The less you say, the more intimidating and powerful you are. Always say less than necessary. When you do speak, make it vague and ambiguous, leaving the meaning to others to interpret. They’ll be frustrated and obsessed with trying to figure you out.

In the power game, appearance is everything. When you always say less than necessary, you come across as powerful, intimidating, and mysterious. Keep these principles in mind:

• When you’re silent, you make other people uncomfortable. Because they dislike uncertainty, people want to know what you’re thinking. When you control your words, they can’t figure out what you mean or intend.
• Short answers and silence make people feel defensive. They quickly try to fill the silence, and in the process reveal motivations and weaknesses — information you can use. Later they’ll obsess over every word you said and its potential implications. The inordinate attention they give to your brief comments adds to your power.
• In most instances, the less you say, the more important and profound it seems, and the more mysterious you are. For example, Andy Warhol found that he had more power when he said little and kept his comments vague and ambiguous. Sometimes he made purposely meaningless comments. Interviewers struggled to interpret what he meant, believing it was profound. He learned from fellow artist Marcel Duchamp that the less he said about his work, the more people talked about it and the more desirable it became.

• Besides creating an impression of great import, saying little avoids the risk of saying something foolish, which can be costly. For instance, in the early 1800s, a Russian rebel named Ryleyev talked too much and paid for it with his life. Nicholas I had sentenced him to death, but at the moment he was being hanged the rope broke. Believing he’d be pardoned, as usually happened in such cases, he yelled to the crowd that Russia couldn’t get anything right, even rope. Instead of pardoning him, Nicholas responded, “Let’s prove the contrary,” and Ryleyev was hanged the next day with a rope that held. Ryleyev hadn’t learned to always say less than necessary.