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24Interrupted: What If I Keep Getting Talked Over?

Being interrupted is a really common workplace and general communication complaint. Although there is data that says both men and women interrupt one another, men tend to do more interrupting and have fewer social or psychological penalties for interrupting than women do, according to research from Joanna Wolfe, a teaching professor of English at Carnegie Mellon's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.¹ While preparing for this book, dealing with interruptions was in the top five things people wanted to make sure I cover, so to be sure, interrupting is giving folks some serious grief.

How do you deal with being interrupted in the moment? I'm going to be honest, this one is tough. Many of us have visions of evoking Vice President Kamala Harris's “I'm speaking” with that one colleague who seems to always interrupt everyone, but we also worry about being seen as confrontational. Remember that nervy feeling I have described a few times in this book that can happen between our nose and our navel? Managing interruptions activates that feeling for me big time because there really isn't a way to avoid addressing the behavior being at least a little confrontational. Addressing an interruption always runs the risk of getting a little messy no matter how tactfully you address it. There just isn't a way to do it where you can be sure you won't potentially rub a leader the wrong way, although I have found addressing interruptions ...