The Pause: Letting Silence Do Its Work
Launch library · evergreen read
The instinct to fill a silence immediately after a question is strong, especially for a nervous interviewer worried about dead air, but that instinct often cuts off exactly the moment a subject was about to say something more considered than their first, more automatic response to the very same question.
Waiting a few extra seconds after an answer seems to have finished, resisting the natural urge to move straight on to the next question on the list, frequently produces a second, more thoughtful layer of response that a rushed interview would simply never have reached at all otherwise.
This is genuinely uncomfortable to practise at first, since silence can feel like a failure of preparation rather than a deliberate technique worth cultivating, but with real experience it becomes one of the most reliable tools available for deepening an answer well beyond its polished surface response to the original question asked.