Human beings are incredible animals simply because they have the power to talk; thanks to speech we can both cooperate and persuade or even defend our perception of the world, or simply meet people and seduce. However, despite the fact that the range of possibilities offered by the art of speech is almost unlimited, there are situations in which none of that matters, because we get blocked when trying to chat with someone.

Uncomfortable silences are situations that many want to avoid but that, incomprehensibly, appear again and again in the daily life of many people. However, through training in certain social skills, it is possible to master some simple tricks to avoid those uncomfortable silences . Let’s see how to do it.

Social skills to avoid uncomfortable silences

You are talking to a person with whom you have only crossed a few words before, and everything is going perfectly: during the first minute, you realize that you have easily overcome that phase of uncertainty in which you must decide how to start the conversation, and so far everything seems to be going smoothly. However, there comes a point when the topic you are talking about apparently doesn’t go any further, and that odious uncomfortable silence appears. What has gone wrong?

As we will see, there are different answers to the previous question. To explain it, we will see several strategies that help prevent these small relational problems. However, in all of them it is assumed that the conversation has already been initiated. If you are also interested in knowing how to start talking to someone you don’t trust very much, it is better to go to this other article: “How to start a conversation with someone you love, in 6 steps”

Let’s just see what steps we can take to have fluid and natural conversations.

1. Emphasize positive aspects of the other

It may seem strange, but flattery has a relationship with uncomfortable silences or, rather, the absence of uncomfortable silences. The fact is that these “dead ends” in the conversation are often due to the fact that either we or our interlocutors have adopted a defensive attitude , something that is frequent when we do not know the person we are talking to very well. In the face of uncertainty, we unconsciously think that it is best not to expose vulnerabilities through what we say.

Thus, flattery is a simple and easy way to make a good part of those defenses crumble . The consequence of this is that the person who receives these positive ratings pronounced aloud will be more open, more extensively explained, and at the same time more comfortable.

Starts conversations about something that interests the other person

It’s an easy way to avoid uncomfortable silences. On the one hand, allows us to skip those phases of formal conversation composed of topics that don’t have to be of interest (time, work in general, etc.), and on the other hand, it makes our interlocutors feel comfortable talking about something that excites them and about which they have many ideas.
For example, you can talk about hobbies, about news in an interesting area of news, etc. Thus, the answers are unlikely to be short.

3. Don’t speak in fear of pauses

One of the key aspects of uncomfortable silences is that, in order for them to come into existence, almost any pause in the conversation must be interpreted as a “failure” – a symptom that the people involved in the dialogue are not connecting. However, this doesn’t have to happen; a pause can mean many other things .

It is possible, for example, that in order to emphasise a statement, it is accompanied by a pause deliberately placed there, so that the forcefulness of the response is enhanced and, therefore, that we have a very clear view of what is being discussed.

Many times, the uncomfortable silence appears when this happens and we are not able to draw attention to the expressive power of this fact: we simply say a sentence and keep quiet because we cannot conceive of any other possible response. However, in certain subjects in which one would expect different opinions from ours, the simple fact of having created this silence is in itself another topic of conversation, since gives rise to an explanation as to why we are so sure of what we are saying .

In other cases, the uncomfortable silence may be because the other person responds in a brief and concise manner. In these cases, we can turn the situation around so that the interpretation emerges that it is the interlocutor who is nervous and does not know how to continue talking.

In these situations, it is good to adopt an affable attitude and redirect the conversation by implying that we take away the responsibility of continuing to talk to the other person; a sign of good will: “well, if I have understood you correctly it seems that you do not agree with the proposed reforms Of course, this should be done if there is really reason to think that the silence is partly due to the other person’s nerves, and not simply because they do not want to continue talking.

4. Get used to giving your opinion without fear

Anyone will be eager to end a conversation if all we bring to the dialogue is one question after another. Interrogations are not to anyone’s liking , and they are the most propitious context to make them look like uncomfortable silences. The solution to this is simple: avoid asking questions all the time.

In practice, if what you say is interesting or expresses an original point of view, the effect of these contributions to the dialogue will be very similar to that of a question that is crying out for an answer. For example, if the other person talks about one of his hobbies and you talk about what you know about that activity by adding an opinion, the other person will feel called to take a stand on that kind of statement.

In short, we must bear in mind that questions are not the only tool for getting the other person to talk and, sometimes, they are just the opposite: something that leads our interlocutors to decide to stop talking.