Clients often ask me to help them slow down, or to sound more dramatic or authoritative.
The answer to these three very different concerns, is surprisingly the same:
It’s to add pauses between your thoughts.
Why Pause? Because You and Your Audience Both Need a Break!
My husband told me a story that’s attributed to the great cellist Pablo Casals.
Casals performed well into old age, and a student supposedly once asked him, “Maestro, you’re not a young man, but you play with extraordinary vigor. How do you maintain your energy?”
Casals is said to have replied, “I rest between the notes.”
As a public speaker, you can also “rest between the notes” (or, in this case, the ideas), and give your audience a chance to do the same, by using pauses.
And learning to pause will unlock a whole new level of public speaking mastery. It just takes a small amount of effort, repeated often.
Here’s an exercise to get you started:
Try This Exercise To See How Pausing Can Be Practiced and Learned
Read what follows out loud.
As you read my little pitch for pausing, slowly say “one hundred, two hundred, three hundred” out loud between each phrase. This will help slow you down and give you a sense for how long a “pause” can last.
When you rest between thoughts, you’re giving yourself a nice break.
One hundred, two hundred, three hundred.
You’re making the space to slow yourself down, relax, and check out how your audience is reacting to what you just said.
One hundred, two hundred, three hundred.
That same pause also gives your audience time to take in what they just heard.
One hundred, two hundred, three hundred.
This increases the chance that they’ll remember what you said.
One hundred, two hundred, three hundred.
Pauses are invaluable for you and your audience.
Practicing Pauses: A Big Gain for Very Little Pain
You get the picture.
This exercise takes just a few seconds. But if you do it often, the ability to pause will seep into your brain, and you’ll always have the choice of sounding more thoughtful, authoritative, interesting, colorful, and memorable.
So have fun practicing pauses.
The people that you speak to will thank you!
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In 25 years of speaker coaching, I’ve helped my individual speaker coaching clients develop their strengths and skills to become authentic and effective communicators.
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