Page 71 - Effective Communication Skills Mastery Bible 4 Books in 1 Boxset by Tuhovsky, Ian

to often jump from one topic to another and talk about one

hundred different things in a matter of few minutes. I have this

business partner who tends to lose track often in his

conversations. He really is a big talker. If you took him to a

business meeting and asked him to quickly tell you how he got

into the retail business and what his background was, he would
tell you something like: “Well, that’s an interesting question.

In 1979, I was a military school dropout. Before that, I

originally wanted to become a pilot because I always wanted

to be paid for playing with grown-man toys, and you know, the

military planes are so fascinating. I don’t know if you’ve heard
about the new project for US army stealth-planes, but they can

fly above the stratosphere and they’re equipped with the

newest…” and then he would tell you everything he knows

about military, soldiers, their families, their friends and dogs.

He would probably love to tell you a story longer than all nine
seasons of How I Met Your Mother put together.

What you need to do to politely interrupt in that situation is

to take any of the last sentence that person said and repeat it

back, prefacing it with, “So, you’re telling me.” So if my

friend got to that point, I would tell him something like: “So,
you’re telling me that these new planes can fly really high,

right?”

And normally when you say something like that to people,

they respond with saying, “Yes, I was telling you that…but

why did you ask me?” and then they go back right on the
track. “Ah yes, I’m a mechanical engineer.” Or if they forget

the original question, you just need to repeat it and they get

right to the answer you wanted to hear, but they are not

offended that you are interrupted them, because you