"A pause would be awkward"

The last belief is about the gap. If you wait for the finish and then leave a pause, it'll feel awkward, and awkward is worse than a jump.

Levinson and Torreira's figure was that the gap between turns is about a fifth of a second. Stivers's ten languages varied from that by up to a quarter of a second in either direction. So a normal gap runs from nothing to about half a second, and a full second is at the slow end of normal. That's the whole scale. The pause you're afraid of, the one that feels like a silence, is under a second long, and it reads to the other person as thought. Templeton's participants felt connected at fast responses, but fast meant a gap, not a jump, and the difference between a quarter-second and a half-second is not the difference between connection and awkwardness. It's the difference between a quick reply and a considered one.

Nobody has ever complained that you paused half a second. Think about that. You have been told "let me finish". You have not been told "you left a slight gap before answering". The half-second isn't a risk. It's the thing that turns a jump into a reply, and it's shorter than a breath.

If the half-second still feels long, there's a sound that fills it. A quiet "right", or a nod. That's not a jump. It's a signal that you're at the finish with them, and it buys you the time to make sure the tail has arrived before you speak. People who are good at this do it without knowing, and the people they talk to feel listened to without knowing why.

It's worth asking where the fear of the gap came from, because it isn't universal. Some people were raised at tables where a gap meant the conversation had died and it was your fault. Others were raised where a gap was where thinking happened. If you're the first kind, the half-second will feel like a small failure for a week or two, and then it'll feel like nothing, because nothing is what it is to the person opposite.