Women at Work - Make Yourself Heard

Episode Date: January 24, 2018

Have you ever been in a meeting and shared an idea, only to have it ignored? Then, 10 minutes later, a guy shares the same idea, and your boss says “Great idea!” (Grrr.) Or maybe you’ve been told you apologize too much, don’t speak up enough, or that you need more “confidence” or “leadership presence.” (Ugh.) In this episode, we tackle three aspects of communication: first, how and why women’s speech patterns differ from men’s; second, how women can be more assertive in meetings; and third, how women can deal with interrupters (since the science shows women get interrupted more often than men do). Guests: Deborah Tannen is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University.  She is best known as the author of the bestseller “You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.” Jill Flynn is a founding partner at Flynn Heath Holt Leadership. Amy Gallo is an HBR contributing editor and author of the “HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict.” Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network. For links to the articles mentioned in this episode, as well as other information about the show, visit hbr.org/podcasts/women-at-work.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. Let's go back for a few minutes to the 1990s. More women were in the office, increasingly working alongside men or above them, not for them. Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University linguistics professor, was concerned about these women being heard and respected by their male colleagues. Here's Deborah in her 1995 workplace training video, Talking 9 to 5. For example, have you ever said something at a meeting, had it ignored, then someone else said the same thing and it was picked up as a great idea?

Have you ever told someone to do something and then it wasn't done or was done wrong? She knew from her research that the way women tend to talk at work can put them at a disadvantage. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Nicole Torres, associate editor. I'm Amy Bernstein, editor of HBR. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael, executive editor. Our show's about what women experience at work, and our first episode is about being heard. And those couple workplace scenarios, being ignored in a meeting, not getting credit for your ideas, seem just as on topic now as they did back in the 90s. So we sat down and watched Debra's video to hear what women of the 90s were up against. Oh, right, right, right. My landing gear is down.

Your landing gear? Oh, I just over-tried with the headphones on. I feel like I'm like in a cockpit or something. As you'll hear, Amy and Sarah did not hold back. A ritual that men often use, which women can take literally, is ritual opposition. Just as little boys when they play with their friends often spend time play fighting, much more than little girls do. As adults, men often use an oppositional stance to get things done. I find it so confusing. Ideas, rather than supporting somebody else's ideas, they'll try to point out the weaknesses, challenge it as a way of helping somebody explore the idea. And that makes me run away.

But listeners, we need you to stay with us because we're going to talk to Deborah Tannen about the power of talk, which she wrote about for HBR in 1995. Then Sarah, Amy, and I have our own observations and stories. And after that, we'll talk with two experts who will give us practical advice on how we can communicate more effectively. First, our conversation with Deborah Tannen. We started by asking her what, if anything, has changed about how women are speaking and being heard in the workplace. My impression is that not much has changed. I have been giving talks to various organizations, corporations, companies, pretty much nonstop since back then. And whenever I do give these talks,

I get the same response. That's exactly what's happening to me. I experienced that just yesterday. You've just told the story of my life. So that's the basis for my saying that not much has changed. So if women are still struggling to be heard for the same reasons today, if not much has changed, we want to get a better understanding of where that comes from, what's driving that. I trace the way women and men tend to speak at work, and it's very important to say right at the beginning, tend to. Nothing is true of all women or all men. We have many influences on our style other than our gender. But there are tendencies that girls and boys tend to learn as kids playing in same-sex groups. Girls tend to talk in ways that

downplay their authority. If they talk in ways that play up the fact that they're maybe a leader in the group or that they think they're good at something, the other girls will criticize them. She's bossy. She thinks she's something. She's stuck up. That contrasts with the way boys tend to maintain their position in the group, talk up what they're good at, maybe even make it into a game where they're trying to top each other. And the leader of the group is someone who tells the others what to do and gets it to stick. If we move into the workplace, a person in authority has to tell others what to do. And frequently, women will find ways to do it that doesn't seem too bossy, that downplays their authority.

I was actually speaking at a college and talking to the president of the college, and she told me of this experience. She had said something to her assistant like, could you do me a favor, and went on and asked her to do something. The member of the board took her aside and said, don't forget, you're the president. He had heard the fact that she started with, could you do me a favor? Literally, as if she really thought she didn't have the authority to ask her own assistant to do something. She was quite certain that she knew the assistant

had to do whatever she asked her to do. So she was saving face for the assistant by asking it in a way that was, in her view, simply polite. Could you do me a woman in a meeting saying something like, I'm not quite sure I'm following. Can someone like recap for me if they think that the person running the meeting should have done that but didn't in the beginning? Or can someone please, you know, explain what the Q3 results mean, even if they themselves know, but they think someone else in the group needs that information. That's a great example of how women will often talk in ways that will save face for other people. And it's interpreted as something internal about them. So I thought that this was a really interesting take on confidence.

I feel like the narrative is usually that women are socialized to be less confident, but it seems like you're saying they're actually socialized to sound less confident. Yes, absolutely. Laurie Hetherington did a study where she asked hundreds of incoming freshmen at the university where she taught to predict the grades that they were going to get in their first year. There were two conditions. Half of them were asked to do it in a public way, either orally tell the interviewer what grades they expected or write it on a piece of paper, but then those predictions were read aloud to a group. The other was private. Write what you expect, close it in an envelope, seal up the envelope, no one's going to see it. The findings were fascinating because in the conditions when it was public, women predicted much lower grades for themselves than men tended

to. When it was private, it was pretty much the same for the women and the men. So what the women were doing was downplaying what they really expected so that they wouldn't come across as too full of themselves. I think that there might be something a little bit different going on with credit taking and women, where for some of us, taking credit is kind of a repugnant act. Have you seen anything on that front? Yes. I observed that women frequently said, we, when talking about something they personally had done or accomplished. I also observed men saying I about things that they were not individually, personally responsible for.

And I think that has a lot to do with our sense of what's appropriate. So a lot of women feel it's kind of boastful to say I. The word I in itself is to be avoided. So they'll say we to be gracious about the people that they work with. But they kind of assume other people will know that they really did it. And that's kind of similar to this more general pattern that many women felt. If I do a good job, it will be noticed. I don't have to call attention to what I've done. Whereas for many men, they realize that they should call attention to it or people won't know. A lot of these ways of speaking that women have taken for granted or assume are appropriate, it's realistic. The phenomenon I often refer to is the double bind.

We have expectations for how women should speak, and if they don't fulfill those expectations, people don't like them. We have expectations for how men should speak. If they don't speak that way, people will have a negative impression. It's a challenge to find some middle ground. Deborah, what does that sound like? What does it sound like to successfully navigate that? I'll give an example. A woman has to tell a subordinate to do something. If she says something like, do you think you could do this by four? The high pitch,

the rising intonation, all of that would be polite and not too imposing. People would like her, but see her as lacking authority. She could say, do this by four. That would be authoritative, but would make a bad impression because it's too assertive for a woman. She could say something like, I need this by four. Do you think you could do that? So it's something in between the very self-effacing and the very declarative. One of the things I found really interesting about the article was reading about some of the conversational rituals that women have that I had never thought about in those terms,

such as apologizing when something's not their fault, but just sort of apologizing because something bad happened. The other one that really hit home to me was compliments, sort of just ritualistically complimenting other people, especially other women. And then you had a great example in the article, too, of like a ritual that was uncompleted by the other party and how awkward that was. And I was like, yes, this happens every day to me. Here's an example of a conversational ritual that can backfire when the other person doesn't do their part. Women are often told they apologize too much.

They're told, don't apologize. It's not your fault. Sometimes a woman will use an apology to get the other person to apologize. I'll give you a specific example. Let's say there was a meeting. You're the boss. Subordinate didn't come to the meeting. They were supposed to be there. She might say something like, gee, sorry you weren't at the meeting if I forgot to tell you about it. I'm sorry. It was really pretty important. She sorry you weren't at the meeting if I forgot to tell you about it. I'm sorry. It was really pretty important. She knows she told him about the meeting. She has apologized for A. He is supposed to apologize for B. So he should say, and she would expect him to say, oh yeah, you did tell me. I'm sorry something came up and I couldn't make it,

but I'll make sure to find out what went on and it won't happen again. If he says, yeah, make sure you tell me next time. It's almost like sitting on a seesaw, a teeter-totter. You sit on your side, but you trust the other person to sit on their side. If they get off, you go plopping to the ground and you wonder how you got there. What did I do? But it really wasn't anything you did. It's that the other person did not do their part of the conversational rituals. There's more complimenting, more apologizing going on maybe. So why aren't those behaviors, those rituals more valued now if they're more common? When I did this research back in the early 90s, I was quite convinced that when there were more women in the workplace, the standards would change. So in a way, I'm disappointed and also surprised that they haven't. The explanation I would surmise is that our sense of how a person in authority should speak or behave is still based on an image of a man in authority. We still associate authority with men.

Well, Deborah, thank you again so much for joining us today. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Bye. After we said bye to Debra, Amy, Sarah, and I stuck around and chatted about how we talk at the office as three women working as editors at HBR. I have found it really hard to find this sort of happy medium between backing off some of these behaviors like apologizing that I know are undermining me and also finding a more assertive way to speak that doesn't sound too strong. apologize. And the endless on-ramps to the point, just stop it. You're not doing anyone any favors, particularly yourself. But the people listening to you just want to hear what you're trying to say. They don't want to hear all the atmospherics around it. The other piece of advice I'll give, and you didn't ask for it, but I'm going to give it anyway, is get over yourself. It's not about you. It's about the idea. And when you get to that point, you liberate yourself from all of those doubts and all of the communication of those doubts. And you make it so much easier to get your ideas across and you become so much more interesting. Just to push back on that a little bit.

You're wrong. In my career, earlier in my career, I had attempted to cut out a lot of these conversational female tics. And the advice I then got from someone who I think very much was having my best interest at heart was, you know, Sarah, when you talk, you're not deferential enough. Instead of just blurting out your idea, you need to say, you know, well, this is just one idea, but or I could be wrong, but. And I was really taken aback by that and actually told the senior male who was giving me this advice. Oh, it's funny you notice that because I actually had made a conscious effort to stop doing that because I had heard that that is something young women do that undermines them. Okay, that makes me absolutely crazy hearing that. That is such bad advice. There isn't a question in my mind that that was, it may have been well-intentioned,

it may have been delivered with love. But to tell a young woman to be more deferential is so undermining. An exceptionally bright and articulate young woman does have a steeper hill to climb. There's no question about that. But a good manager helps her climb it without stepping on every little landmine. And it is a minefield out there. We all know that.

The best advice I think I've gotten at work was a couple of years ago in a presentation, I was apologizing for like having ugly slides. It was, you know, kind of a joke. So my like poor attempt at being funny at the end, you know, Catherine, my boss was like, that was great, but stop saying sorry, especially if you didn't do anything wrong and you're not at fault. And Debra touched on, you know, how women apologize more. I feel like that's a common refrain we hear. Have you two ever gotten advice to stop apologizing?

I have never gotten that advice. But I also have noticed that I will apologize in absurd situations. Like someone on the street bumps into me and I say, oh, gosh, I'm so sorry. Thank you. And I'm like, what? That person just ran into me. You know, I not only apologized, but I thanked them. And I realized that is like disturbing behavior on my part.

I don't know. Amy? I've not been told that I apologize too much. I've been told I take too much blame. Huh. I've only heard that a couple of times, but yeah. The thing that has been tricky for me in this area also is the word just. And I know there's been a kind of online movement to convince women to stop using the word just.

I was just reaching out. I was just wondering. I think it's just a little bit too, you know, as a way of like, just don't say just, you know, have your opinion and just own it. And it's bad writing. It's bad writing. It's like the word very. But when I take it out, I look at what I wrote and I'm like, God, that woman's a bossy woman. And maybe the woman who gets it is thinking, ah, finally, clarity.

Fair enough. Fair enough, fair enough. From talking with Debra Tannen, we came away more aware of how we tend to speak at work, like how lots of us tend to be politely indirect or save face for other people, and how those speech patterns can prevent us from showing up

as leaders at work. We wanted to hear more about what we can do to make our colleagues listen to us, especially in meetings. So we called up Jill Flynn. She's a founding partner of the consulting firm Flynn Heath Holt. She and her team of consultants work with women and coach them to be more effective as business leaders. They've also done research about women's performance in meetings, which was the topic of the 2014 magazine article, Women Find Your Voice, which Jill co-wrote with Catherine Heath and Mary Davis Holt. They write about why highly capable women don't feel as effective as they could in meetings. Among the many reasons they found, their voices are often ignored or drowned out. They also have practical advice for women trying to make themselves heard.

One piece of that advice was to master the pre-meeting. If you, like me, often feel too busy to have a pre-meeting or are just wondering what the heck it even is, here's Jill to explain. The meeting, for the most part, the meeting is not where everything happens. The meeting is to usually ratify decisions, maybe discuss potential options. It's really, really important that you know before you go to a meeting what's going to happen and what's the purpose of the meeting. Depending on the focus of the meeting, we have got to prepare. And so many of us don't do that. We just show up, do what we think we're supposed to do, and then we leave immediately.

We say that meetings are really like the corporate stage. It is where you get to be seen and heard and evaluated. And we're not taking that seriously. So if we are trying to get approval for something or we are trying to get our peers to join in and follow, because as leaders, what we're trying to do is make changes in our organizations. We have got to have individual meetings and find out what's on those people's minds, who are the key influencers, how can I get them to help me, how can I understand their potential resistance. So break that down for us, though.

When you're preparing to enter a room, you're preparing to speak spontaneously. You've done all of the work. You've tried to get votes before the meeting. So what do you do aside from get ready to look confident? You speak up pretty quickly, and you go to the meeting early. One thing about that is that it helps you be more comfortable. And our tendency, many women's tendency, is we're so busy we book ourselves all the way till 10 and the meeting starts at 10. So sometimes we come in at 2 after 10 and we're

carrying a bunch of stuff and we don't even look like we're ready for the meeting. Men, if you notice, particularly at the executive level, they come early. They don't carry a lot of papers. They don't take notes. When they get there early, they talk to each other. They do what we call the power of the informal. You know, men are very relationship-oriented too. We always say women are relational, and we are.

But men, especially the higher you go, it's more about relationships. Who can I trust? Who can I go to? Who do I know has my back? And so when we come in late or right on the dot and we haven't paid any attention to these relationships, even just, you know, casual talk, it doesn't have to be anything about business. We're not as ready to be part of the group, and we can't read the tone of the group as well informally. Women tend to like more formality and more presenting, and then we also tend to not speak up if it's not our area of expertise. So we're quiet a lot, but the more successful people, they understand the whole business and they can speak to the whole business. You can go into a meeting and have a few questions, good, deep thought questions.

That's a good way to contribute. You don't have to be the expert. Are you saying, Jill, that you should be prepared to speak up and speak up early, but speaking up can include the smart question? Absolutely. You'll be in a meeting. It's going to, you know, it just goes around and around, people repeat. And sometimes it can be very helpful to just be able to say, you know, we've looked at this now from three different angles. We did this, we did this, we did this. What's our next step? Just to sort of call the question in a nice professional

way, not accusatory, not belittling, nothing like that. We can't get away with anything like that. But to name what is happening right now, that can be powerful. So I want to ask you about some advice that I feel like women, but maybe especially young women get all the time, speak up more or voice your opinions in meetings. What should managers maybe say instead? The manager needs to help the person prepare. You don't just say to someone, speak up more. You say, now, we were just in a meeting and you didn't say anything. I know you have some ideas. Talk to me about this idea that we were discussing in the meeting. And they'll say it. And you say, you know, say it to me again in more succinct, don't use all the acronyms or whatever. Okay, good. That's the kind of thing I'd like to

hear you say in the meeting. Also, managers, if they're in the meeting, they can call on the person. You know, what do you think, Amy? Amy, you've got some ideas on this. What do you think? This is one of the main things men can do, any mentor can do for younger people, men or women. Jill, you in the article you wrote for HBR on this topic actually had some specific phrases that women could also use that you called muscular language. So instead of phrasing your suggestion as a question, you should say, I strongly suggest. Or instead of saying, well, I think maybe you could say, well, my plan is, do you ever get pushback from the women you coach where they're just like, I just can't say that. That doesn't sound like me. Yes. And what do you tell them?

I'd say, okay, talk to me, tell it to me in your own words. And then we get there. Well, Jill, this has been a really fun conversation. I feel empowered. Thank you. Good, good. Thank you, Jill. Thanks so much, Jill. Well, I've enjoyed it. Thanks for having me. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP,

bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work.

That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Mudupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts.

Amy, you're someone who always makes her opinion known in meetings. What did you think of the muscular language advice? started to make a point by saying, you know, this may be stupid, but blah, blah, blah. Where I do think the muscular language point is important is when you're in a debate and you're getting a lot of pushback and really there's no win here. You know, you're trying to make yourself heard and make sure that whoever's making the decision makes the best informed decision. I do find myself using language like, I recommend blah, blah, blah. I've noticed that if I don't phrase it that way, it's almost like it doesn't get heard at all.

Like if I just say, oh, you know, does anyone want to do X, Y, Z? It like just floats away on the wind. But if I say, I think we should do this or my preference, my strong preference is that we do X. Yeah. It's marching to the center of the stage and drawing the attention and saying, this is what I want you to pay attention to. And it also is a very useful way to get past that thing we've all experienced where we say, hey, how about X? No one pays attention. And the guy down the table says, you know what? I think we should do X.

And all of a sudden it's the most brilliant idea today. And in those situations, I always try to say, oh, that's great. It sounds similar to what Nicole said. I think that I'm glad that we like that idea. Well, I think less thing around that. And that idea of helping each other is super important. And there's a it's not just because you're a good person that you should do this, but you want to surface all of the best ideas and talk about them. And if Nicole doesn't feel comfortable speaking up, then how are you going to get all the best ideas out there?

She's not going to be the only one. We need the diversity of views. We need someone who is thoughtful to come into the conversation, having factored in what she's heard already, bringing in new ideas. You are missing the opportunity to get the best thinking out there on the table if you're not, as a discussion leader, calling in the people who aren't speaking up. And sometimes it's as simple as, you know, I lead a lot of meetings and there are times when I can tell when someone wants to say something and doesn't feel comfortable. You know, she'll look up. It's often a woman. She'll look up. She'll look like she wants to jump into

the pool but she's a little afraid the water's cold yeah and i'll say susan you look like you have something you want to say what are you thinking about or how does that sound to you laura and just because invariably what you get back is thoughtful and new. But what if it's like I feel lukewarm about an idea? I think it should be on the table and I want everyone to discuss it. I just want to put it out there. So I want to put an idea out there because it's in the wind. It deserves some attention. Here's the idea.

And then you don't have to say everything all at once. In the course of the discussion, see how you feel about it and say so. That's good advice. Yeah, I think no one has ever been annoyed at someone who they managed to convince of their point of view. So if the outcome of the discussion is that you think, actually, maybe it wasn't such a good idea, I feel like you can strongly, and not in like a deferential way,

but in a strong way say, I'm really glad we had this conversation. Now that we've hashed it out, I agree with you. Yeah. We asked Jill some questions about preparing for meetings and sort of what women can do if they've been given advice, just like, oh, just speak up more and how that's not very helpful advice. I've been guilty of giving that advice. I'll never do it again. I'm just curious, you know, like, Nicole, like, have you ever had like a meeting coaching that was effective? Something in her article, she wrote that like 67% of women say they don't get any feedback about how they act in meetings and they would like more feedback. And I think that's true. I haven't really gotten any feedback or advice

about meeting specific behaviors aside from you should speak up more because you have ideas and you should have them heard. But something I found really helpful is when my manager says, I want you to speak up in this meeting tomorrow, like give us an update on this project that you're working on. And I think that like little advance notice makes a difference for me personally. I think of that as the warm call. Like you don't cold call someone on a meeting, but you just tell them, by the way, tomorrow I'm going to ask you about this. I love the warm call. So far, we've been talking a lot about how to make ourselves heard at work and how to help the women we work with speak up. One thing that makes us particularly challenging, though, is getting interrupted while speaking.

There's a lot of research on how women are more likely than men to get interrupted. There was even one study of the Supreme Court that found that male justices interrupt female justices three times as often as they interrupt each other. But what do you do when you get interrupted? It's not always easy to know what to do. It's pretty awkward. I know I clam up when I get interrupted at work. Francesca Gino has some advice. She's a behavioral scientist who teaches at Harvard Business School. She wrote an article for HBR called How to Handle Interrupting Colleagues about why interruptions happen.

You know, sometimes it's cultural, sometimes it's about power. And she gives a few tips to avoid being cut off. First, try to preempt the interruption. Then, if that doesn't work, try having a private conversation with the person who keeps interrupting you. Or talk to your team about ways the group as a whole could communicate more effectively. These strategies sound pretty simple, but I know they can be hard to put into practice, especially if you, like me, are known to avoid confrontation. To make the task of confronting colleagues seem less awkward and intimidating, we brought in our in-house expert on difficult conversations, Amy Gallo. She's a contributing editor at HBR and the author of the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict.

Thanks, Amy. I'm glad to be here. What should we actually say to someone who's interrupting us? Because it's not easy to approach someone and say, hey, please stop interrupting me. So I think the key is to just do it in a very casual, relaxed, confident way. Because the more discomfort you show others, the more likely they will feel uncomfortable. So Amy, can you like do that for us? Like model how that would sound? Sure. Of course, you want to be in the flow of the conversation. You don't want to sort of raise your hand, make it a really awkward moment. But in the flow of the conversation, you say, I have something to contribute here. Would it be okay if I got through

to the end of my point before I took questions? I have a hard time keeping my thoughts together when I'm interrupted, but I'm happy to hear your thoughts as soon as I finish. I'll let you know when I'm done. So you want to really own it as your issue, not project it on someone else. Like you interrupt me all the time, so I need to do this. But I have a hard time finishing my thought when I'm interrupted. So let me get through this. Could you please do that for me? Isn't there a way, though, that that could almost seem like self-undermining? Like, I'm such an irrational female that if you interrupt me, my thoughts will scatter to the wind. Right. So please let me finish. Agreed. And I think sometimes we worry so much about undermining ourselves that we come off as non-collaborative and assertive in a way that's not contributing.

So I think we often worry, well, my power is going to, especially as women, right, where my power is going to be undermined or I'm going to seem weak or that I've never seen a man do that. And the truth is they probably don't have to do that because they're interrupted far less, as the research shows, and they don't have to be as collaborative as we do to be effective at work. So unfortunately, yes, that is a risk, but I think it's a risk worth taking to maintain a soft collaborative stance while also getting what you need. So what if you keep getting interrupted by the same people, by the same person, and you have to talk to them and just tell them what you're feeling, tell them what's going on.

How do you have that conversation with them? That's not an easy conversation to have. Again, especially if you're worked up, angry. If you go in with the mindset of this person interrupts me because he's misogynist and arrogant jerk, then you're not going to get very far in that conversation because you're going to be projecting that to the person. So first of all, you have to go in with a curious mindset. Why is this person interrupting me? I really genuinely don't know. They may not realize that they're doing it. So how can I have a conversation, collaborate with this person to fix this problem together instead of thinking of I have to correct this person's behavior? So when should you even do that? Like how many times is too many times?

There's not a golden rule. I tend to be someone who doesn't mind being interrupted partly because I go on and on and I know it's sometimes very useful to cut me off. So I don't mind it as much. Pay attention to how you're feeling. If it's prohibiting you from constructively contributing in a meeting or it's changing the way you're interacting with a co-worker, you should really take the time and it will depend on your relationship with the person, but take the time to make things right so that you're both feeling good about your meetings together. So I would go into that conversation saying, you know, can I talk to you about something? Always start a difficult conversation with a question, sort of get the person's permission. I like to say, hey, I'm about to say something. Are you ready? It helps them give you a little bit of permission. I'm consenting to this conversation, so to speak. They're part of it now. Exactly. And then you really want to make sure that you don't

assign any negative intention to the person. So you might even say, and this is important because a lot of interrupters don't realize they're interrupting. And Francesca Gino admitted in her piece, she just was interrupting because she was Italian. It was part of her culture, right? So they may not know. So you might even start by saying, you may not realize what's happening in the meetings, but I feel like I'm being interrupted multiple times. And I don't know what I'm doing to contribute to the problem, but I'd love to talk with you about how we can change our dynamic in the meeting. And that puts you both on the same side of the table. You're not leveling accusations. You're not

being antagonistic, but you're saying, we have a problem. Here's what I perceive it to be. Can we talk about it together? So how helpful is it to bring specific examples like on this day, at this meeting, like I was trying to say this and then I was interrupted this way. Is that helpful or does that sound like I'm holding this massive grudge? I think the way you just said it sounded like a massive grudge, but it can be useful to give examples because some people don't even realize what they're doing. So you can say, you know, when I was talking about the strategy for this new project

and I was laying out my thoughts, you interrupted me multiple times. I knew you were eager to get your opinions heard, but it would have been helpful if you waited till I was done to do that. You don't want it to sound like an email that you would send to HR, right? You want to sound like a collaborative discussion in which we're solving a problem we have together. So the other piece of advice that Francesca writes about in her article is to, you know, if you're uncomfortable approaching one person, just address the group as a whole. Address multiple people about this problem of interruptions. What would you say would be the best way to bring that up? This is one of my favorite tactics, and I've seen this happen in some of our meetings. We've often discussed at the beginning, how could

this meeting go better? It's a natural thing to do at the beginning of a meeting, hopefully in your organization. So before the meeting starts, just say, hey, before we get started, I just wanted to bring something up about how this meeting is going and wanted to throw out something that I've seen work in other meetings, for example, or that I thought might help us.

And then you can say, I want to make sure we all get to finish our thoughts. Can we hold off on interruptions so that we get to hear everyone's point of view? Francesca does write about her tendency to interrupt, and she says it's because she's Italian. And she talks about how cultural differences around pauses and interruptions is one reason why interruptions happen, why some people are more likely to interrupt than others. Have you ever experienced that, cultural differences affecting interruptions? I've not only experienced cultural differences affecting interruptions, but cultural differences affecting interruptions because I was a woman. I was on a consulting project in Korea working for

this large Korean conglomerate. I was one of two American women on the project. There were no Korean women. And basically, anytime we spoke, we were talked over or interrupted. And it got to a point at one really important meeting where it just, I short-circuited and just burst into tears. I was so frustrated. I was so angry. I left the room. I went outside. I walked around the building. I really couldn't get my act together. So I just left for the day. Was not one of my proudest moments. But, you know, tears happen. And, you know, I went back to the situation and thought, what could I have done differently?

I talked to my male colleagues and they said, you know, we wish we had stood up for you. We wish it had gone differently. But honestly, they just don't want to hear what you have to say. And we came up with a strategy where if I had an important point of view or perspective, I would just feed it to one of my male colleagues and they would say it in the meeting. Wow. Really disappointing. I wish it wasn't that way. I wish that organization wasn't that way. But if I wanted to be heard, it was the only way to get my opinions heard. It was also okay because it was temporary. I knew I got to go home and work in a place where

I was able to speak and not be interrupted. But it wasn't fun for sure. So I wanted to ask you also, is all interruption bad? Because there are times when, yes, you are being interrupted because people don't care what you have to say. But there's also times when it can really signal excitement, lots of people talking, lots of new ideas coming out. I know I'm guilty of interrupting people when I get excited. Do you know anyone who sort of admits to that? I have friends and colleagues who know that they're interrupters. I work with a woman who's in her 60s. She owns her own business. She is a leader in her field. She confesses to being a chronic interrupter and says, I really wish I could change it. And when I ask her, well,

why don't you? And she says, I actually think I have some of the most valuable opinions in the room and they need to be heard. And, you know, she probably does. And should she interrupt and should she make people feel that their opinions aren't valued? Absolutely not. But she does need to make herself heard. And I think it's something she's in a male dominated industry. And I think it's something she's learned over the years to do is to survive. So that's the flip side of this that I wanted to ask you about, which is how to get better at interrupting other people, you know, either to like help you hear someone kind of going off and maybe they'd appreciate an interruption or that you have something to say, but you don't want to interrupt anyone impolitely. How do you break into a conversation? The Korea story, what was hardest about those interruptions is that they would never look me in the eye when they would do it.

They would just start talking and they would look at the other men in the room. So it really made me feel completely unseen and unheard, which was painful. I think when you want to interrupt someone sometimes, and again, I admit that I tend to go on and ramble. So when someone catches my eye and gives me this sort of signal like I'm ready to talk, it's a good sign for me to wind down. Or at least I know they're hearing what I'm saying, they acknowledge that I'm speaking, and yet they want to speak. So you can say, Amy, can you hold on one sec? I hear what you're saying, but I want to contribute as well. Or would you mind if I said something now? Just interrupt with a question so that you're

getting their consent to start talking even though they have the floor. And they might then say, you know, actually, I'm not done yet. Or yes, go ahead. So I think you just want to engage the person in a either nonverbal, hey, is it okay if I jump in, or an actual verbal, do you mind if I take the floor right now? So let me ask you, we've been talking for a bit, do you guys actually feel better equipped to handle interruptions? I do. I do too. Yeah. Having like actual things to say is very helpful. Yeah. Sample language is always the best. Yes. Yes. Amy, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Amy.

Sarah, a lot of this episode has been about how women can have their voices more heard at work and how managers can help women speak up. But don't you think it's also important to talk about not just how to help women succeed at work, but how to change what matters for success? I completely agree. You know, communicating effectively is not just about trying to get a word in. It's also about learning to be quiet and to listen when you need to. And I feel like listening is a very undervalued skill, although it's a crucial one. And I can't help but think if more workplaces, if more meetings also valued the women who listen, work would run better, more efficiently, be more collaborative. Amen, Nicole. I totally agree with that. And not just women. I mean, a lot of people from other cultures and backgrounds are not comfortable with so much talking. And yet that is in our sort of American extroverted culture, the way to get ahead is by talking a lot.

And I think the last thing we want is just more people speaking over each other. You know, what we really want is people learning how to speak up with their ideas and also how to give people room to voice their ideas too. I would love to see in performance reviews, listening created as a skill just as much as selling your idea or talking or holding the floor, blathering on. Yeah. And I think women are socialized to be great listeners in a way that maybe men are not. You know, a lot of the advice I feel like we've talked about today on this episode is about how to thrive in the unfair world, you know, in which we live. But if more women became leaders, maybe we would have workplaces where listening was more valued. Yeah.

Thanks for listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael, and my co-hosts are Amy Bernstein and Nicole Torres. Our producer is Amanda Kersey. Our audio product manager is Adam Buchholz. Kurt Nickish is our consulting editor and Maureen Hoke is our supervising editor.

Thank you to Chart House Learning for letting us use sound from Deborah Tannen's workplace training video Talking 9 to 5. This is our first episode of Women at Work, and we want to know what you think. So email us at womenatwork at hbr.org. Finally, women are increasingly being heard in other ways.

We're speaking up against sexual harassment in the workplace, against unsupportive partners, and about unequal pay. We'll be talking about those topics in upcoming episodes. Talk to you next time. Have you guys heard of this website, AreMenTalkingTooMuch.com? No. Tell me. I secretly love it. And what it is, is it's basically just a website that as you're in a meeting, you can have it up on your phone. And when a man is talking, there's a button that says dude. And when someone else is talking, who's not a man, there's a button that says not a dude. And I have actually used it in our meetings here to make sure

that we're getting equal participation. And what have you found? I have actually found that here, at least in the meetings I've tracked it in it's about 50 men talking and 50 women which is really pretty good yeah although i also have realized sometimes in those cases women make up more than 50 of the group so it's maybe not proportional but right um i think we're pretty good at it but i found it useful because i feel like in my head sometimes i assume maybe because i'm a strident feminist or just a suspicious person, I don't know, an engrieved and embittered woman, that I always assume that men are talking a lot more than maybe they are. And so I use the app partly as a way to just keep my own assumptions in check. Yeah.