Ask HN: How to deal with constantly getting cut off in work discussions?
I am not someone who tolerates getting cut-off easily but it is frustrating and it takes a lot of energy for me to drive the conversation back on track and say what I want to say. This is something that I never had to deal in previous work environments prior to moving to the Bay Area so I'm inclined to think it's something specific to this area. Recently, I have moved to a team in my company where it is almost damn near impossible to have my thoughts heard and in some cases, I just shut myself off from discussions to save my energy. It's starting to affect my work life and my daily mood because in a lot of cases I just don't have the energy to reject and explain why we shouldn't be doing X, Y, or Z.
Is this a common thing in workplaces? I would be interested in hearing if people have been in this situation and how they've dealt with it if so.
310 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 473 ms ] threadThe complete rejection of interruption-during-conversation is equivalent to the denial of existence of far-too-long monologues, isn't it?
The way I helped curb this at my workplace, which may or may not be applicable to you, was by always back-tracking to the person who was cut off.
X starts saying something, Y cuts them off. As soon as Y is done speaking, I ask X: "Sorry X, what were you saying?" while ignoring Y. This non-confrontational approach seemed to work, at least in my workplace. Y quickly began to realize that they were cutting off X and that the table was interested in what X had to say.
Unfortunately this requires two people. If you are the one being cut off, without someone else to step in, this is a hard problem to deal with.
One day our director called a meeting and announced that our whole department had a serious issue with interrupting. He noted the results of interrupting each other (not hearing each other out, drifting off topic, just being seen by the rest of the company as jerks). He laid out a bunch of rules for meetings, discussions, etc and he policed them for a few months.
It mostly worked as everyone (even the interrupters) saw the benefits pretty fast and the urge to interrupt seemed to fade as everyone knew they'd get to get all their words out of their mouth when it was their turn. Meetings even went faster.
Might be worth probing if your manager or any leadership feel like it is a problem / what the impact of this communication style is.
I'd say that without knowing more, it's better to advise the safer and more diplomatic approach.
So some of use have learned how to recognize that type of situation and how to deliver bitter pills of truth without risking a job you might otherwise really like for it.
Be direct if you can, but don’t stay silent if you can’t.
Like an absent god.
He was a mixed bag as a director as he could get sort of autocratic, impulsive and ... was a bit out of his element a lot of times.
But, you could hold him to his word, he listened, and he was loyal. One of those flawed guys who... you'd still choose to work for if you could.
Generally the meeting holder called on people and such.
Lots of "let's address that at another time" kind of stuff from the person holding the meetings.
Meetings had agendas.
After that it sort of bleed into how most conversations went.
One potential is if it's just one or two people being cut off constantly - if so, they might need to practice being engaging speakers and speaking more concisely. Everybody has the one coworker who takes 10 minutes to get to a 30 second point. (Cutting people off is still rude, the above isn't an excuse, it's an explanation.)
The alternative is that everyone is fighting to get out their idea instead of cooperating to lay out all ideas. If you need to, go buy a damn ruler, label it the talking stick, and whoever holds it gets to talk. Preferably before getting to that point, have a conversation with your peers that the deliberative process is a cooperative one - it's not about winning and losing, it's about everyone putting out their possible solutions and working together to build the right one.
Maybe ask a fast thinker about your style, or try recording yourself and listen back to see if you can be more concise or lively.
It's probably easier if I just start talking - hopefully they'll take the hint and shut up. In the long run everyone will be happier.
I would raise with manager.
I know sometimes people cut off others very purposefully or in malicious ways, but it sounds like maybe where you're working that's just how it is- so everyone kind of has to play the game to be heard. In that case, try and change the game! A little bit of discomfort now can lead to yourself and probably others being happier down the road.
I'm trying to tackle it by writing it down and waiting for others to finish with some decent success.
Start it when you start talking, and periodically make it a habit to check ("How long has it been since someone else talked?").
If it's been too long, wrap up your thoughts and pause a while before launching into the next bit.
It's usually obliviousness ("I didn't notice anyone else", in my personal experience), but it can feel very rude to others ("I didn't want to listen to anyone else").
All part of soft skills. We all get better together.
If it's really important, I'll remember it.
Writing it down won't get you too far, imho. Because you probably still will be in rush just to read what you noted down and eventually miss the chance to learn from others. It's all about listening first.
There was a thread here on HN recently, titled "People with Greater Intellectual Humility Have Superior General Knowledge".[0] I think it's pretty relevant here in this topic. Intellectual humility goes a long way I'd say :-)
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20124447
Sometimes technical thoughts can be literally founded on faulty assumptions and will teach you nothing unless providing another anecdote of a conceptual mistake is instructive.
Listening in bikeshedding conversations is a wise maneuver, though. Save your forceful thoughts for actual problems.
Apology speaks directly to your impulsive mind, a kind of self-inflicted peer pressure mechanism.
I grew up in a hispanic family in a majority hispanic community, where my everyday conversation with people was people talking over each other. It was common to start making your point while the other person was still finishing theirs.
The difference is, because everyone did it, we would just keep talking, even if we were cut off, and finish our thought. The other person would hear it, while still talking, and the conversation continues naturally. If you were in a group, you had to go louder than the currently speaking person in order to "grab the baton" and get your word in (something I was often too quiet for).
This was my normal throughout childhood.
It was a culture shock when I went to college and eventually someone called me out for cutting people off all the time. It was then that I realized that now, when I cut someone off, they actually stopped talking.
I still struggle with this, because I reflexively expect people to not let me stop them.
Deborah Tannen, Gender and Discourse. Oxford University Press, 1994
https://www.thoughtco.com/cooperative-overlap-conversation-1...
they also frequently ask if everything's ok, if you understand, etc. at the slightest pause in talking, which is kind of hilarious sometimes
Completely agree. I'm not Hispanic, but I grew up in the south in a household where talking over each other was the norm. A different culture, but culture indeed. College is also where I learned this was considered bad practice / rude
I think it's important to note that it is considered bad/rude in most american culture. Manners are relative to the culture you are living in. This style is certainly not rude in Cuban circles, for example.
It's like how belching at a restaurant is rude in the US, but a sign of respect to the chef in Japan.
As a side note, when I notice these differences, I like to reason from first principles and decide if I should change my behavior (without completely alienating myself from my peers). A Japanese chef might consider my belch a sign of respect, but how respectful is it to the people around you eating? A gross smelling burp could make me loose my appetite completely.
Unfortunately I developed a kind of intense mix of the two cultures and I have to work hard not to dominate others in (non Italian) conversations. I try to de-interrupt by reminding someone who stopped taking of what they were talking about and asking them to continue. This also isn't ideal because it's forceful but it helps.
In my experience, interrupters frequently assume something entirely different from what was actually being said, or even cut off the speaker before a "but" and wind up responding to the exact opposite of the intended point. This is needlessly annoying and confusing to almost everyone involved.
But it's hard to imagine you ever reached any sane conclusion to these discussions?
It just seems like a bunch of primates expressing their feelings, opinions and tribal affiliations, but not a way to make good decisions.
Or am I missing the point?
It's just another conversation style, I don't need to hear the end of your sentence to know the point you are making, at a certain point the end of the sentence is likely fluff. If the end is important, I'll still hear it, and if it changes what my response is, I'll probably stop and react mid-stream.
What I also noticed now that I try to pay attention to it is that I am practically unable to say a word in a German conversation if I try not to interrupt. I seem to be missing the cues that seem to say "you may now speak", and have the feeling I get interrupted all the time. I guess those cues are culture-specific and internalized over time.
That might be relevant to the OP 's question: in a multi-cultural team, one might need to develop a set of cues that are specific to that context. That can only come by discussing the topic one way or another, be it during the meetings, in breaks, at lunch... In my case, telling exactly what I described above, in a "aren't cultural differences interesting" way helped.
The best thing I can do is attempt to use my natural inclination to help people like OP.
To that end, I'll usually say things like. "I think this is what "president" was saying, am I right?" This both validates to a more quiet team member that I heard them, but also gives them back the floor from someone who interrupted them.
I also attempt to listen to signals from quiet people who have opinions and then ask them their opinion after sharing. If they grunt or make a noise then I can direct it away from people who are more like myself and willing to speak out.
My goal is to not take the spotlight but instead to re-direct. I do this because I used to be SUPER quiet and I worked hard to get away from that. Now I'm considered fairly outspoken but I remember what it's like to be quiet and try to help out by giving them the time they need.
Turns out keeping your attention on something interesting isn’t actually a problem for people with ADHD. It’s the boring stuff that’s hard, and boy do I hate the boring stuff. We pay people to clean our house. I’ve had take away (healthy and organic of course) at least two days a week since I left home. I’ve paid people to do my laundry for as long as I’ve had a decent job. Heh. Long story short, I’m now in the process of being tested for ADHD. I’m not sure the results will change anything, I’ve done fine so far after all, but knowing is better, and it was interrupting people that started it.
Yep, same here. Though if I do cook, it has to be a massive production. If there's not something to be actively preparing the whole time, it's too boring to make. Which means there's gonna be a ton of dishes... that I really don't want to do.
Whatever is most stimulating gets my attention.
Also when I talk to someone who has ADHD it might sound strange to neurotypical people. The discussions are much faster and also less - well, I don't want to call it less boring. They are more exciting, but it does not mean that discussions with neurotypical people are boring.
However, if I notice that I have interrupted someone too late, I finish my point, and then say "but I've interrupted you, you were talking about X", and then make an effort to listen actively instead of coming up with thoughts of my own.
Sometimes, when we get carried away, I remind the other person of something he had been talking about so long ago that even he has forgotten about it. In my experience, being able not just go with the flow of the conversation, but keeping long conversation "stack traces" in mind so you can go back and actually "return" from a "subroutine" in your conversation is one of the most useful communication skills I have.
But that is unfortunately not always why. Some people take a very, very long time to get to a point they’ve already telegraphed long before. In a conversation that’s about problem solving, this is wasting everybody’s time, and I will absolutely shove you out of the spotlight and without compunction. Daylight’s burning.
To these people I say, think about your writing style. Do you bury the lead? Do you save your best information for last? Sort yourself out. Give the person permission to stop reading when they get the gist. Then try to do the same with your speaking. Maybe work on noticing comprehension cues from your peers.
The longer we go on a tangent the higher the probability that everyone’s working memory has been reset. If that keeps happening, a good solution is unlikely to arise. And if you don’t have time to do it right you have time to do it over. If you’re accepting defeat at the beginning, just pull the bandaid off, pick any reversible solution and get on to other problems.
This is definitely part of my problem. I get excited; I can understand where a point is going; I get impatient, especially when I'm hearing it described in an overly verbose way.
However, I think I probably need to remember that it's worth hearing someone out. Ultimately the team might benefit, even though the problem might be solved at a slightly slower pace.
> and I will absolutely shove you out of the spotlight and without compunction
Just to be really clear: this makes you toxic.
Brevity allows the process to continue. It avoids upsetting the checklists in people's brains. Grandstanding, soap boxing, and shaggy dog stories are actively harmful to this process. These are primarily the situations where my patience for ineffective communication is at its nadir, and we can't stop this process to have an intervention or let you keep interfering.
Also, by unspoken consensus you will quickly find yourself disinvited from these meetings.
When talking about new angles of view it is quite unusual that the whole argument/"paragraph" is 100% logically sound. In fact that is quite an exception when talking. Maybe there is more than one argument for the other position that would still follow.
I think a lot about problems and details at work that have a lot of impact. These things cannot be summarized in single sentences and I don't have the time to follow higher standards in organizing my speech than others. So in the end I often ended up repeating my standpoint through various meetings until managers realized that this is indeed a thing.
> Some people take a very, very long time to get to a point they’ve already telegraphed long before.
Many people often take a very, very long time to troubleshoot problems, perhaps even work overtime because of that. I prefer to solve things by talking when this is possible and spent engineering time on the really interesting things.
(Also it might be an organizational problem if there are no meetings to discuss things in-depth with large rounds. Dailies are surely not the place for that.)
I asked a good friend of mine who was a successful CEO that people really listened to what his secret was...
He said he stays quiet until people ask him for his opinion, then he makes sure what he says is succinct and on point as much as possible. That blew me away. Since I have been practicing that method I have noticed amazing results. It's really something that I continually need to work on, and it doesn't work with family and friends (of course) but try it out...
Also, fight the urge to put emojis in company emails, people will lose respect for you ... :\
... Crap, still working on that one.
These days a lot of people feel the need to be first and last to talk. This way, you're in the middle, but not overly invested in being heard, but choosing times when you speak, and choosing your words carefully for relevance, for best overall impact.
Eventually after a while of practicing this, people grow into the habit of looking forward to your input, and they always ask you for it, provided you don't screw up things too often.
In "brainstorming" or problem solving meetings, instead of everyone going silent and then the loudest guy getting an idea, try briefly breaking up the meeting from say 6 people into 3 groups of 2. Discuss for 2 minutes and then present the conclusions to the whole group.
1. Abject rudeness or lack of a culture that values social graces (usually the "hacker"/"power player" mentality). Usually can't be solved except from the top, but not as common.
2. Time pressure. The rudest meetings in my current workplace happen when the meeting is ill-formatted (like a design review meeting that has nothing posted beforehand that only lasts 1 hour and is expected to get a stamp at the end). The time pressure for some people to get their points or feedback across results in a total loss of empathy.
3. Lack of any moderation or management. If nobody is in control of any meeting, it leaves it to the loudest voices, who sometimes won't give space for others to talk.
But to your point, I personally just confront the person who keeps interrupting me: - Hey, can you stop talking over me and let me finish my thought? - Dude, you're wrong, and talking over people won't make your argument better.
That being said, I'm sometimes the one interrupting when people keep babbling on and on, and the manager (or meeting lead) doesn't do their job. I try to do it politely by redirecting discussion to the point or summarizing the decision, but sometimes I need to force it and be a bit rude. I don't like doing that, but when you see people starting to roll their eyes or look at their phone, someone needs to step in.
Having a clear agenda with a meeting lead also help to keep the discussion on point while giving a chance to everyone to express their thoughts. If there are bullies, the meeting lead can shut them down.
When the manager or meeting lead is the one being a jerk, then it's obviously tricky. Depending on the culture, you can either politely redirect discussion to the point, summarize the decisions... or just don't attend the meeting. If asked why, can be honest and say you keep being interrupted and might as well work on something else if they don't want to hear your thoughts.
If you get the floor and are still sounding out an idea in front of a group, consider whether contributing is a valuable use of everyone's time. There are of course people who talk forever and interrupt everyone else to make it about them, and it's because they need personal development. It's on the senior-most person there to interrupt them and redirect the flow of the discussion.
However, if that person going on and on is the most senior person, then sitting there and listening and humouring them is your job.
Seniority is a matter of job description. My job as a senior engineer involves driving alignment on the design and implementation of features. When I run meetings, they have an agenda and concrete outputs. If someone derails the meeting, I will politely but forcefully run them over. When that bubbles up into an interpersonal conflict, as it sometimes does, I'm again, polite but forceful.
I know what my job is, and I hold myself accountable for getting it done.
The only time I've been openly rude to someone was a Senior Principal at AWS who thought derailing 12+ engineer meetings to rant about unrelated topics was an acceptable use of time. The rudeness was probably uncalled for, but it got the job done and was (surprisingly) well received.
But it would be even better if you could do that job, AND not make people feel shitty / mad / disrespected in the process.
As someone who struggles with this, getting the "emotional layer" right, on top of the base objective of doing your job, is sort of the next level of competence you might think how to achieve.
It is very difficult to get right.
I have coworkers who constantly talk over each other in meetings. Bringing this up as a problem in weekly team meetings, one-on-ones with manager (she's one of them) and any other review meetings has been somewhat successful.
Took me years to painfully wean myself from the habit when talking with my wife, who objected strongly (as she should).
Check out this YouTube video titled: How to stop people from talking over you.
https://youtu.be/ikAfrKf5A8I
The YouTube channel Charisma on Command have a bunch of great videos on EQ.
I think I still lean towards talking to a manager as a more effective strategy, and a culture where management lets this kind of thing happen isn't really one I want to be a part of anyway.
I’m not sure going to a manager will work. That’s like saying: Rather than adapting my behaviour, I’d rather go to someone in the group who has power and ask them to defend me...I would rather improve my social skills and navigate the company myself. This would build my EQ and make promotions more likely.
You can escalate and re-assert that your point is valid, but that's just escalation that can go both ways, it can result in your message being heard and it can also result in you being physically removed from the discussion; so if you choose to escalate, then you need to be certain about who'll "win" the escalation. If it's an internal team meeting and the 'interrupter' is your peer, then it's one context; if it's a customer-vendor meeting and the 'interrupter' is your boss, then that's a quite different context, and you'd better stop making that point as soon as you get a hint that it's not where he wants to direct the conversation (with the other party); your point may be valid but if making it here and now would harm the company negotiating position, then he gets to decide that your message shouldn't be told here and now.
A big aspect that's important is who's setting the topic of the discussion, and the limits of what's off-topic, disctracting or irrelevant? In an informal small discussion between peers usually that's everyone and includes you, but there are many cases where it's someone else. And in many cases that someone else should be interrupting people and ensuring that some things don't get listened to - moderating discussions is a valid need that's hard to do and often gets done less than it should, resulting in excessive ineffective long offtopic meetings.
And after the two of you have talked over each other for a few seconds, they'll stop and say something like, "I'm sorry, what were you saying?" You may think it's an invitation to explain what you were trying to say. It isn't.
And if you're like me, at this point of what I laughingly call my career, your best move is to shrug and walk off.
It sounds like you were forced into a fight with a manager over whether your opinions, ideas and thoughts were worth hearing - to him.
Although he had an official position, he was not acting with decent authority: so his judgement of your ideas has no force or truth, but is just his.
Your ideas, opinions and thoughts themselves were never at stake. They existed before that manager, and they existed after. They exist now.
I'd argue that much better way is to back off for a moment and try more diplomatic solution.
There should also probably be a time limit as well.
Only real downside is when you are in a meeting with external parties on a conference of video call. Then it gets tricky.
– Guess culture: Doesn't name needs. There's an expectation that people guess each other's needs from clues/context/intuition.
– Ask culture: Names needs as an ask.
– Tell culture: Names needs. No specific kind of response is required or expected.
These aren't normative categories, but I think in any workplace, being collectively aware that these different styles exist and that communication will be improved by each person knowing their own styles and the styles of others can improve things.
– Guessers can work to name their needs.
– Askers can learn to interpret Guessers and gently help them articulate their needs, and likewise can gently ask questions of Tellers to determine their asks.
– Tellers can likewise learn to interpret Guessers and gently help them articulate their needs, and for Tellers, invite questions about their asks.
A LessWrong post, with another take on the subject: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rEBXN3x6kXgD4pLxs/tell-cultu...
For instance, over a meeting invite, letting everyone know the agenda and the rules of engagement would go a long way in setting the expectations beforehand. You might even set rules of engagement generally enough for all meetings instead of just yours... of course, then, expect to work on the feedback from all quarters, but that's manageable. It might also stand to surprise you the number of people that might be supportive of such a thing because it makes future meetings productive and approachable for them.
That said, some teams do have dynamics where a few powerful personalities by the virtue of their position in the team or their closeness to the management drain out all other voices in the room, as it were. This is a different ball-game since it involves power struggle which you'd eventually lose. A couple of ways I know to out manuver is to:
1. Show up in the meeting prepared with facts beforehand.
2. Do a post-meeting commentary on the meeting notes or talking points with a view to encourage further discussion, over email or wikis or docs.
Regardless, your comments may be ignored. Don't take it too hard, but know that you were heard loud and clear, fwiw. Rest of your team most certainly isn't turning a blind-eye.
Focus on being concise and formulating your thoughts while everyone else is hashing things out - then jump in with your clearly articulated thoughts at the end.
A lot of the time it seems people get cut off because they ramble.