• I know what they’re going to say.
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62 Improve your Communication Skills
• They don’t need to finish the sentence because my
rewrite is an improvement.
• They can’t improve this idea any further, so I might as
well improve it for them.
• I’m more important than they are.
• It’s more important for me to be seen to have a good
idea than for me to let them finish.
• Interrupting will save time.
Put like that, these assumptions are shown up for what they are:
presumptuous, arrogant, silly. You’re usually wrong when you
assume that you know what the other person is about to say. If
you allow them to continue, they will often come up with
something more interesting, more colourful and more personal.
Allowing quiet
Once you stop interrupting, the conversation will become
quieter. Pauses will appear. The other person will stop talking
and you won’t fill the silence.
These pauses are like junctions. The conversation has come
to a crossroads. You have a number of choices about where you
might go next. Either of you might make that choice. If you are
interested in persuading, you will seize the opportunity and
make the choice yourself. But, if you are enquiring, then you give
the speaker the privilege of making the choice.
There are two kinds of pause. One is a filled pause; the other
is empty. Learn to distinguish between the two.
Some pauses are filled with thought. Sometimes, the speaker
will stop. They will go quiet, perhaps suddenly. They will look
elsewhere, probably into a longer distance. They are busy on an
excursion. You’re not invited. But they will want you to be there
at the crossroads when they come back. You are privileged that
they have trusted you to wait. So wait.
The other kind of pause is an empty one. Nothing much is
happening. The speaker doesn’t stop suddenly; instead, they
seem to fade away. You are standing at the crossroads in the
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