ExecMagazine

Interrupting can cause a whole stream of problems and challenges. It reduces our effectiveness as a listener, negatively impacts relationships, shuts down communication, reduces our ability to learn and much more.

If interrupting causes all of these problems, and we all seem to do it, the logical question is, how can we stop interrupting?

Read on, because the rest of this article offers seven ways to change your approach to listening and to kick your interrupting habit.

The Seven Ways

Don’t talk. If you aren’t talking, it is hard to be interrupting. The goal is to develop the habit of not interrupting. So just stop interrupting. This could be called the Nike™ approach – Just Do It (just stop interrupting). Seems simple enough, but unfortunately this is a habit that many of us haven’t yet developed. (If we had, I likely wouldn’t be sharing these ideas.)

Close your mouth. Believe me, this is different than “don’t talk.” In the last point I said, “If you aren’t talking, it is hard to be interrupting.” This is generally, though not universally, true. Many times (including several times yesterday) I find myself not audibly interrupting someone, but I do open my mouth as if I’m signaling to the other person that I am ready to talk. Is this better than talking over them? Perhaps slightly, but you still have communicated to the other person that you are done listening and are ready to talk.

I read once that the best thing we could do to be a better listener is to imagine that we have a drop of glue on our lips. Keeping our mouth closed, whether we speak or not, will definitely keep us from interrupting.

Source: Kevin Eikenberry