, both of the "wait culture" analogies seem less rude than the "interrupt culture" one. Of course, the toy represents the shared conversational resource. "The stage," if you will.
I think the societal trick is, then, not to "learn to adjust to wait/interrupt culture if you're used to interrupt/wait culture", but to encourage more mindfulness about using the shared resource and returning it if others want it.
Why can't they just have an app or a button to summon them like on an airplane? LOL
Life's hard enough for waiters even when they can visit all their tables in a rotation that's convenient for them; I don't think we need to add an additional hassle.
I think you can definitely make this argument, and it will establish, conveniently, that everyone should do things our way. But then interrupters can make an argument about how, if only we could all agree to do things their way, then things would be so efficient, and no-one would need to waste time waiting for someone else to finish up a sentence whose content they've already guessed, or that they can already tell will be irrelevant to the discussion at hand, or … well, whatever the argument is. Of course, I find your argument more persuasive than the interrupters’; but … well, I would, wouldn't I? If it just so happens that the answer to a vexing societal question is for people to realize that I'm right and do things my way, then I have to become suspicious of whether I'm really arguing as logically as I think I am.
> If it just so happens that the answer to a vexing societal question is for people that I'm right and do things my way, then I have to become suspicious of whether I'm really arguing as logically as I think I am.
I appreciate this position greatly and I think it's very noble. I try very hard to argue with myself along the same lines to arrive at better conclusions. My concern with the alternative - that people are hard, there are no answers, and all we can do is communicate - is that it means nothing is knowable with a side effect of supporting the status quo.
This is a common lazy conclusion that extraverts frequently hear from introverts— when they can be bothered to speak up.
No, it’s not a battle of wills. It’s not really a battle. It’s the music of enthusiasm; the peal of many bells. Energy is not necessarily a curse; placidity is not necessarily a virtue.
Let’s respect that there are different cultures. I come from enthusiasm culture. My culture works. There are other cultures, and they can also work.
I know this is opposite to the experience for many others who I assume have an easier time with in-person interactions because they feel very natural going with the conversation flow.
Yes, I can totally relate to this feeling. I grew up in an interrupting culture family. My wife grew up in a wait culture family. I've learned to try not to interrupt her because when I do she can go all Galadriel on me. So over the years I try to wait - and it can still be really hard to do. I suspect that people who find it easy grew up in the waiting culture families.
We used to have a neighbor who would talk & talk saying the same thing over and over just in slightly different ways. It was really frustrating to try to wait her out because she'd go on and on for a long time without a pause- but I did suspect that she did this because she didn't feel heard in life.
this in turn makes them monopolize the poor soul who doesn’t interrupt them
I think this is an under-appreciated reason why people socialize, and people who aren't getting the level of socialization they need can have a compulsion to pursue conversation by any means necessary.
I feel for cashiers and waiters when they have lonely customers.
There's two types of conversations in life.
"Brain in 5th gear conversations." Every word carefully chosen. And the second type, "Priority 2" conversations. Priority 2 is where both parties winging it and do their best via heuristic.
Most folk wait their turn during Priority 2. It's just the convention, nobody is in a rush.
For engineers, every conversation ends up being Priority 2 because their brain is gutted from coding. However, they need to get shit done, fast, and get back to coding. Hence the convention to interrupt conversations and get to the point.
It's a speed vs productivity vs margin of error triple constraint.
What Hoffman doesn't realize is the goal. Deliberately practicing 5th gear conversations forces you to concentrate on the material.
Getting priorities straight is a matter of competence, not culture.
If you've ever wondered why people scoff at the term "software engineer", this is one potential answer.
"We know X=1, so we should do Y which involves connecting A to C and removing B, so D, E & F need feature Z to be implemented in the next T months."
* Actually, X=2 so the logic as presented is questionable at best
* (but people don't like all their ideas to be dismissed with a single point, so we continue...)
* We can't remove B, it's required by M & N
* E doesn't need feature Z
* Feature Z depends on feature Q which won't be done in T months
The interrupt version is better:
"We know X=1..."
* Do we? I think X=2
"Is it? Why do you say that?"
* Reasons
Also this article: https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html
My family dinners would have 6 conversations going at once with people fluidly moving between them, often by interrupting the person talking.
My wife's family has dinners where there is exactly one conversation and nobody interrupts. Even with 16 people at a table.
Long story short, a lot of it is just related to the existing societal norms and expectations of different environments, similar to the author.
My second-born brother perceived my interruptions as aggression/dominance and eventually started out-interrupting me. I find it hard to have a conversation with him on any topic that we even slightly disagree.
My third-born sister is just a very loud and gregarious person.
My fourth-born sister, being the youngest, found it very difficult to get a word in edge-wise among the four of us. She grew up to be very aggressive in her speaking when she has a point she wants to make, but is also a very patient listener. Just don't dare interrupt her when she has something to say.
Anyway, I found this paper from a few years back about interruptions among SCOTUS justices pretty interesting:
"Female Supreme Court Justices Are Interrupted More by Male Justices and Advocates" (2017)
https://hbr.org/2017/04/female-supreme-court-justices-are-in...
Which led to the court changing its oral argument rules:
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/oct/15/us-supreme-court...
Conversational styles and gender:
https://news.stanford.edu/2018/05/02/exploring-interruption-...
> Antonin Scalia: No. He reached the conclusion because--
> Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.: And that’s completely supported by the proffer.
> Antonin Scalia:--He reached the conclusion because he--
> William H. Rehnquist:--No two voices at the same time. Justice Scalia is asking you a question.
> Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.: Excuse me.
Scalia talking right over the top of Sotomayor:
> Bert W. Rein: His estimate was that a very small number, and it--it’s in his opinion. It’s--it’s not only by percentage, but it’s by number, and that number is insignificant relative--
> Sonia Sotomayor: Do you think--do you think that change has to happen overnight? And do you think it’s--
> Antonin Scalia: Excuse me. Can I--can I hear what you were about to say? What are those numbers? I was really curious to hear those numbers.
> Bert W. Rein: He assumed, at the outside, that any of the admits that were actually African-American or Hispanic outside the Top Ten, he said let me take that assumption and see what it would add
So I don't think it's the case that the justices are getting interrupted in the middle of long-winded questions. In any case the paper examines interruptions with respect to gender, seniority, and ideology and has a lot more detail than what's in the article.
This example you provided is actually Scalia stopping Sotomayor from interrupting the first speaker and asking them to continue.
Perhaps there are better examples, however your framing and the framing of the article is not held up by the evidence provided (here, and there).
> Given that Justices are permitted to, and frequently do, interrupt advocates, Scalia’s interruption was a breach of that norm, prioritizing both the advocate’s response and his own interest above that of Sotomayor’s inquiry. The effect of this breach was that Sotomayor’s question went unaddressed, as Rein instead responded to Scalia’s demands. One may look at the significant discrepancies in seniority and ideology between Scalia and Sotomayor, however, and surmise that the interruption could be the effect of such differences.
The paper is 108 pages containing dozens of examples and two empirical analysis. The datasets are publicly available if you find fault with its methods. I wouldn't judge it based on my apparently poor job of providing a couple examples.
Interruption isn't black and white and to me there is nothing nice about people who interrupt by default. Still I usually don't don't mind interruptions when in a friendly brainstorming or casual conversation with good people. But the interrupter has to understand that he's interrupting and do it in a good way.
But things like interrupting and going totally off topic, interrupting to argue or interrupting when power dynamics are at play is entirely a different beast. I feel like the first version I mentioned should have a different name than this one.
But if you have someone who is prone to just go on tangents or repeat themselves endlessly interruption isn't a bad thing for a conversation.
For example I don't think I could make it through the same 20 year old Stallman stump speech in person without losing my mind. There's people who exhibit a really bad combo of being repetitive, verbose and allergic to challenge that makes for dreadful conversations.
Definitely an interesting thought. I think there are problems with both interrupting and waiting.
Interruption works only if the other person works in the same way. It can, however, be very efficient because the flow of the conversation is much faster. It also simply does not work in group settings.
Waiting allows to converse with the most people, but it is harder to do and requires much effort to put into practice correctly. It also relies on people talking in short bursts to simply provide their input on the topic at hand, so there's still a certain amount of discipline required.
That's why I prefer text-based conversation. You can come back to what other people said easily, have less trouble remembering what you want to provide input on, and can skip the parts you already know about. It takes more time than verbal communication, but it's truly the best way to communicate in my opinion. The only real problem is that you lose an important part of communication; physical cues, tone, etc. Text has a lot of trouble conveying emotions.
It’s mind opening to see some of these articles advocating for the interrupting style. I see how it can work well, and I will try to adapt to that style some more in some circumstances. And in particular try to develop more signaling abilities. However, in my experience interrupting is useful just when someone is not succinct- otherwise it’s too easy for interrupters to do a poor job listening and actually facilitate a good conversation.
The client team I work with is kind of trying (although without verbalising) to move more towards a "wait" mode of talking, assisted by the "put your hand up" functionality in Teams. The problem we run into is that it isn't clear whether you should be speaking before or after the next person - sometimes you have a supplementary point about the exact current topic that makes more sense to be said before the next person slightly changes the subject. In an engineering discussion it makes a lot more sense to make your point about the performance of the feature in discussion before the conversation moves to talking about testing it!
It’s a bad habit in the wrong circumstances sometimes.
My experience is people usually decide whether to wait or interrupt depending on context - they just different in their assessment of the situation.
Personally I often explicitly yield to someone who to me appears like they want to say something, but are waiting for the right moment.
In face to face conversation I sometimes lift my finger and make an "uuuuum" face to signify that I want to say something right now. People usually respond to that very well - the more braindead my expression, the better.
In college our conversations were moderated and you would lift your hand if you wanted to say something, and the moderator would at times interrupt the person speaking.
On one hand everyone waited, on the other people were interrupted constantly. To me this is how most real world conversations work and pigeonholing them into just two categories is counterproductive.
Its not a different culture. Its a lack of culture.
There is no excuse for constantly interrupting people. Its disrespectful and counterproductive.
There is a bit of subtlety also in that interrupting in the middle of a word is more rude than in the middle of a sentence versus a paragraph.
If, for example, someone has completed the third sentence of a paragraph that is clearly wrapping up, and pauses longer before what apparently may be the fourth sentence, but the other person thinks they have already got the message, it might not necessarily be rude at all to start talking before the last (probably not really important) sentence comes out. Sometimes it depends on the context and how long the pause is.
Lack of common courtesy is unfortunately very common. That doesn't mean we should accept it without comment.
There is no natural law that says the person who starts talking first has a right to talk. It's a reasonable rule, but not the only reasonable one.
Most contexts globally where there is education and respect will show this type of common courtesy. If there is a lack of respect of education or both, more rude interruption is likely. I think there are for example some contexts or cultures where there is less respect, for example some executives talking to workers in certain countries. But it's not excusable and the workers there who are the majority in that country will not have the same behavior.
I will tend to change my body language (become eager) or just mouth something (aa). Online, I unmute myself.
I think its the only solution I have to demonstrate my intent to interrupt without actually doing it.
It's also much easier to negotiate rules - interrupt vs wait - in a group size of 2-4 than in one on the order of 20 people.
Most places I have worked have had interrupt culture. I hated going to meetings, it felt like the people that spoke loudest “owned” the meeting. After a while I started taking notes, but never participating. It was easier to get answers afterwards by talking directly to the stakeholders once they were identified.
It is so interesting to me to hear the counter argument here, that some people actually prefer this method of communication, I’ll need to think about what my participation looks like in this culture.
Waiting prioritizes clear communication at the expense of some time that is almost always justified. People who wait are typically detail oriented and have the infamously prevailing cooler heads. They're the ones actually getting stuff done while management impatiently glances at their pathetically underspecified checklists.
Interrupting prioritizes a false sense of efficiency and just seems like weak impulse control or a bad short-term memory. Every interrupter I've ever met is disorganized and unreliable.
It's very much worth questioning what your accuracy threshold is before deciding to interrupt.
Maybe they're wrong about a minor detail but have a much better overall plan. Maybe they have some ideas buried under all the mud that are worth the wait.
If the perception of efficiency is always the priority, that will come at the cost of everything else.
While I have noticed that ADHD people gravitate towards interrupters, and are more likely to be disorganized and unreliable, generalizing this to all interrupters is absurd.
Everybody in my mom's family is an interpreter, including my mom. You will meet few people more organized and reliable than her.
It's a bit different as "aizuchi" is merely signaling that you're being listened to, rather than an actual switching of speakers. "Enthusiastic listening" is how I've heard it described, and it can be a distraction if you're not used to it.
Wait culture is IMHO more appropriate for larger groups of people and more formal settings, or some subjects that are very important to the one speaking, so interruption would be disrespectful.
I only do this with friends I am familiar with, but it's quite efficient to respond to things in real time, without waiting for people to stop.
https://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/newyork...
Although some people might listen to the end and be engaged, or you could tell by their facial expressions. That isn't always perfect, some people naturally aren't expressive. By default, you got no clue what they're feeling.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Tannen#%22High-involve...
It's also why the 15 min presentation followed by 5 min Q & A is a decent communication model, you can do three per hour and then the meetings over.
Are you a part of wuss-culture because you don't like spicy food?
I'm also a part of male-culture ... wait, no that' one isn't allowed.
Prior to that... I avoided interrupting under any circumstances. And that was a mistake.
> When people are interrupting each other - when they're constantly tugging the conversation back and forth between their preferred directions - then the conversation itself is just a battle of wills. But when people just put in one thing at a time, and trust their fellows to only say things that relate to the thing that came right before - at least, until there's a very long pause - then you start to see genuine collaboration.
I think that's the meat of the collaborative conversational spirit. Interruption/waiting is one axis, another nearly orthogonal axis is continuation/abandonment of the current topic which correlates more strongly with actual listening rather than politeness.
In terms of [1], I've definitely encountered "civil barkers", who will never interrupt you verbally (but usually offer increasingly strong nonverbal cues that they want their turn), then very weakly link into a new topic. That is to say, waiting isn't a sufficient (nor I'd say necessary) condition for constructive conversation. E.g. the Trump/Hillary debate, when asked to say something nice about each other, Hillary immediately pivoted into talking about her platform.
[1] https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html
Refusing to interrupt is cowing to authority.
Refusing to yield is asserting authority.
If people feel safe and free to act autonomously and engage in the best way they see fit, they allow interruptions and they interrupt.
I disagree, and I think a lot of bad feeling and a lot of bad meetings come out of people assuming that the dynamic that is comfortable for them is what others always prefer, or is somehow the natural state of conversation, from which other dynamics are a flawed aberration.
I hate being interrupted because of the family dynamic with which I grew up (ceaseless interruption), and so try very hard not to interrupt others. When I feel safe that my ideas will eventually be heard, I don't interrupt; and, when I feel safe that I am interacting with my peers as equals, and will neither hurt feelings nor impose authority, I will request of them that they don't interrupt me, i.e., taken together with the first point, that we have a conversational dynamic where we don't interrupt one another.
(The latter is, of course, more dicey, since while I indisputably have a right not to interrupt others, but don't have a right to insist others not interrupt me. But, under the very stringent conditions of conversations with equals with the understanding that it is OK to say "no" to a request, I think that it is a reasonable thing to request.)
For what it’s worth, this is a common take from interrupty people which I have found not to be the case in the long run. I suspect there’s a significant observer effect.
What they miss is that interruptions should be like a "yes, and..." in improv comedy, not a "yesyesyes, BUT..."
So that ends up being a limit for me, I just choose not to interact with people like that if I can help it, and communicating async if I have to.
That's not to say someone can't switch styles, but the unfortunate reality is that it's easier if people don't have to do that. This results in the kind of self segregation that you do. I've also done that, by switching to a team that shared my communication style.
I don't know if this is good or bad, but it does seem to be the path of least resistance.