Safe enough to interrupt?

A leadership team I worked with this week was reflecting on something that had changed for the better: people felt safer speaking up. There was more challenge, more questioning, more ideas in the room.

Then one of the team raised a question: Could that be coming at a cost?

As people become more comfortable contributing, this leader wondered, do conversations also become less efficient? Does everyone become so careful about making others feel heard that nobody wants to interrupt, cut a discussion short or say, “I think we’ve got enough to move on”?

Are we trading efficiency for psychological safety?

I think it’s a good question. But I’m not sure it’s the trade-off it first appears to be.

Most of us know the meeting. Someone has made their point, but keeps going. The conversation wanders into detail. A few people glance at the clock. Nobody steps in, because nobody wants to seem rude or make the speaker feel shut down.

It looks considerate. It may even feel safe.

But if people are quietly thinking, “I can’t say anything or they’ll take it personally,” there’s nothing safe about that.

Psychological safety isn’t measured by how long people can talk without being interrupted. It shows up in whether people can question each other, disagree, offer feedback and even challenge the conversation itself, without worrying that it will damage the relationship or come back to bite them later.

That doesn’t give anyone licence to talk over people. An interruption can be dismissive - we’ve all been on the receiving end of one or two of those.

But an interruption can also help the team do better work.

Sometimes that means stopping a conversation that’s going around the block. Sometimes it means slowing one down before the loudest view becomes the team’s view. The skill is noticing what the conversation needs, then being willing to say so.

“Can I pause us for a sec? I think we’ve got the concern. What do we need to work out from here?”

“We’re getting pretty deep into detail. Have we got what we need to make a call?”

“Is this a conversation for now, or should we pick it up elsewhere?" (Or with the people who need to work through it?)

“We’ve heard a fair bit from a few of us. Who haven’t we heard from yet?”

None of these is a magic phrase. If someone says there’s more to the concern, you need to hear it. And drawing in another voice only helps if you’re prepared to give their view some weight.

The point is that strong teams know how to steer their conversations together. People can ask whether to keep going, change direction or make space for someone else, without it being taken as a personal slapdown.

I’ve written before about asking “How long? Who many?” to help a team give a topic the right amount of attention. Those questions matter just as much once a conversation is underway. The team may need less time on the topic. Or it may need to hear from someone who’s barely spoken.

When a conversation needs steering, does anyone feel safe enough to do it?

Until next time,
Simon