Try these tips during awkward silences or when you don't know what else to talk about. 1. Don't reject your own ideas thinking that they are not worth sharing. When you filter most of your stories and experiences you have fewer topics to talk about. 2. Don't list your points, instead elaborate on each point using examples or personal experiences. This also gives the opportunity to the listener to add to the topic or share their own experiences making it a two-way conversation. 3. Speak at the right pace. If you speak too fast, you end the conversation very quickly. It’s usually because the listener doesn’t understand you and therefore can’t keep the conversation going. 4. Learn to ask smart questions to keep the conversation going. Ask open-ended questions such as, “what do you think about …?” with follow-up questions “why do you think …?”. This helps you build up on the information that you received. 5. Practise thinking critically so you always have something to say. When you practice critical thinking and ask yourself counter-questions, you are able to spontaneously think of ideas and form arguments using your background knowledge. You can easily connect the dots and be eloquent while talking to people. 6. Learn a few speech frameworks such as Past - Present - Future, Problem – Solution - Benefit, or other storytelling formats such as ‘the mountain’. When you have a structure, you don’t lose your chain of thoughts and you don’t run into dead ends. Your listeners are also able to understand you better and remember what you said. 7. If you are using a second language to communicate such as English, then simplify your complex thoughts in your native language first and then translate them to English. Lots of times when translation is tough, we give up and change the topic. But this practice helps you make the translation process easy. If you want to learn more, please book a session with me.