Public Speaking Tips for The Power of the Pause
The Power of the Pause is almost a cliché in Public Speaking.
So what does it mean?
Is it just the silence between words?
It can be, but it can be used for a lot more than that.
In music it is said that it is what happens between two notes that creates the expression and meaning:
‘the stillness between two waves of the sea’, as TS Eliot would say.
Like breathing in and breathing out, it is the pause after the out-breathe and before taking air in again that simultaneously marks a moment of relaxation and a moment of expectation.
Silence is much more than an absence of sound.
If you have listened to a station announcement about a train arrival and the onward destination you will receive useful information, but those words of the announcement have been compiled by a piece of IT software to dispense data, not emotion.
Would you want emotion in a train announcement?
Probably not! Just tell what to expect. I don’t need you to try to make me feel happy about it!
At one station on the London Underground, there is a very human station supervisor who has decided to improve the morning journey by adding an extra level of excitement for his passengers as he delivers ‘Mind the doors. Mind the closing doors.’ He expresses so much animation and enthusiasm, that on first hearing, you want to smile and laugh. After a few more time it starts to annoy!
Expression has its place in Public Speaking, particularly when you want to communicate belief, anger, or generate excitement in your audience.
Imagine hearing the phrase:
‘My darling, I love you. Without you, my life would lack all meaning.’
said by automated station announcement software.
There would be no expressive gaps or joins between the words and instead of experiencing
‘the stillness between two waves of the sea’ it would feel more like the monotony of a dripping tap.
The volume of the voice will add to the expression of meaning;
the pitch, pace, and power of the voice will add to the expression of the meaning,
but the most striking expression will often be created by the spaces between the words,
‘the stillness between two waves of the sea’.
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, when Mark Antony speaks at Caesar’s funeral, and as he attempts to stir the audience’s passions, he builds to a moment when he breaks down saying:
‘Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me’
His emotions have 'apparently' so overcome him that the absence of words conveys more feeling than any spoken word could.
I am not suggesting you break down and weep during the monthly sales meeting, but be aware that you might on occasion be able to convey even a routine message more powerfully by a calculated use of space and silence.
10 tips for the use of the Power of the Pause
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Speechless
Let’s start with that dramatic one!
The implication is that the enormity means ‘words fail me’. This may be positive or negative.
‘Your beauty leaves me speechless.’
‘Your bare-faced cheek leaves me speechless.’
‘The severity of your crimes leave me absolutely…(pause)…’
(and you would probably be shaking your head in disbelief as you let the silence have its full impact!)
Please be careful! I would hate to think of a speaker pretentiously opting for this as a way of confecting indignant outrage, which is why I am often concerned about people who want to improve their Public Speaking by joining an Amateur Dramatics Society.
An over-calculated demonstration of emotion intended to leave you ‘speechless’ can easily seem forced or insincere.
(People do not like to feel manipulated)
The worry with adopting amateur dramatics, of course, is that good drama is about good acting,
whereas good Public Speaking should be about being genuine.
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Rhetorical Questions
A common fault in most of us is the tendency to rapidly plough on through our words without leaving any spaces between them. This is a particular problem if your speech is highly scripted. It comes from a very natural - but counter-intuitive - belief that as long as we are making a noise, the audience will be attending to what we say. The truth is almost the opposite. Being an engaging speaker is about creating contrast in your tone and style and contrasting space and silence with sound will often hold an audience’s attention better than a continuous flow.
The simplest solution is to be very conscious of leaving a healthy space after any rhetorical question.
Very often I will hear a speaker start with something like:
‘Who believes they need more time? I know I do.’
Without leaving any gap between the question and the answer, the speaker is not even giving the audience the moment to think about the question and come up with their own internal answer, which means that as well as there being no ‘stillness between two waves’, the audience feels rushed and hurried.
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Count
One way of guaranteeing a pause between words or phrases is to force yourself to count in between.
‘Who believes they need more time? (..2,3,4,5) I know I do.’
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Eyes
Holding good eye contact is a way of maintaining focus or holding attention during a pause.
You can even make eye contact with part of the audience, hold it for a moment and move eye contact to another part of the audience, and only then continue speaking. The eye contact will show the audience that you are still holding your thought and communicating with them, rather than having lost your way:
‘Who believes they need more time? (Eye contact, shift eye contact) I know I do.’
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Before a word
‘Today I would like to talk to you about a very important quality
…..Trust……Trust……..
…trust in your abilities
…trust in others
… and trust….in the process.’
When you know what your keywords are, you can set them up in your speech for special emphasis.
Think of a host announcing the winner in a Game Show:
‘And the winner is………(ridiculously long pause)…….Name of person.’
Not only can we use the pause to emphasise the next word, but if we extend that pause we can use it to build a tension in the room.
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After a word
By placing the pause after the word, it allows the impact of the keyword to sink in.
This all depends on your understanding that you are not just delivering words, but delivering meaning.
When you say the word ‘Trust’ – that is the keyword that you would like the audience to consider and so by following it with a few moments of silence, the audience can register the significance of what you are saying.
And of course, you can use the space both before and after the word to make it stand out even more.
Fans of the original Star Trek series will remember the opening sequence:
‘Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission:
to explore strange new worlds;
to seek out new life and new civilizations;
to boldly go where no man has gone before!’
That first word ‘Space’ would hang in the air before the narrator moved on
(And while we are at it, let’s note some of the rhetorical forms being used, calculated to appeal to the listener’s ear and drive the meaning home:
- the use of Three – to explore, to seek, to boldly go
- the use of ‘Same, same, different’ form within those three (like: ready, steady, go)
in this case – infinitive, infinitive, split infinitive
Some grammarians might be upset by a split infinitive, but this goes to emphasise that in speaking meaning always comes first.
The important word in that phrase is ‘boldly’ and so it is placed to attract the emphasis.
The more correct ‘to go boldly’ does not convey the same dramatic power as ‘to boldly go’.
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Structure
Pausing between significant sections in a presentation will serve the purpose of highlighting the structure for the listener. It is also an opportunity for the speaker to gather their thoughts before they move on to the next section and it allows the meaning to settle in the audience’s mind before a change of direction.
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Control
If one of the most common expressions of anxiety in Public Speaking is the tendency to rush, then anything that counteracts this will be of value. Particularly at the beginning of a presentation, when we want to make a strong authoritative impression, it might be a good idea to build in a couple of moments to pause.
If you were the Captain of the Enterprise introducing each episode of Star Trek, it might be a good idea to consciously build in a moment of pause after the word ‘Space’…
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Gestures
If you stand behind a podium holding on to the sides or stand with passive hands, you have no physical means of controlling the flow of your words. Gestures can be used to regulate the pace at which you speak and therefore by extension, a significant gesture can be used to reinforce a pause.
If we return to the opening of Star Trek, one could imagine the speaker pronouncing the word ‘Space’ with fingers of one hand flexing next to the speaker’s head and then being held there to reinforce the moment of impact generated by the pause in the voice and the freezing of the gesture.
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Meaning
Words have meaning. How you emphasise a word will add to that meaning (volume, irony, context) and meaning governs expression. Therefore when you become clearer about what you want to convey, it becomes easier to find the right words, and once you have found the right word you will want to put significance into the way you express it and one of the best ways of placing significance on a word is to give it space and time to resonate – and that is governed by the use of the pause.
