[public speaking tip] The power of the pause

At a birthday party, years ago.

Photo by Larry Stillman.

It's my birthday today and I often find it a bittersweet day. The getting older and wiser is the sweet part for me. The bitter part is that I sometimes have big expectations for the day and big expectations can only lead to disappointment. The big expectations probably started when I was a kid because birthdays were a huge deal in my family, always celebrated with a party, friends, gifts, cake, ice cream and games like "pin the tail on the donkey." When I was in second grade, I told my friends that the reason we were all getting a summer vacation was because it was my birthday! I was kidding, of course, but on some level, not really!

So maybe I have higher-than-normal expectations for my birthday which might explain why my husband always breathes a sigh of relief when the clock strikes midnight on the evening of June 29 and the pressure is off for another year.

This year, I'm taking the day off and going to the beach to let myself pause for a moment and do one thing that grown-up birthdays are meant to do: allow you to look back and look forward.

This day of pausing got me thinking about pausing in presentations, something that many of us don't do enough. When most people get nervous, they speed up, which doesn't allow the audience time to absorb what they're saying.

Watch Gigi’s 45-second lesson on the power of the pause.

Pausing can also add drama. At the right moment, pausing can make the audience sit up and pay attention as they wait for the answer or the mystery to be solved. On Juneteenth this year, I heard Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech on the radio and noticed how King uses pauses to let his words sink in. It's such a moving speech, for many reasons, but it's partly due to his amazing sense of pausing.

Try pausing. If you don't know where or how, schedule a free consult with me and we'll ... pause ... a moment ... to find the perfect place for you to ... slow down.

Wishing you pauses in your life and presentations, today and always.