Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.

Silence is read as depth by default, because the listener fills it in with whatever they expect. Most of what damages someone’s standing is not what they failed to say but what they said too quickly. This works in your favour more often than you think, since the sentence you leave out is rarely missed and the one you rush out is sometimes remembered for years.

In your next meeting, hold back the first thing you want to say and see whether it still needs saying two minutes later. Often somebody else covers it. When you do speak, you will have something the room does not already have.