Can you let me finish?
At the dinner table among relatives, when grown-ups talk, children (until they become adults themselves) are discouraged from joining the conversation. In families, designation of children and adults does not always refer to actual age. There are just juniors and seniors in the family hierarchy, even as they add years. Even when the very senior ones are hardly able to speak, they are still encouraged to jump in, maybe by whacking the table with their walking stick.
Verbal shoving and elbowing are encouraged in TV talk shows especially with a hot topic, like the location of a volcano or the merit of an alumna award, with two panels representing opposing sides and the moderator encouraging discord until it gets out of hand. (Let’s take a break for commercials.)
In corporate events that throw together virtual strangers (Do you have a card?) conversation is limited by proximity. The search for a familiar face sometimes entails tearing out place cards from their taped positions and appropriating an empty seat. (Sir, your table is the one near the kitchen.) The randomly paired conversation-mates hardly have anything to say to each other, limiting themselves to small talk like the phase-out of jeepneys and the winners and losers of TRAIN. No interruption happens when no one is paying attention.
This reluctance to converse applies even more to conferences. Attention is focused on the speaker at the stage and his power point presentation. It is impolite to be chatting with a seatmate while the session is going on, as he may want to take notes on the lecture.
In scheduled corporate settings, the hierarchy for turn-taking needs to be observed. The rule is simple: never interrupt the flow of someone who outranks you. (Note: a client always outranks the service provider regardless of title.) If the CEO is talking at the table, even if only commenting on how office spaces have become smaller and dispensed with windows, lower life forms need to continue to pat butter on their soft rolls, and nod.
What is the rule in table conversation when more than one CEO is at the table? Is market cap to be the hierarchy tie-breaker? What if one CEO is taciturn and concentrating on his soup with no intention of saying anything (or having anything said to him)? How can conversation tangles be avoided when a table is full of CEOs? The seatmate rule probably applies here too. Just talk to the person beside you.
The hierarchical rules may not apply in particular industries like advertising, or start-ups with less than twenty employees. Informality and interruption of conversation hogs are the norm — can you pass the butter please.
The talking rules are routinely applied in military organizations, religious orders, and large listed companies.
When spouses are invited, the hierarchy applies equally to the couple. It is not clear how hierarchies work with informal relationships involving significant others. Breaching these unwritten protocols can be more severe, and result in political rifts.
Most of the rules of conversational hierarchy change with celebrity status. The guidelines here are more fluid. Do TV hostesses of current programs take precedence over political appointees in subcabinet (and therefore anonymous) positions? (Yes) Does beauty that comes with a winner’s sash trump corporate rank? (Yes) Does a powerful person at the top of the food cycle maintain his conversational perch if he has fallen from grace a week ago? (No) This last one is exempt in case of a TV interview.
Interruptions are seldom carried out with grace. It is best to let someone finish his sentence before attempting to jump into the verbal traffic. But even this seemingly safe assumption leads to tension if a split-second later someone else wants to say something.
Why even try to understand and enforce these niceties of conversational queues and authorized interruptions?
The adept social climber instinctively knows these conversational rules. Sometimes, she opts to be quiet. She watches the verbal tennis matches, seemingly disinterested in what anyone is saying. She restrains the urge to jump in even to correct fake rumors. (The amount offered to the basketball player by a TV host is much smaller than two million.) She waits for the game to come to her and then just shrugs and raises her eyebrows.
Such calculated silence hides intent, rank, and store of knowledge. Anyway not all pronouncements are worth interrupting… especially when the line jumper has nothing to add.
In families, designation of children and adults does not always refer to actual age.