Are you a “chronic interrupter” or a “cooperative overlapper”?
🗣 A 2021 study (which has been corroborated several times over the last decade) found that men interrupt women twice as often as women interrupt men.
Also today: Live-drawing the Trump trial, cautionary design, and strategic impoliteness
By Harris Sockel
The hardest thing for me about transitioning to remote work was how awkward it can be to hold a conversation over Zoom. I have this habit of verbally agreeing with what someone is saying as they’re saying it — sometimes nodding my head isn’t enough, and I need to add a “mmhm” or a “yes!”
On Zoom, it’s easy for that to turn into: “Oh, sorry, what were you saying?”
It’s awkward.
A recent Medium story helped me understand what’s going on here. The author reframes interrupting as — depending on the context — “cooperative overlapping.” Here’s the gist, citing research from linguistics professor Deborah Tannen:
Overlapping “can be a way of showing enthusiastic engagement with what the speaker is saying.” […] Tannen relates a story of how she transcribed a conversation she was part of, at a dinner party between people from New York, people from California, and a person from London.
Tannen and the other New Yorkers talked over one another in a way that is meant to encourage more talking within the group.
The individuals from California and London said they were waiting for pauses during which they could enter the conversation, suggesting that getting a word in edgewise would have required “a crowbar.”
What I love about this story is that it reframes something often viewed negatively (interrupting) in a positive way. This story also does something so many great stories do: It names something that was previously just a vague nameless feeling.
It can be really difficult to understand a behavior without giving it a name. This is the principle driving the popularity of everything from Myers-Briggs to astrology to the use of the enneagram in startups. Labels can jumpstart thinking, and even if they’re over-generalized, they’re a place to start.
What else we’re reading
- A misplaced “Log in” button on a web page meant for collecting endorsements led a bunch of unsuspecting Icelanders to accidentally run for President (!). Content designer Anna Andersen analyzes the misleading user interface and draws a few cautionary lessons for designers everywhere:
— Be wary of generic buttons.
— Use visual hierarchy and clear headings to break a page into scannable sections, because scanning is what people do first. - Visual journalist Liza Donnelly is at Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan (she’s sitting in the press spillover room and watching it via split-screen CCTV). He is on trial for allegedly falsifying business records during the 2016 campaign to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to ensure she wouldn’t go public about their purported affair. Donnelly doesn’t give us a play-by-play of the trial itself; instead, she helps us understand what it’s like to be there: “Everyone was so nice and it felt a little like a weird community. People — cops and journalists — greeted each other as if they had become friends, returning each day.”
Your daily dose of practical wisdom: about strategic impoliteness
“Being polite won’t get you the relationships you want,” explains writer Marta Brzosko. Instead, practice moments of candor and strategic impoliteness to build long-term trust.
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Jon Gluck
Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com
