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The
Pause
In
our classes we have participants work through a number of
exercises, and people quickly learn that indeed, it's much more
comforting when you can give your presentation to one person at
a time. When you get to the point where instead of trying to
crank your whole system up, you actually look at one person at a
time, letting everything else go, you start a process in which
you can settle down and feel much more comfortable. And again,
the more comfortable you feel, the more comfortable the audience
is going to feel, because they're empathizing with you. And the
more comfortable they are, the more likely they are to uptake
your message.
Though
most of our on-site participants pick up on the "Lock,
Talk" aspects of the program quite easily, the hardest part
for most people to implement is always the "&
Pause" part. Yet as we'll examine in this article, the
pause is probably the most important component to the process of
speaking well. As we've mentioned many times before, all great
speakers, all people who have The Skills, have learned to
embrace the pause.
This
lesson will contain less reading than the first two because we
really want you to study the upcoming videos, and replay them
repeatedly, so that you get to the point where when you next get
up to speak, you can "hear" the speakers in your mind
and let them guide you through your delivery.
What
we want you to thoroughly appreciate is how these masters of The
Skills use the pause to such advantage. But why is the pause so
important?
The
pause is important for three reasons. The first is about
allowing your audience to hear what you just said, and the
second is about getting them to hear what you're about to say
next. The third purpose of the pause, which is crucial to
forming the actual verbiage of your presentation, will form the
basis for our next article.
It's
important to recognize that the pause in speech is equivalent to
the paragraph in the written word. Think about this. When do you
end one paragraph and begin a new one? With the movement to a
new thought, a new concept, right? It works the same way in
speech.
Too
much information!
Can
relate to the structure of older textbooks, especially science
textbooks (organic chemistry, anyone?) that you'd open up and
see page after page after page of text without a single break?
Many of us didn't make it through chemistry in college, because
when we opened up the textbook, we flipped through a few pages
and just said, "No way!". You saw an unending stream
of words for page after page and decided that your brain was
simply not equipped to take in all that stuff.
That's
exactly how your listeners feel when you speak without pausing.
You don't see them slam the book shut on you, but they do
silently decide to shut out much of what you say, choosing to
wait for the handout. They still smile and nod when you look at
them, but they're not hearing you. They can't hear you, because
as we know from Rule #3, people only start listening when you
stop talking.
Now
compare the chemistry textbook to a newspaper. Until you pick
one up and count, many people aren't aware that the average
newspaper paragraph contains only two sentences. (In USA Today,
sometimes less than one). Why? Well, when you think about it,
newspapers are in the same business you are when delivering a
presentation.
Newspapers
are there to deliver new information to people quickly, and then
move on. Newspapers know they have one shot to give it to you,
because most people don't hold on to newspapers. They're not
used as reference material. You read them one time through, and
then you toss them in the trash on your way off the train.
So
the process of getting a lot of new information to people
quickly involves being able to parcel it out into nice little
bite-size morsels that the brain can ingest. The paragraph is a
big key to that. Think about the physical structure of a
paragraph. You read across the column: one sentence, two
sentences, and then what do you get? You get a nice little piece
of white space. That white space is brain rest.
And
then even before you're asked you to take in more information,
you're given a little indent - a bit more white space. A little
more brain rest. That's what a paragraph's all about.
Speaking
in paragraphs
The
pause in speech works exactly the same way. In order to get your
audience to really take in what you have to say, you've got to
learn to stop talking and give their brains a little rest. Frequently.
You've got to stop
talking long enough for them to ingest that last thing you said,
get a picture of it, and try to put it into a context that they
know before moving on to the next thing you're going to say.
The
pause is absolutely the most important thing you can do when you
speak. People have a hard time appreciating that, because they
think that speaking is about talking. As we've said before: time
can go on quite nicely even when not filled with your words! But
as you listen to the speakers in the videos, you will begin to
appreciate why those with The Skills not only embrace they
pause, they strive to be masters of it.
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