In the newsroom, “Dead Air” is a crisis. On social media, “Silence” is a sign of irrelevance. We have been conditioned to believe that if we aren’t filling the void with words, we are losing the battle for attention. We’ve become a society of “over-explainers,” terrified that if we don’t justify our existence every five minutes, we’ll be edited out of the story. But real authority doesn’t shout. Real authority waits. 1. The “Listening” Edit Most people don’t listen; they just wait for their turn to speak. They are “pre-editing” their next sentence while you are still talking. This creates a “stutter” in human connection. In an interview, the most…