Prof. Scott Klemmer on silence:
“When I first started teaching, I made a mistake that a lot of young teachers make. I would ask the class for a question and after 17 milliseconds when nobody had answered, I would jump in and offer the answer myself.
I trained the students that they didn’t need to be part of the class, that I would always answer every question. There was no reason to participate.
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One of my colleagues [Jim Hollan] taught me to wait a little longer, and it’s amazing. Even in a quiet classroom before students are used to interacting — let a few seconds of silence happen, and people will start to chime in. The same is true in interviews. You may get a quick answer at first. Let some silence happen. After a few seconds, you’ll hear the second story.
And the second story is often a lot more interesting.”
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The same is true for conversations with an old friend. Let there be a bit of silence, especially when the question you are asking requires that the other person be vulnerable (and that is a lot to ask for). And when there is silence, don’t use it as an opportunity to think of things for yourself to say — that is the opposite of listening and understanding the other person. Give the other person a chance to think and say what she wants to say before butting in with your own story.
Every once in a while I’ll bump into a new couple who’s obviously super into each other. They’re easy to spot — constantly giggling in each other’s company, and sharing inside jokes that nobody else in the room understands (and worse, they won’t bother to explain them! “Long story” they say). The more irritating ones may even say, “we finish each other’s sentences!” to show how cute they are together.
But why would you want to do that? I thought making assumptions breaks relationships!
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One important caveat: there is an emphasis on a little bit of silence. Too much and the conversation thread will end. Too little and the conversation can devolve into a bout of verbal diarrhea.
Comfortable silences rise when both people trust that the other is just as invested in the relationship as they are. That doesn’t always happen, so I try to cherish it when it does.
Source: Lecture 2.2. "Interviewing". You can find the excerpt at the 10:50 mark in Klemmer's / UCSD's "Intro to Human-Computer Interaction Design" course on Coursera.org.
