Speakers tend to prefer either a high considerateness or high involvement style of conversation. Considerate speakers prefer conversations where parties wait for each other to finish and take turns speaking, while involved speakers prefer those where parties jump in when they have something to add. [0]
High considerateness style is getting too much credit in this thread. The two styles are similar in the relevant respect: more dominant speakers get more airtime. Conversations in high considerateness style don't dictate a turn order, so when someone finishes speaking, there's a competition for who gets the floor, and dominant speakers will win more often, and then get to keep talking for as long as they want. Effectively, high considerateness style just increases the packet size, without changing the bandwidth distribution.
High considerateness probably does have the advantage over high involvement in problem solving conversations, since it makes it easier to communicate more complex thoughts, but it's not the best. These two styles describe organic conversations, but it's possible to impose a rule-based structure that makes problem solving conversations more productive by dictating a turn-order (not necessarily in a static way). A structured conversation style that biases the competition for the floor in favor of those who have insights rather than dominance will outperform high considerateness style.
Neither of the organic styles are optimized for problem solving. High considerateness is optimized for preventing speakers from abusing the ability to jump in while someone else is speaking to silence people for political reasons. High involvement is optimized for making conversations enjoyable so that people actually want to have them.
In an ideal world, we would use high involvement style as a default, high considerateness in politically tense company, and various kinds of structured conversations when work needs to get done.
It's possible, as someone used to high-involvement style, to converse in a way that's less hostile to the higher-considerateness speakers in the group. For example, if you start talking and notice that somebody has abruptly stopped talking, wrap your point up as quickly as possible and explicitly give them back the floor: "<name>, you were saying...?". On the other hand, if they keep talking with you until they wrap up, they're using a higher involvment style and you can keep going.
Wow, thanks for this comment. This is a really insgihtful, intellectually involved, rational explanation of this topic (which more people approach extremely emotionally - almost like politics). I'll have to check the linked article (and any other resources) to make sure what you're saying is actually true (supported by data), but it sounds reasonable and logical, so I'm biased towards believing it. Favorited!
High considerateness style is getting too much credit in this thread. The two styles are similar in the relevant respect: more dominant speakers get more airtime. Conversations in high considerateness style don't dictate a turn order, so when someone finishes speaking, there's a competition for who gets the floor, and dominant speakers will win more often, and then get to keep talking for as long as they want. Effectively, high considerateness style just increases the packet size, without changing the bandwidth distribution.
High considerateness probably does have the advantage over high involvement in problem solving conversations, since it makes it easier to communicate more complex thoughts, but it's not the best. These two styles describe organic conversations, but it's possible to impose a rule-based structure that makes problem solving conversations more productive by dictating a turn-order (not necessarily in a static way). A structured conversation style that biases the competition for the floor in favor of those who have insights rather than dominance will outperform high considerateness style.
Neither of the organic styles are optimized for problem solving. High considerateness is optimized for preventing speakers from abusing the ability to jump in while someone else is speaking to silence people for political reasons. High involvement is optimized for making conversations enjoyable so that people actually want to have them.
In an ideal world, we would use high involvement style as a default, high considerateness in politically tense company, and various kinds of structured conversations when work needs to get done.
[0] https://linguistextraordinaire.com/2018/01/07/conversational...