Interrupting artfully is like a secret weapon.
It can energize people and draw you together… if you do it right.
What’s the right way to do it? By only interrupting to agree.
It’s annoying to be interrupted by people who clearly aren’t listening to what you’re saying. When it’s clear that others are just waiting for their turn to speak, it makes you feel unheard and dismissed.
But interrupting to agree, a technique from my new book, will give people the opposite impression – that you’ve heard them so strongly in fact, that you can’t wait for them to finish!
Here’s what I mean:
Don’t you hate when people drive like that? It’s just…
I KNOW! It drives me crazy. They should be banished to tricycles for life.
I can’t believe it’s so hot today, I…
Seriously, my dog looks like he has melted into the carpet!
Interrupting to agree doesn’t upset the first speaker, it makes them excited that the second speaker intimately understands what they are talking about! It’s a shared moment on a shared topic, and this is something that will energize a conversation.
Most of the time when people are sharing opinions on something, like traffic, you can predict which direction they will take it in. Interrupt to agree and magnify their feelings, and you’ve instantly entered their friendship zone.
And if you can interrupt to agree and finish their sentence with them, that’s powerful.