Who gets interrupted at work?
Long before I started Textio, I was researching bias in the workplace. The very first broad-scale insight I published was about who interrupts others in workplace meetings -- and who gets interrupted. In 2024, I am expanding this research. I'd love for you to follow along and participate.
Interruptions at work: What I'm interested in
My initial 2014 study on interruptions at work found that women are much more frequently interrupted in workplace meetings than men are. I also found that men interrupt others more often than women do, and that, regardless of gender, more senior people regularly interrupt more junior people. In addition, I found something remarkable that struck me: the biggest interrupters of all were not senior men, but senior women. It was almost as though these women had had to learn to engage aggressively to advance at work. I certainly relate to that pattern personally.
This year, I'm revisiting and updating this research, expanding my data set and the variables that I consider. I will look at race and ethnicity in addition to gender and seniority, and if I can get enough data, I'd like to consider more than two genders. I'm also looking at something that wasn't even on my radar in 2014: whether there is any difference in patterns when meetings happen in person vs. virtually vs. a hybrid.
You can participate in this research for free!
I'm currently working with organizations that are interested in discovering communication patterns in their own workplace meetings. I'm interested in observing teams that are highly diverse as well as those that are more homogenous.
Participating is easy: You invite me to observe your meetings, and afterwards I will provide you an analysis of the patterns in your own organization for you to use internally. I am anonymizing and aggregating the data I gather from all the meetings I observe across hundreds of organizations. When I'm done, I will publish the insights.
Participation in this research is both anonymous and free. You can follow along with this research and my other weekly case studies in management and workplace communication.