Dale Dixon:
[0:06] Back in the late 1990s, I was anchoring an evening newscast, and one of the segments was a live interview with a candidate for governor.
Dale Dixon:
[0:16] We had three minutes on the rundown, which is plenty of time for a focused conversation, and almost nothing if one answer starts to wander. The candidate had a DUI in their past, and my question was about accountability. What had changed since then and what a voter should look at now as evidence of better judgment? The answer came back very defensive, then started sliding toward a different subject that we didn't want to talk about. Here's what nobody watching at home could see. I stopped breathing. That's what my body does when I'm concentrating really hard, and I'm concentrating hard because two questions are running at the same time. Do I interrupt? And is my judgment on this right? So I bring it back to the question. The candidate slides again. I bring it back again. And now we're live with three minutes disappearing into a subject I never asked about. And cutting somebody off does feel rude to me because respect is one of my core values.
Dale Dixon:
[1:24] So the interview never gets to a second question. I finally call it, and we go back to the newscast. It did not end well, and I never did get the answer. What I got instead was a question that I've been working on ever since. When is the thing that feels rude actually the responsible move?
Dale Dixon:
[1:47] This is The Presence Lab. I'm Dale Dixon. I spent about 15 years in broadcast news, much of it live, where an unanswered question and a shrinking clock, those were real constraints on doing the job well. Today, we're working on when interrupting somebody is the responsible move and how to do it without turning the conversation into a contest. So by the end, you're going to have three moves for that moment, plus a way to check whether your interruptions are doing what you think they're doing. Now, I built a two-page field guide with the tools and a seven-day check, and it's free at daledicksonmedia.com slash rude.
Dale Dixon:
[2:32] Yes, you heard that right, daledicksonmedia.com slash rude. Now, I understand the instinct to treat interrupting as rude because I live inside that instinct myself. Respect matters, and cutting across somebody's sentence can feel like claiming my thought is worth more than theirs. The mistake is turning that instinct into a rule, one that says respect always means waiting until the other person is completely finished. A person explaining something difficult deserves the time it takes because the context matters and the point takes longer than 20 seconds to build.
Dale Dixon:
[3:11] A question that keeps getting slid past also deserves protection because nobody else in the meeting is likely to ask it again. When six people have 10 minutes left and no decision, the decision deserves protection. When one voice has taken most of an hour and a quieter colleague has not been able to get in, that colleague deserves protection. The behavior looks identical from the outside, while the purpose underneath can be completely different. Researchers have been separating kinds of interruption for decades, including work that distinguishes the cooperative sort from the intrusive sort. We don't get a formula out of that because culture, status, and the kind of conversation all change what an interruption means. We do get a better starting question than interrupting is rude.
Dale Dixon:
[4:11] So number one, what is this interruption serving? We run into this everywhere. Once we start looking project meeting is supposed to end with a go or no go. And the answer turns into 10 minutes of history, staffing, vendor trouble, and every detail that led to this week. A customer asks a direct question about what went wrong. And the response keeps adding background because nobody wants to say the uncomfortable sentence out loud.
Dale Dixon:
[4:41] A senior leader fills every pause a director leaves because three seconds of silence feels like wasted time. And a one-on-one goes the other direction where somebody has finally worked up the nerve to explain something hard and the listener cuts in because they already know where it's going. Now, the right move changes with the people in front of us. That may be a television viewer, a podcast listener, a board, a customer, the other people in the meeting, or one person sitting across the table. Which is why a list of polite interruption phrases is just not going to solve this. Judgment comes before language. Start with what's actually at stake when a conversation drifts. Gloria Mark at UC Irvine has been measuring how long people stay on one screen before switching to something else. Back in 2004, that average was about two and a half minutes.
Dale Dixon:
[5:42] If you're watching on YouTube, wouldn't you love to have somebody stay on a video for two and a half minutes? So across her studies from 2016 through 2020, the average was 47 seconds. Her numbers are about screens rather than conversations. And I'll say the next part as my own opinion rather than her finding. The screen is changing how we treat each other when we talk.
Dale Dixon:
[6:07] Attention is finite. It's hard to get, and it's harder to hold. That's the real cost of a 10-minute detour in a meeting with eight people in it. The detour spends something that belongs to everybody at the table, and most of them will never say a word about it. Here's where it gets difficult in the moment. Research on social evaluative threat has shown for years that being watched and judged by other people produces a real physiological stress response, especially when the situation is hard to control. Those studies use speeches and interviews, situations far more extreme than a Tuesday meeting. The signal is the same one, though, and it shows up as a very ordinary question. If I cut in right now, what will this person think of me? For some of us, the body answers by backing away. We wait, we nod, we let the explanation keep running, and we tell ourselves, we're being respectful while the question and the clock quietly disappear. For others, the body answers by grabbing control, talking faster, coming in harder, staying in longer, and we do that more than the moment needs. My version is the breath hold, the hesitation, and those two questions running underneath it.
Dale Dixon:
[7:30] Neither reflex leaves much space for judgment, and judgment is the whole job here. You see, every interruption decision comes down to one comparison. Is this conversation moving toward what it's supposed to produce or away from it? Most of the time, the person talking deserves to keep going, and respect means we don't take that lightly. Priority shifts when something more valuable is about to be lost. In that live interview, the candidate was mid-answer and entitled to finish, while an unanswered accountability question and three minutes of a viewer's evening were about to vanish.
Dale Dixon:
[8:13] In a leadership meeting, the decision can carry more weight than the explanation. In a customer conversation, the customer usually needs the whole explanation before we defend anything. In a team meeting, the person who has not been able to speak can matter more than the senior voice ready to jump back in.
Dale Dixon:
[8:34] We're not asking permission to interrupt. We're asking what deserves protecting right now. So the first tool is settle first. Use it the moment either urge shows up. The urge to jump in fast or the urge to stay quiet because interrupting feels too uncomfortable. The move is physical before it's verbal. And for me, it starts with noticing that I stopped breathing even for a moment.
Dale Dixon:
[9:03] Let the breath go, feel the chair, put your attention back on the whole conversation, and just take that one beat. Then ask the internal question, what needs protecting right now? If the honest answer is my status, my impatience, or my need to show I already understand, the other person keeps talking. If the answer is the question, the decision, the customer, the clock, or somebody who hasn't been able to speak, we have a legitimate reason to look at the next tool.
Dale Dixon:
[9:37] We're not trying to feel calm. We're getting steady enough to choose instead of letting the first reflex run the conversation. And it's important to call this out. We're doing this in literally a split second. So this takes practice. It's not gonna come natural in the moment the next time the opportunity presents itself. It's looking for practice. The second tool is name who it's for. Every conversation has somebody depending on it being useful, and naming that person changes what counts as rude. Sometimes it's a thousand people watching television. Other times it's six executives who need a decision before they walk out. It can be one employee who needs uninterrupted time to explain what happened. Occasionally, it's us trying to get a straight answer before we agree to something very expensive.
Dale Dixon:
[10:34] Once we know who the conversation is for, we can see whether the current answer is moving toward them or away from them. A detour isn't automatically a problem because context can be the answer and a hard story takes the time it takes. Somebody working through something important may need more time than the agenda would prefer. This is a test of who the conversation serves, and it gets used against our own impatience at least as often as against anybody else's. The third tool is bring it back. Interrupt briefly. Say what you're protecting. Ask one clean question. Then stop talking and let them answer. In a project meeting, that sounds like, I'm going to stop you there because we need the go or no go today. What's the biggest risk if we cut over Friday? With a customer, it might be, I want to come back to what you asked, which part of our answer still isn't resolved.
Dale Dixon:
[11:38] When one person keeps talking over a quieter colleague, try, I want to make sure Marcus finishes that point, then let's come back to you. The wording changes because the people change while the structure holds, protect something real, say what it is, ask, then get out of the way. So my dog has this down better than most executives I work with and has down better than I do. About every 15 minutes, Petra walks over, lays her chin on my lap, gets an ear scratch, and then goes back and lays down.
Dale Dixon:
[12:17] Claire Purpose, 15 seconds, and she gives the conversation back without anybody asking her to. So an interruption that runs long stops being a redirect and starts being a replacement.
Dale Dixon:
[12:31] There's a reason to keep it short. Katherine Hawkins studied what she called deep interruptions in task-oriented conversations, looking at both real incidents and recorded ones that observers rated afterwards. The interrupters were more likely to end up being the next person talking so the tactic worked those same observers rated them less appropriate and thought less of them personally.
Dale Dixon:
[12:59] Here's an important line an interruption has to earn the cost it creates getting to speak and speaking well are two different results and only one of them shows up in the next conversation you have with that person. So Jeremy Paxman's 1997 Newsnight interview with British Home Secretary Michael Howard is still the most famous example of refusing to let a question disappear. Paxman kept asking whether Howard had threatened to overrule the head of the prison service, and The Guardian later counted 12 versions of the same question without a real answer. Paxman added a production detail years afterward that changes how I read it. A producer told him through his earpiece that the next piece of tape wasn't ready, so he needed to keep the interview going. His persistence was serving two things at once, the unanswered question and the broadcast rundown. I've been there before. Sometimes we call that dancing on the table. Now, that doesn't make 12 repetitions a model for a leadership meeting.
Dale Dixon:
[14:08] It makes the question more honest. Accountability, time, or both, and good judgment means knowing which one we're actually protecting.
Dale Dixon:
[14:20] Now, the obvious objection is, Dale, every chronic interrupter in America thinks they have a good reason. Fair. Intention is not evidence because we're all talented at giving our own behavior a flattering explanation afterward. So a 2026 study in the American Economic Review looked across thousands of economic seminars, job talks, and conference presentations. Within the same seminar series, women presenters were interrupted more than men, even after the researchers controlled for the presenter, the paper, and the audience. Interruptions that were negative in tone or that cut somebody off mid-sentence also went up for women presenters. Research in congressional hearings and Supreme Court arguments finds gendered patterns in those settings, too, though the details vary.
Dale Dixon:
[15:16] That research changes how we have to think about our own experience. I spent years deciding when somebody had talked long enough and when I needed to cut in. Fifteen years of practice does not exempt me from checking my pattern. It gives me more reason to check it. Who do I interrupt most easily? Who gets more time from me before I decide there's too much context? Whose pause do I treat as an opening and whose pause do I protect? If the same person keeps getting cut off around us, our stated purpose, stops being enough. We need the pattern.
Dale Dixon:
[15:58] So the Supreme Court is the clearest example I know of that check producing a result. A 2017 study by Tanya Jacoby and Dylan Sweers found that the female justices were interrupted at much higher rates than their male colleagues. Justice Sotomayor later said the study had an enormous impact on the court.
Dale Dixon:
[16:23] Chief Justice Roberts became more sensitive to interruptions and started refereeing them, making sure a justice who got cut off came back to finish. Nine of the most accomplished people in American law needed outside data to see their own pattern.
Dale Dixon:
[16:41] That's the argument for running the check on ourselves. So three moves. We settle first so the social discomfort doesn't make the decision for us. We name who the conversation is for, which tells us what deserves protecting. Then we bring it back briefly, say what we're protecting, ask the question, and let them answer. Afterward, we check the pattern because intention tells us what we meant, while behavior tells us what we did. There's no universal setting for this. A live interview, a board meeting, a customer call, and a hard one-on-one run on different rules because different people depend on each one. The steady discipline is staying regulated enough to notice which rule the moment is asking for. So I still think about that three-minute interview, and not because it ended well. I never got the answer. We used the entire segment on one question. I called it over, and the newscast moved on.
Dale Dixon:
[17:46] At the time, I knew exactly why I had interrupted because a viewer deserved an answer about accountability from somebody asking for public office.
Dale Dixon:
[17:55] Years of meetings, coaching, and ordinary conversations added the other half of the lesson. The habit that served a viewer in three minutes can turn into plain rudeness in a meeting where nothing is scarce except my patience. Respect still matters, and that value is exactly why this takes judgment instead of a rule. Some conversations need more time than the agenda wants to give them. Others need somebody willing to bring it back. The Interrupt Field Guide is free at daledixonmedia.com slash rude. It has the priority question, the three moves, one practice drill, and a seven-day check so you can see your actual pattern instead of just guessing at it. If you work with a leader who is thoughtful, respectful, and lets important conversations drift because cutting in feels rude, please send them this episode. And it means so much if you like, subscribe, and share this episode. The Presence Lab community is at dailedixonmedia.com slash community, where we practice this work together. I answer questions live. You know, an interruption has to earn the cost it creates. I'm Dale Dixon. This is The Presence Lab.
