“YEARS ago, while producing the hit TV series “The Shield,” Glen Mazzara noticed that two young female writers were quiet during story meetings. He pulled them aside and encouraged them to speak up more.
Watch what happens when we do, they replied.
Almost every time they started to speak, they were interrupted or shot down before finishing their pitch. When one had a good idea, a male writer would jump in and run with it before she could complete her thought…
Professor Brescoll looked deeper. She asked professional men and women to evaluate the competence of chief executives who voiced their opinions more or less frequently. Male executives who spoke more often than their peers were rewarded with 10 percent higher ratings of competence. When female executives spoke more than their peers, both men and women punished them with 14 percent lower ratings. As this and other research shows, women who worry that talking “too much” will cause them to be disliked are not paranoid; they are often right…
At “The Shield,” Mr. Mazzara, the show runner, found a clever way to change the dynamics that were holding those two female employees back. He announced to the writers that he was instituting a no-interruption rule while anyone — male or female — was pitching. It worked, and he later observed that it made the entire team more effective.”
I really like the idea of a no-interruption rule; sometimes, I want to carry around a buzzer to indicate to people when they are interrupting each other. Or just not even trying to pay attention.
There are certain situations where I find myself being uncharacteristically quiet, where I find that I need a lot of energy to actually speak. And then there are other situations where I speak before I think, am constantly talking. It’s something subconscious and I think it has a lot to do with subtle patterns that I don’t even realize I am noticing. I am trying to be more aware of when I am interrupted (and also, I have noticed, when people literally leave while I am speaking as though they cannot hear me, or have no expectation that they need to respond to me).
It’s also interesting listening to talkshow-style podcasts, and hearing the men interrupt the women and the women choose their moment to jump in very carefully. You can hear it, and I bet that no one in the room is fully conscious of it at the time. I am sure that they are real friends who really respect each other, it’s just that there are way too many gender dynamics
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