The power of silence. Silence may be one of the most powerful tools a facilitator has in his/her toolkit. In a group facilitation, silence is a way to challenge the audience when you want them to dig deeper such as responding to a difficult question.
If you want your audience to openly share beyond superficial responses then you must first create psychological safety in the room for people to be comfortable sharing. Secondly, you need to ask a question that is clear and within bounds of what the group is there to accomplish.
To be successful with silence, you, the facilitator has to be comfortable with silence. You have to be ok that a room full of people are nonverbally begging you to break the silence and rescue them from the discomfort. You won’t get the audience to engage with you at a deeper level if you look uncomfortable with the silence. If they sense your discomfort, they will count on you to save them. The audience must observe that you are comfortable waiting through the awkwardness.
Even attendees who are scrolling through their phone will pause and take note if the entire room goes silent for the unacceptable amount of time. How much time is unacceptable? I can’t tell you in seconds or minutes but I can tell you by the nonverbal reaction in the room. The audience shifts from looking at the facilitator to looking around the room at their colleagues to staring at their feet (repeat). I’ve never met an audience that enjoys silence. The purpose of silence is not to make the audience uncomfortable. Oddly enough, silence is an engagement tool.
If you look comfortable and hold out, I guarantee you someone in the audience will engage and respond to your question. Once you have one response, the second response comes much quicker. Now you are getting to the depth of responses you had hoped for when you first asked the question.