151. The Power of the Pause

Alright STOP, collaborate and listen.

Are you afraid to take pauses in your speaking? Worried it seems like you don't know what you're talking about or like you've lost your place?

In this episode Sally shares three amazing reasons to fall in love with the pause.

Transcript

Hello Hello …

The power of the pause.

In the words of Ronan Keating, you say it best when you say nothing at all.

There’s all the quotes – silence is golden

Silence isn’t empty it’s full of answers.

And you’re probably nodding your head going yeh I get the sentiment, but when I’m speaking pausing freaks me out.

And if this is you it’s because you have a freaky complicated relationship with pausing.

Remember it’s not the pause itself, it’s what we make the pause to mean.

What does it mean when you take a pause during speaking?

The things I hear from my clients include –

If I pause that means I’ve forgotten my place.

If I pause that means someone else will jump in and interrupts me.

If I pause that means they think that I don’t know what I’m talking about, and they’ll think I’m incompetent.

If I pause that means I’m not confident.

Jump over to Instagram and let me know if any of these are resonating for you. I’m @sallyprosservoice or @thatvoicepodcast – a new insta channel just for the podcast, jump on and be an early adopter of this channel.

If you have any negative association with pausing, by the end of this episode you will fall in love with the power of the pause.

There’s one exception – broadcast radio. So when I was in radio we were heavily instructed never to have what they call ‘dead air’ so this is no sound. So when I was reading the news on radio I chugged along with no pauses, because if people hear dead air they think something is wrong with their radio and are more likely to switch stations.

You might be like how do you do a whole bulletin with no pauses.

Well here’s where I’ll explain the two main types of pauses. There are more than two – so if you want to nerd out about suspension pauses and syntactic pauses – hit me up in the DM’s. It is a weird subject area interest for me.

I bloody know my craft, I’ll give you that much.

For the purposes of this podcast and what you need to know, let’s stick to two.

The first one is a phrasing pause or a sense pause. And I did take these reading the news on radio. These are the pauses we take for our words to make sense. So we pause at full stops and commas etc. You might have seen the memes, I enjoy cooking, my family and my dog, different to I enjoy cooking my family and my dog. So those are sense pauses and you take those without too much conscious thought when you’re speaking.

The second type of pause is what I want to focus on today and the one you’re going to repair your relationship with.

And that is the emphatic or dramatic pause. The one we use for effect. The one that is oh so powerful, so powerful it tends to put fear in people, so much they don’t want to use it. But oh when you do, woah, just watch the level of impact you have when you speak explode.

Pausing is one of my favourite techniques and anyone who’s heard me speak live especially knows I’m not afraid to hold one of these bad boys for just a little longer than you might feel comfortable with…love it.

So to fall in love with a pause we need to change what you think a pause MEANS.

Those negative stories are just that.

And the pros of pausing way outweigh the cons.

Remembering that when you pause it is just your speech pausing. Your eye contact your body language your energy carries on.

A pause is intentional, and something to be practised.

Right so this is different to the complete brain freeze. I have an episode on what to do with public speaking brain freeze, that’s episode … 136.

So here’s a new mantra for you – a pause is a gift. A pause is a gift to me and a gift for my audience.

And I’m going to share three very good reasons to pause.

Number one. If you pause it means you have a chance to breathe in.

We think on the in-breath and speak on the out-breath. It’s impossible to breathe in while speaking which means if you don’t take pauses you don’t get enough air in and you run out of breath and your voice goes like this and at best you sound rambly and at worst you hyperventilate.

You need to breathe. Oxygen powers your voice and the only way to fuel up , breathe in.. is to stop talking. Pause.

2. If you pause it means your audience is able to digest what you’ve said.

You don’t want to shit on your own wisdom and this is what happens when you drop this amazing content and don’t allow the audience to absorb it during a pause.

This happens with so many subject matter experts. You get so close to your subject, you forget when you speak many people are hearing it for the first time – and it is amazing!! You think it’s basic, to the audience it’s mind blowing.

So yeh this research has found the cure for cancer, and the other thing we’re doing is working with patients to  help when they come in for treatment.

Hang on, what, found the cure for cancer. Talk about bury the lead. This is what happens when we don’t pause, we bury our own brilliance and deprive the audience from experiencing the gravity of our words.

Number 3. If you pause it means the audience is on the edge of their seat.

So it’s not just about digesting what you’ve said, a pause helps your audience lean in to what’s next. It’s an attention grabber – one of the easiest and most effective I know. Back when free to air TV was a thing and you had ads, did you ever look at the TV when you didn’t hear any sound? Yeh, companies used silence in their ads to get attention.

In speaking there’s a really great pattern you can use. I call it the Rise Pause Drop. So you raise your inflection, like this, then you pause and then you drop the mic on the next part. And it’s in that pause that the audience is hanging for what’s next.

I use this pattern a LOT.

Here’s an example.

So I did what any woman in my situation would do …

Told them  I broke up with him and continued to date him in secret.

Another one is

You voice is no-one’s to take… and only yours to share.

Without the pause.

Your voice is no ones to take and only yours to share. It loses the suspense. The opportunity for the audience to lean in.

You can use this in all types of settings.

So even in a meeting. Rather than saying I believe the better option is go to a four day week. With the pause, I believe the better option is to go to a four day week. We use that pause to prime our audience to really be all-ears for what we have to say after it.

So that is the power of the pause.

Before we wrap this up, I am aware something called the interstellar effect is at play.

So in the movie interstellar, great space movie. Love it. There’s a part where one hour on one planet is 7 years on earth. And when we are up there pausing it can feel like you’re on planet 7 years, remember the audience is on planet one hour. So a big pause to the speaker, is often a little pause to the audience. And if you’ve ever had a really long pause for whatever reason, and then asked someone in the audience, OMG could you tell I lost it, or whatever happened and they will usually honestly respond with, didn’t even notice.

So take this as your big fat permission slip to PAUSE.

And it’s way more than a permission slip it’s a certificate.

Pausing is a gift,

And there are heaps of studies that show people who are considered to be more confident more charismatic and better leaders ALL PAUSE when they speak.

So I don’t know what devil is out there causing havoc and making people feel weird about pausing because it is honestly a game changing speaking technique.

There is so much power in a pause.

And if you’d like to practice pausing and work with me on your content, so you can make a real impact when you’re sharing your story online on stage on podcasts, then apply for Soul Speakers Advanced. This is for just ten people – professionals and business owners ready to speak up with confidence. I’ll share the link in the show notes. The program involves small groups and also one on one’s. So if you’ve been wanting to work on your speaking, one on one has been too intense or out of your budget and you don’t want online self-paced or with a big group, then Soul Speakers advanced is ideal for you.

And speaking of pauses. I am taking a couple of weeks pause from the podcast.

I’ll be back soon with a new intro, new outro, probably the same music, I’ve used this since episode one and I’m attached now.

Although for this outro, I can’t resist, let’s bring Ronan back, because when it comes to the pause, it’s true you say it best when you say nothing at all.