The person who makes room for your answer is easier to trust than the person who finishes it for you.

Finishing someone’s sentence is often meant as warmth, a way of showing you are keeping up. What it does is take the thought away just before it was formed and replace it with a close approximation the other person now has to accept or correct. Over time you learn which people let you find your own words. Those are the ones you tell difficult things to.

In one conversation this week, leave the pause alone. Let a silence run three seconds longer than is comfortable. What arrives is usually more honest than what you were about to supply.