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Jan 1, 2021
Brenda Smyth
We’ve all been taught not to interrupt. And that still seems like good advice in our virtual world.
But with so many virtual meetings now, bad listening and speaking habits seem to be morphing. Should you try to interject when a meeting is dominated by one person? When they don’t pause, don’t take a breath, and their sentences are strung so tightly together, like taxis at a busy airport, should you wait patiently for an opening? You’ve taken time to come to this meeting and now you’re sitting silently. Your time is too valuable for this kind of treatment, isn’t it?
Before answering, there’s another question I think we should consider: Why are people in online meetings not pausing between sentences anymore?
The answer to this second question is easy. Talking without pauses is a conditioned response. Because it’s likely they’ve been interrupted once too often and now that they finally have the floor for just a second, they’re going to keep it by talking and stringing one sentence right into the next even when they have nothing to add but are still thinking and don’t want to give up the floor because if they do, it will be hard to get it back.
Now, to answer the first question. No. Your silence is important. Interrupting is still usually wrong unless the speaker has veered wildly off course (in which case, it’s the meeting moderator’s job to bring things back to topic).
If you’re struggling to keep from interrupting in a virtual meeting, what can you do to curb your impulse to be heard?
If you’re the person interrupted, experts tend to agree on the best course of action: Keep talking. While this will feel awkward, remember that you were the one who was interrupted. If someone jumps in as you pause, take back control by saying, “Great point, Jim, and now I’ll finish what I was saying.” This advice does come with a caveat: Be sure you’re not the one monopolizing discussion during online meetings.
Related post: Skilled Interrupting: Polite Ways to Keep Meetings and Conversations on Track.
Brenda Smyth
Brenda Smyth is supervisor of content creation at SkillPath. Drawing from 20-plus years of business and management experience, her writings have appeared on Forbes.com, Entrepreneur.com and Training Industry Magazine.
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