Seriously, They Get It

Why you need to be more interruptible

It’s important to be interruptible.

And by “important”, I mean absolutely fundamental to convincing other people that you are a likeable, intelligent, socially aware human who adds value to conversations.

It’s likely no one has ever told you this (perhaps because they can’t get a word in), but even if you don’t know if you’re interruptible, you’ve probably been victimized by someone who isn’t. But just in case your god’s favorite and you haven’t, allow me to paint you a picture:

Katie, Danny, and Bert are meeting for 15 minutes to review how their project is going. Katie gives a quick update: code’s approved, she’ll update the trackers. She leans back to hear Danny’s update.

Except Bert gets there first.

Bert has decided the campaign collateral needs to go in a slightly different direction, and he’s given it a lot of thought. He leads with the headline “When we put together the original materials, we didn’t have last month’s data yet, but it turns out our audience is responding way better to content without illustrations.” Only use content without illustrations because it performs better. That tracks. Katie and Danny nod. They’re onboard.

But Bert? Bert isn’t finished. Bert came armed with many justifications and a breakdown of why the change won’t affect the launch date. And since he’s been staring at his hands while talking, he has no idea Katie and Danny are already with him. They’re still sitting there nodding. Vigorously.

Bert launches into his explanation.

“Yeah, we’re totally aligned,” Katie tries to interject, but Bert just raises his volume the second she starts talking. She tries two more times, then shoots Danny a pleading look. “Sounds great, dude,” Danny tries. But there’s no reaching Bert. He talks for another eight minutes while Danny discreetly sorts through his email, wondering how someone can talk for so long without coming up for air. Katie tries to remind herself that a homicide would not look good on her performance review.

“Any questions?” Bert asks when he’s finally ready to cede the floor. But Danny and Katie don’t hear him; they’re just nodding on autopilot.

“Great, glad you guys agree. Oh, Danny, did you want to use the last four minutes to go over the ad budget? I heard there might be some big changes.”

Danny slacks Katie, I’ll tell you about it later, before turning back to Bert with a forced smile. “Nah, it’s okay, man. I need to get to my next meeting.”

Common advice would tell us that Katie is the villain of this story. After all, Bert was talking, and interrupting is rude. And she interrupted multiple times, or at least she certainly tried.

But put yourself in this meeting, and you know Bert is the bad guy. In his inability to be interrupted, he has wasted his colleagues’ time, obstructed Danny from giving a valuable update, and pissed off everyone around him.

If you aren’t letting people interrupt you, I promise you’re doing all those things too.

It’s not about what you want to say

I used to lead a training session at work on how to be a better presenter, and it always included this concept: effective communication requires sharing what the audience needs to know, not what the presenter wants to say.

This principle applies to all communication, although I violate this in the newsletter all the time. Do as I say, not as I do.

Whenever you’re explaining something, this “needs to know vs wants to say” gap will exist. Your friends don’t need to know where you bought your Subaru to hear how you crashed it. Your manager doesn’t need the backstory on the eight ideas you scrapped. We over-explain because we’re anxious communicators who have no idea what people need and think more detail equals more clarity. And also because we tend to think we’re a little more interesting than we are.

While I encourage you to exercise restraint, you should expect to yap too long sometimes. We all do. And when you do, make sure the people around you can use the one tool that helps them get you back on track—interruption.

A Taxonomy of Interruptions

There are two types of interruption (according to me): tangents and engagements. And while most of us were scolded as children for interrupting our parents with the former, we have also likely used the latter strategically many times without realizing it.

Tangents are what they sound like: disruptions that yank a conversation away from a topic it’s on and to something entirely new. Saying “Mom, can I have ice cream?” when your mother is in the middle of discussing the carpool schedule is a tangent. So is interrupting a conversation about the budget because you just had an epiphany about the creative. So is basically any idea that you introduce with the word “anyway.”

Engagements are less obvious and come in more forms. Often, they’re acknowledgements and agreements: “Yup,” “mhm,” “I got it,” “understood.” These let the speaker know that you get the point, and they can move on. Other times, they are redirects: “Wait,” “hold on,” “hey, but…” which can tell a speaker you need them to pause or backtrack before they continue. And most sneakily, they are skip-aheads: full sentences or new ideas that respond to the place the speaker’s sentence was heading before it finished getting there.

We are taught that interruptions are rude because tangents always are. They say, “What I’m thinking about is more important than what you’re talking about,” and “I am totally not listening.”

But engagements aren’t that easy. While they can feel rude--especially if you’re wrong about where the speaker was going or if you do it every other sentence--this type of interruption is a useful tool for letting someone know how their communication is going.

“I understand” can be a big relief for someone who’s not sure they’re getting the message across, just as a re-direct can help show someone that you’re seriously listening and want to be certain you understand them. Interruptions, when they engage with the speaker, are often just the easiest way to help someone figure out how to communicate what you need to know.

I will quickly admit that I am biased. I come from a proud lineage of engaged interruptors, and I’ve been interrupted this way all my life. Implicitly, I was taught to interrupt this way. My family’s full of sharp, busy people, and we sit around the dinner table, interruptions are as common as speaking.

After decades of trying to be mindful of my interrupting, I’ve found most engaged interruptions help more than they hurt.

Particularly at work.

In social settings where we tell stories for pleasure, interrupting often has no point. Even if you get where the story is going, let someone tell it their way. It’s joyful, and you’re in no rush. Order another drink and chill.

At work, almost all communication serves a purpose to inform, inquire, or instruct. Time is expensive, clarity is important, and information asymmetries abound. In this setting, being joyful is not the point (although is encouraged!), and you often are in a rush. So when Bert decides to filibuster the monthly business review, interrupting him when everyone clearly gets the point isn’t just practical, it’s respectful to other people’s time. Allowing yourself to be interrupted is also respectful.

Being uninterruptible: not respectful.

It’s actually tactless, selfish, and rude. When you prevent others from interjecting with engagements, you’ve done the exact same thing a tangent does. You’ve declared that what you have to say is more important than what anyone else does. That might not be what you think, but it’s what you’ve communicated.

So, unless you’re certain you’re a perfect business communicator, you need to make sure that whenever you speak, you can be interrupted.

Great. Now that I’ve told you all the stuff I wanted to say and you probably didn’t need to know (this newsletter is for pleasure, sorry), I’ll tell you the one thing you need to do to be more interruptible.

In Short: Pay Better Attention

Being uninterruptible, though it may seem like a crime of ego, is usually a crime of ignorance. Bert doesn’t ramble because he’s enchanted with his own explanations; he does it because he wants to convince his teammates of his idea, and he has zero idea that he did it in one sentence. The only thing Bert has to do differently to avoid his meeting faux pas is pay attention while he talks.

Most people, through their faces and bodies, will tell you what they think about what they’re saying. Educators know this better than anyone: a silent classroom doesn’t mean everyone is listening if everyone’s slumped over, staring out the window. When talking at work, think of yourself as a teacher who has to get through to your class. It doesn’t matter how clear the material is if they’re all on their phones, so you need to try to read their cues while you speak.

Head nods: people are following. Good sign.

Really big head nods: they really agree, or they want you to move on. Either way, move on.

Head tilts: people are confused. Bad sign. Pause and give people the chance to ask questions.

Furrowed brows: people are either confused or unhappy

Slyly reading something on their laptop: you’ve lost them

Mouths gaping open and closed like goldfish: they get your point. Let someone else talk.

Your brain already knows how to read these nonverbal cues. You just have to make a point of taking them in.

When you’re speaking (no matter what you’re speaking about), pause. Take breaths. Look around for two seconds. All these things give you the chance to read the room and, even better, the chance for someone to interrupt and help you out.

Let’s say you’ve failed to do this. You have not, in fact, read the room, and now your colleagues are trying to interject. My advice: just try letting them. When you hear someone raising their voice at the same time as you, try to meet it with curiosity. Stop speaking, let them talk, and then assess. If they were off base about where you were headed, you can always just get back on track and finish the thought. If you have to, you can even interrupt to do so.

If they skipped ahead successfully, let them do so. It expedites the conversation so long as everyone else is following too (this is when you scan for furrowed brows and tilted heads).

Worst-case scenario, it’s a tangent. And you interrupt back, try to get back on track, and if you’re really miffed about it, tell the person later that you didn’t like the way they spoke over you.

The one caveat I’ll include: it’s possible to be too interruptible, especially for women and minorities. My guidance is to trust your instincts. You know when you’re being shut down or spoken over because you’re not being taken seriously. I promise you do. When someone’s just repeating you or blatantly ignoring what you were saying, you know. When this happens, I lean on a tactic I learned from an older female debater I admired in high school. She was being aggressively spoken over in a cross-examination, and instead of backing down or raising her voice, she waited until the kid paused and delivered a calm, devastating: “I actually wasn’t finished speaking.”

I cannot begin to tell you the power that phrase introduced into my life.

But for all the moments you are being engaged with, I’ll leave you with this:

Being interruptible is not a speaking skill; it’s a listening skill. If Bert had paid attention—for literally two seconds—he would’ve made his team feel seen, and IT wouldn’t be wondering why Katie googled “how to dispose of a body” during working hours.

Let the people interrupt you, even when it’s mid-sentence. Your meetings will get better, you’ll learn where to start applying restraint, and best of all: you’ll make other people feel heard.

Thanks, always, for reading. Talk soon.