> If people feel safe and free to act autonomously and engage in the best way they see fit, they allow interruptions and they interrupt.
I disagree, and I think a lot of bad feeling and a lot of bad meetings come out of people assuming that the dynamic that is comfortable for them is what others always prefer, or is somehow the natural state of conversation, from which other dynamics are a flawed aberration.
I hate being interrupted because of the family dynamic with which I grew up (ceaseless interruption), and so try very hard not to interrupt others. When I feel safe that my ideas will eventually be heard, I don't interrupt; and, when I feel safe that I am interacting with my peers as equals, and will neither hurt feelings nor impose authority, I will request of them that they don't interrupt me, i.e., taken together with the first point, that we have a conversational dynamic where we don't interrupt one another.
(The latter is, of course, more dicey, since while I indisputably have a right not to interrupt others, but don't have a right to insist others not interrupt me. But, under the very stringent conditions of conversations with equals with the understanding that it is OK to say "no" to a request, I think that it is a reasonable thing to request.)
I disagree, and I think a lot of bad feeling and a lot of bad meetings come out of people assuming that the dynamic that is comfortable for them is what others always prefer, or is somehow the natural state of conversation, from which other dynamics are a flawed aberration.
I hate being interrupted because of the family dynamic with which I grew up (ceaseless interruption), and so try very hard not to interrupt others. When I feel safe that my ideas will eventually be heard, I don't interrupt; and, when I feel safe that I am interacting with my peers as equals, and will neither hurt feelings nor impose authority, I will request of them that they don't interrupt me, i.e., taken together with the first point, that we have a conversational dynamic where we don't interrupt one another.
(The latter is, of course, more dicey, since while I indisputably have a right not to interrupt others, but don't have a right to insist others not interrupt me. But, under the very stringent conditions of conversations with equals with the understanding that it is OK to say "no" to a request, I think that it is a reasonable thing to request.)