There’s a particular kind of restraint that looks like doing nothing. You’re in a conversation, you see exactly what’s happening, you know what needs to be said — and you don’t say it. Not because you’re uncertain, but because you understand something most of us overlook: the right words at the wrong moment aren’t the right words.

Cristina Latici describes this practice with the clarity of someone who has spent years developing it. As a movement coach, she watches students struggle with something she could easily correct. She sees the adjustment they need. She has the expertise to name it precisely. And she holds back.

“You have to wait — you just have to wait and see. It’s not always the right time to give feedback.”

This isn’t the silence of not knowing what to say. It’s the far harder silence of knowing exactly what to say and choosing not to say it yet.

Most of us experience conversation as a kind of pressure system. Knowledge builds up inside us, and the natural impulse is to release it — to share the insight, offer the correction, provide the answer. We treat our observations like perishable goods that will spoil if we don’t deliver them immediately. Someone says something slightly wrong, and we feel an almost physical urge to set the record straight. A friend describes a problem, and we leap to solutions before they’ve finished describing it.

Latici’s restraint points to something deeper about how readiness works in conversation. She draws a parallel to working with children in special education, where she describes the early stages of a new relationship: “If you go in like a bulldozer, it’s just not going to go well. So there is this dance that happens at the beginning.”

A dance. Not a delivery. She’s describing a fundamentally different model of what conversation is for. In the delivery model, I have something and I give it to you. Timing is incidental — the sooner the better. In the dance model, both people are moving, and the value of any particular step depends entirely on where both partners are in the sequence.

Latici goes further. She describes seeing what needs to happen, understanding what the correct response would be, and deliberately withholding it:

“I really have to temper what I see and knowing what the response should be, but it’s not the right time for that response. I need to wait. And I need to move slowly.”

Notice the tension in that statement. She’s not uncertain. She’s not gathering more information. She knows what should happen. But she also knows that premature correctness can be worse than no correction at all — that offering the right answer before someone is ready to receive it doesn’t just fail to help, it can actively damage the relationship that makes future help possible.

This has profound implications for everyday conversation. Think about how often we derail a conversation by being right at the wrong time. A friend is processing a difficult experience, and we offer perspective they’re not ready for. A colleague is working through a problem out loud, and we jump to the conclusion they haven’t reached yet. A partner is expressing frustration, and we provide the solution that short-circuits the emotional process they actually need to complete.

In each case, we’re being helpful. We’re being correct. And we’re being counterproductive.

The discipline Latici describes — watching, waiting, bookmarking things for later — requires a kind of trust that runs counter to how we usually think about conversation. It requires trusting that the right moment will come. That holding back now doesn’t mean losing the opportunity forever. That the relationship is long enough and deep enough to contain the unsaid things until they’re ready to be heard.

She even describes bookmarking observations for future sessions: “This is something that I want to address at some point, but today is not the day. So I’m just going to bookmark this and we’ll loop back to it at some point.” What if we approached our conversations with that same patience? What if we trusted that the important things could wait for their moment?

The hardest skill in conversation may not be knowing what to say. It may be developing the restraint and the trust to hold what you know until the other person is ready to receive it. That silence — active, deliberate, loaded with intention — might be the most generous thing you can offer.

This field note references the Movers Mindset episode “Insight with Cristina Latici,” published February 27, 2025.