Tools / Wait trainer
How long can you sit in silence?
You asked the room a question. Nobody has answered yet. Hold the pad for as long as you would actually wait before you filled that silence yourself, then let go.
Takes about thirty seconds. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no email field.
Mouse, finger or keyboard. With a keyboard, hold the space bar or enter key while the pad is focused.
Why the number matters
Mary Budd Rowe put a stopwatch on teachers and found the pause after a question averaged about one second before somebody filled it, and that somebody was almost always the person who had asked. The pattern is not about patience. One second is simply how long an unmanaged silence feels survivable when the room is your responsibility.
Past about three seconds the room changes. Answers get longer, more people volunteer unprompted, and the number of non-answers drops. That is the finding almost every facilitation course repeats, and it is where almost every facilitation course stops.
Three is not the number I teach. Three clears the fastest talkers and nobody else. The person composing before they speak, working in a second language, sitting on a delayed connection, or still deciding whether this room is safe to speak in is not finished at three. I teach a silent count to eight, for a practical reason as much as a principled one: a facilitator aiming at three lands at two once fourteen people are watching, and a facilitator aiming at eight lands at five.
The harder pause is the second one. After somebody finishes answering, there is a gap where a different person decides whether to add something. Most facilitators close that gap instantly, usually with praise, and praise ends the thread: the room reads it as the correct answer having arrived. When Nobody Talks is built around both pauses, and lesson two is the eight count.
Eight seconds alone is the easy part
Holding it in front of fourteen people who are all looking at you is the part that takes practice.