A trait of mine that I continue to work on is to let conversations breathe. I tend to jump in quickly to keep things moving along, to the extent of sometimes trying to finish someone else’s sentence. It’s not good, but it’s getting better.
Better still, though, is allowing some silence to exist in a conversation. Particularly when it’s a tough subject, silence can be a great way to punctuate a question. In a recent episode of “The Long and the Short Of It” podcast, host Peter Shepherd simply said the title of this post: “The silence is the question“.
This can work very well for tricky conversations, as it doesn’t let the other person off the hook as easily. People often feel the need to fill the silence with words (like I often do), so being the one to hold back will encourage the other person to speak and it can often move things along at a better level.
Getting comfortable with silence is something I’ll keep working on, as it can itself be a very good question to leave out there.
