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I don't agree that Strong Civility requires speaking only briefly. In fact, it makes me think someone who thinks that is just barely suppressing their interrupt

I don't agree that Strong Civility requires speaking only briefly. In fact, it makes me think someone who thinks that is just barely suppressing their interruption. "I'll wait until you finish...for a minute." No, taking turns speaking is its own reward, just like speeding a conversation along via interruptions is it's own reward.

jacobolus 7y ago
It’s less about speaking briefly per se, and more about assuming that the other person understands what you are saying, and saying no more than necessary to convey the message. Some people will keep elaborating some point until told to stop, whereas others will assume the other person understood without any explicit evidence that is true. I have found that in practice whether speakers assume their listeners understand them is a separate question from whether they tend to interrupt or not, however. The most efficient and effective conversations in my experience are 1:1, with two speakers who both explicitly verify that the other person understands their meaning and is using the same definitions of words, and have some kind of efficient protocol for working backwards from a misunderstanding or gap in knowledge as soon as one pops up. There has to be enough trust involved that both interlocutors are willing to quickly and freely admit when they don’t know something or don’t understand an argument.
- rhizome 7y ago
  It’s less about speaking briefly per se, and more about assuming that the other person understands what you are saying, and saying no more than necessary to convey the message. That's not what the article proposes: DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH OF STRONG CIVILITY 1. Thou shalt not interrupt. 2. Thou shalt speak briefly. 3. Thou shalt use physical cues to indicate your understanding and desire to speak. == That said, what's wrong with listening to someone, asking questions if you require more understanding? Another way of looking at all this: what makes you think that what you have to say is so important that it can't wait for someone to even finish their sentence?
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    The point of “thou shalt speak briefly” is that the argument is kept to a minimum required for understanding, with the expectation that a listener who does not understand will ask for clarification. The speaker does not just keep talking on and on about the same thing, waiting to be interrupted. (Note that “briefly” can sometimes be a rather extended argument, if it happens to be irreducibly complicated. The point is that it isn’t over-elaborated, not that it must be short.) This works if people always ask for clarification when they don’t understand, but in my experience that’s pretty rare, and often a poor assumption; while this style is eminently polite, it sometimes leads to severe miscommunication when there was a fundamental difference in definitions or premises that neither person recognized.
    - rhizome 7y ago
      I could be wrong, but by my read none of that is supported by the text.
      - josephg 7y ago
        The text doesn't go into detail, but I think the GP is right. You can model this as cooperative vs preemptive multithreading. In a preemptive model, each process just does its thing until it gets interrupted by the scheduler, and then then that process does its thing until it gets interrupted in turn. This is the "church of interruption" model. Its the responsibility of the other (scheduler / person) to signal to you (via an interrupt) when your turn is over. But in the cooperative multitasking model, its the responsibility of the speaker to hand the baton back. It is vulnerable to a single person / process dominating the whole space by talking / running forever. And this is totally what happens when the two cultures meet - I have a friend who is 100% church of interruption. I came back from a retreat feeling calm and peaceful. We talked on the phone for a few hours the next day and I patiently waited for him to be done before I replied - which took about 3 hours. He was vaguely confused / annoyed at me for doing that. Apparently it simply didn't occur to him that if he wanted to know my thoughts he might need to ask me for them. In the cooperative multitasking world, the golden rule is that all programs should run for a short amount of time then yield back to the scheduler so it can run something else. Its not so cut and dry for humans - I think "speak briefly" is a lossy summary of the rule because it often makes sense for one person to do most of the talking in a conversation. But in the "strong civility" culture its the responsibility of the speaker to be aware of tracking that, and usually do so only with the blessing of the group. Taking all the air in the room is a faux pas.
- Swizec 7y ago
  I had a team mate once who would go on and on and on explaining the same point over and over and elaborating a million different ways and it was extremely frustrating because not once would there ever be a break in his speech to give others the chance to ask questions (so he'd explain what we actually didn't understand) or to reply and move the conversation along. It was quite frustrating. Many of us resorted to talking over him until he noticed, stopped, and let us reply. Surprisingly impervious to interruption.
  - noobiemcfoob 7y ago
    I had a similar coworker. Worse still because they were a junior who couldn't yield the floor to anyone, regardless of seniority. Their eyes would become a little bewildered as anyone talked over them (read as 'everyone') and they never seemed to grasp what was happening. This piece gives me a better model for understanding them; just a lost soul deep in the church of civility to the point of affliction.
    - switchbak 7y ago
      Aren't you saying they're someone who won't yield until they've said their peace? That doesn't sound like the church of civility to me, but more like the rarer "interrupts, but doesn't want to be interrupted" (Barker) style. Combined with their lack of experience, I can imagine that would be frustrating to be around.
drewcoo 7y ago
I find it really rude when people are obviously just waiting their turn to say their prepared statement. It means they're not really listening to the other person, thus it's not really a conversation. Should someone keep score when that happens?
- trhway 7y ago
  So when those people are supposed to express their position? Prepared statement is another way to say that some thinking was put into it vs. just blurting out the first thing that comes into mind. So, the former is rude while the latter is respectful?
  - wtallis 7y ago
    A prepared statement may or may not be well thought out, but even if it is, ignoring the current context and not directly addressing the other party's arguments or concerns means you're hijacking the thread of conversation and implicitly dismissing the other party's statements.
    - trhway 7y ago
      if you wanna the other participants to drop everything in their heads, drop their arguments and concerns and start addressing yours you better put some work into it to make the arguments and concerns relevant and engaging. Not doing it or failing to do it and crying out "rude! highjacking!" instead is kind of rude and disrespectful to the other participants i think. I wonder whether/when we would see meeting software including "karma" feature so people could just "-1" and move forward without wasting time/effort, though "-1"ing say your manager, even if anonymously ... :)
cbanek 7y ago
I find myself speaking briefly, only because I'm expecting to get interrupted. It happens every time. Some people have said I'm very Zen by how quickly I can get a point across in few words. I tell them "it's the only way." I leave out the part about being constantly interrupted. Being a Zen woman in tech, I figured that went without saying. If I have something complex, I have to write it out, if only to prove my work/logic. At least text tends to last longer, spread wider, and be more useful than any conversation.

jacobolus 7y ago

It’s less about speaking briefly per se, and more about assuming that the other person understands what you are saying, and saying no more than necessary to convey the message. Some people will keep elaborating some point until told to stop, whereas others will assume the other person understood without any explicit evidence that is true. I have found that in practice whether speakers assume their listeners understand them is a separate question from whether they tend to interrupt or not, however. The most efficient and effective conversations in my experience are 1:1, with two speakers who both explicitly verify that the other person understands their meaning and is using the same definitions of words, and have some kind of efficient protocol for working backwards from a misunderstanding or gap in knowledge as soon as one pops up. There has to be enough trust involved that both interlocutors are willing to quickly and freely admit when they don’t know something or don’t understand an argument.

rhizome 7y ago
It’s less about speaking briefly per se, and more about assuming that the other person understands what you are saying, and saying no more than necessary to convey the message. That's not what the article proposes: DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH OF STRONG CIVILITY 1. Thou shalt not interrupt. 2. Thou shalt speak briefly. 3. Thou shalt use physical cues to indicate your understanding and desire to speak. == That said, what's wrong with listening to someone, asking questions if you require more understanding? Another way of looking at all this: what makes you think that what you have to say is so important that it can't wait for someone to even finish their sentence?
- jacobolus 7y ago
  The point of “thou shalt speak briefly” is that the argument is kept to a minimum required for understanding, with the expectation that a listener who does not understand will ask for clarification. The speaker does not just keep talking on and on about the same thing, waiting to be interrupted. (Note that “briefly” can sometimes be a rather extended argument, if it happens to be irreducibly complicated. The point is that it isn’t over-elaborated, not that it must be short.) This works if people always ask for clarification when they don’t understand, but in my experience that’s pretty rare, and often a poor assumption; while this style is eminently polite, it sometimes leads to severe miscommunication when there was a fundamental difference in definitions or premises that neither person recognized.
  - rhizome 7y ago
    I could be wrong, but by my read none of that is supported by the text.
    - josephg 7y ago
      The text doesn't go into detail, but I think the GP is right. You can model this as cooperative vs preemptive multithreading. In a preemptive model, each process just does its thing until it gets interrupted by the scheduler, and then then that process does its thing until it gets interrupted in turn. This is the "church of interruption" model. Its the responsibility of the other (scheduler / person) to signal to you (via an interrupt) when your turn is over. But in the cooperative multitasking model, its the responsibility of the speaker to hand the baton back. It is vulnerable to a single person / process dominating the whole space by talking / running forever. And this is totally what happens when the two cultures meet - I have a friend who is 100% church of interruption. I came back from a retreat feeling calm and peaceful. We talked on the phone for a few hours the next day and I patiently waited for him to be done before I replied - which took about 3 hours. He was vaguely confused / annoyed at me for doing that. Apparently it simply didn't occur to him that if he wanted to know my thoughts he might need to ask me for them. In the cooperative multitasking world, the golden rule is that all programs should run for a short amount of time then yield back to the scheduler so it can run something else. Its not so cut and dry for humans - I think "speak briefly" is a lossy summary of the rule because it often makes sense for one person to do most of the talking in a conversation. But in the "strong civility" culture its the responsibility of the speaker to be aware of tracking that, and usually do so only with the blessing of the group. Taking all the air in the room is a faux pas.
Swizec 7y ago
I had a team mate once who would go on and on and on explaining the same point over and over and elaborating a million different ways and it was extremely frustrating because not once would there ever be a break in his speech to give others the chance to ask questions (so he'd explain what we actually didn't understand) or to reply and move the conversation along. It was quite frustrating. Many of us resorted to talking over him until he noticed, stopped, and let us reply. Surprisingly impervious to interruption.
- noobiemcfoob 7y ago
  I had a similar coworker. Worse still because they were a junior who couldn't yield the floor to anyone, regardless of seniority. Their eyes would become a little bewildered as anyone talked over them (read as 'everyone') and they never seemed to grasp what was happening. This piece gives me a better model for understanding them; just a lost soul deep in the church of civility to the point of affliction.
  - switchbak 7y ago
    Aren't you saying they're someone who won't yield until they've said their peace? That doesn't sound like the church of civility to me, but more like the rarer "interrupts, but doesn't want to be interrupted" (Barker) style. Combined with their lack of experience, I can imagine that would be frustrating to be around.

drewcoo 7y ago

I find it really rude when people are obviously just waiting their turn to say their prepared statement. It means they're not really listening to the other person, thus it's not really a conversation. Should someone keep score when that happens?

trhway 7y ago
So when those people are supposed to express their position? Prepared statement is another way to say that some thinking was put into it vs. just blurting out the first thing that comes into mind. So, the former is rude while the latter is respectful?
- wtallis 7y ago
  A prepared statement may or may not be well thought out, but even if it is, ignoring the current context and not directly addressing the other party's arguments or concerns means you're hijacking the thread of conversation and implicitly dismissing the other party's statements.
  - trhway 7y ago
    if you wanna the other participants to drop everything in their heads, drop their arguments and concerns and start addressing yours you better put some work into it to make the arguments and concerns relevant and engaging. Not doing it or failing to do it and crying out "rude! highjacking!" instead is kind of rude and disrespectful to the other participants i think. I wonder whether/when we would see meeting software including "karma" feature so people could just "-1" and move forward without wasting time/effort, though "-1"ing say your manager, even if anonymously ... :)

cbanek 7y ago

I find myself speaking briefly, only because I'm expecting to get interrupted. It happens every time. Some people have said I'm very Zen by how quickly I can get a point across in few words. I tell them "it's the only way." I leave out the part about being constantly interrupted. Being a Zen woman in tech, I figured that went without saying. If I have something complex, I have to write it out, if only to prove my work/logic. At least text tends to last longer, spread wider, and be more useful than any conversation.