The Power of the Pause
by Phil Waknell
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Reasons for pausing:
1. It gives the audience time to reflect.
This is the single biggest reason to pause from time to time. We don’t remember things because we hear them, or
because we understand them. We remember them because they mean something to us, and because we remember
how we feel about them. But for a message to have personal meaning and generate an emotion, we need not only to
hear and understand it: we also need to think about it, to think about what it means for us, and to work out how it fits
with the rest what we think we know about life, the universe and everything.
Personal reflection is the glue that makes a message stick. It is as powerful as any story.
The trouble is that most speeches and presentations bombard the audience with sentence after sentence, without giving
them the time to perform this personal reflection. Leaving strategic pauses after important points gives the audience
time to reflect, and gives your message a chance to stick.
Think of it like painting a wall. You apply the first coat of paint, and then you wait for it to dry before applying the
second coat. You wouldn’t apply the second coat while the first is still wet. You give it a chance to dry. Do that with
your messages too. Give them a chance to stick by letting your audience think about what your messages mean to
them.
2. It gives you time to reflect.
A pause between sentences is not only good for your audience: it is also good for you. It gives you a chance to catch
your breath, to relax, and to prepare the next sentence. You are therefore physically ready to deliver the next
sentence, and you know what you are going to say, so it will come out smoothly. It also gives you time to gauge the
audience’s reaction to your talk.
I’m not suggesting you should pause at the end of every sentence. Pause to give effect to your point, and that point
may have required two or three sentences to make, so pause at the end to let people think, and you can take
advantage of that time to catch your breath, check how your audience is reacting, and prepare your next point.
Always remember, by the way, that a pause will always seem far longer to the speaker than it does to the audience.
So don’t worry if the pause seems long to you: your audience won’t think so.
3. It makes you look like a leader.
Many speakers are nervous, nervy, over-excited, worried about how they will be perceived, worried that they might
be interrupted, worried that they might run over time, and desperate to get it over with and get off stage as quickly as
possible. All these points contrive to make them speak far too quickly. Unless you are a racing commentator, speaking
quickly will make people perceive you as a loser.
Remember the four aims of presentation: to be heard, understood, respected, and remembered.
If you rattle through everything at lightning speed as if you had a plane to catch or an urgent appointment with the
nearest rest-room, your audience might not hear all your words, they might not properly understand, they won’t credit
you with enough credibility to care what you are saying, and they won’t remember it anyway because they have no
time to think about what it means to them.
Leaders, on the other hand, are confident. Leaders know that people will listen to them, and not interrupt them. Leaders
are calm and collected. In short, leaders speak slowly and in a controlled way, and when they leave a pause, they are
saying to the audience: “I am confident that nobody will use this pause to interrupt me.” And because they exude this
confidence and this sense of leadership, generally nobody does.
Therefore when you use pauses, it makes you look confident and powerful. It makes you look like you are in control. It
makes you look like a leader. It makes you look like someone worth listening to. And if the audience thinks you are
worth listening to, then speaking slowly with pauses should enable you to achieve all four of the aims of presentation:
to be heard, understood, respected and remembered.