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The Power of the Pause: The Secret Sauce of Great Public Speaking
This presentation is all about a crucial tool in public speaking that is missing from Toastmasters:
The Pause.
In this presentation, I demonstrate the importance of pauses in everything from telling a joke to playing music. You may find it helpful to first download the Pause Counter form with the explanation of pause types so you have it to follow along while listening. http://bit.ly/pausecounterform
Pauses are found in many places. A long distance swimmer pauses between strokes to go further faster. In music, there may be many notes played at one time, but when a rest note is played, it stands alone. Driving in traffic, a stop sign creates a pause to add safety. When you look for them, you can find pauses everywhere in our world. Pauses are the natural substitute for that infamous Toastmaster Taboo: the filler word. Elimination of filler words is a good goal, but Toastmasters has put the focus on the problem, not the solution. What if, instead of focusing on what to avoid — the filler words — we focus on what we want in their place — pauses? If you focus on adding pauses, the filler words will naturally disappear.
Not all pauses are created equal. There are many different types of pauses which I have been able to separate into 2 categories: Incidental and Intentional.
Incidental pauses are those that come naturally and are used in conversational speech. They generally give the speaker a chance to breathe or to think. They are usually dictated by punctuation, such as commas, semicolons, periods, question marks. Incidental pauses are also used as a replacement for a filler word – or rather, a filler word is often used where a pause belongs. This is “the silent filler.” These pauses are essential to being clearly understood and a basic part of speaking. The Ah-counter in Toastmasters is essentially focused on these, but instead of listening for pauses, they are listening for when pauses are replaced with filler words.
Intentional pauses make up the second category of pauses. These are the pauses that serve a greater purpose than just giving the speaker time to breathe or think. These pauses add seasoning and spice to your words. Most people go through their day never using these pauses. But if you listen carefully, you will find that the most interesting people tend to use many of these pauses as a staple part of their vocabulary.
Types of Intentional Pauses
Here is a breakdown of the different types of intentional pauses that I have identified so far. I’m sure as you study and observe, you will come up with more of your own, either nuanced differences from these or entirely new styles of pauses. If you have an idea, post it in a comment.
Pre-emptive Pause: Pause before starting to speak. This allows the speaker to gather their thoughts as
well as draw in the attention of the audience. A powerful start to any speech. Extend this pause for 5 or more seconds to build anticipation in your audience. Remember in Toastmasters, the timer doesn’t start until you start talking.
Punchline Pause: Humor has more impact when a pause is made before delivering the punchline. Watch a few standup comedians online to see how they use pauses. A wonderful example can be found in this performance by Stomp entertainment group. Their silence is palpable and the pause itself even becomes the punchline.
Audience Pause: Also known as Laugh Pause and Applause Pause. This is used to give the audience
time to react. Generally, the larger the audience, the longer the Pause. Do not step on their reaction or
cut it short. Like popping popcorn – It’s not done until it slows down enough, but don’t overcook it.
Thoughtful Pause: Allows the audience time to digest what was just said. In storytelling, it allows them
time to use their imagination; in technical talks, it allows them time to understand.
Emphatic Pause: Used to add emphasis to what precedes or follows the pause.
Indefinite Pause: When Finished speaking or when waiting for the listener to respond. Do not speak again until the listener responds. It is very important to not give in and speak first if the audience doesn’t respond as quickly as you expect. Get comfortable with this one so you can let it get uncomfortable for the listener. This is especially useful in negotiations. This specific usage is described in the book “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss.
Here are a few more resources that I mentioned in my video presentation above. These are 3 winners of the International Speech Contest, so they should be a great way to practice counting the various pauses. Even among winning speeches, I think you will find a direct correlation between the number and length of the pauses and the perception of the speech. You can do this with any speech. For comparisons, try to use speeches of similar lengths. That is where contest speeches are handy. They are all 5-7 minutes. Also be aware that speeches given to an online-only audience won’t have any audience pauses. Those only occur with a live audience in the room. This is why talk shows are “filmed before a live studio audience” and why sitcoms have laugh tracks. This is also why I am a strong advocate for practicing your speaking before a live audience. If all you do is speak to a camera, you are missing out on the most important part of Public Speaking: the audience.
You might also check out the second video on my 2019 blog post showcasing the Stomp acting group video demonstrating pauses.
In fact, pauses can be treated as words in your vocabulary. The more types of pauses you learn, the more fluent your vocabulary will become. Shift the focus from what to avoid — filler words — to what you want to include — pauses — and watch how quickly your public speaking improves.
Call To Action:
– Share this with your Toastmasters club and friends.
– Create a Pause Counter meeting role for your club meetings.
– This is just getting started. Add your suggestions for growing Pauses in the comments below.
You might enjoy these related blog posts:
Video: Stomp performers are masters of body language and pauses
Video: 20 Things You Forgot About Giving Speeches in Person
Video: Worst (and Best) Practices for Giving Speeches Online
The Power of the Paws, inspired by and in memory of Freddy the Bassett.
Public Speaking 101: stage use – Stage Left & Stage Right
Many beginner Toastmasters see their speech from their own point of view, both in how they talk and how they use the stage. With practice, speakers learn to see and hear (and deliver) their speech considering the audience’s point of view. Before explaining how that works, it is helpful to understand the terminology.
Stage Left & Stage Right
House Right & House Left
The term “House” or “Stage” is in reference to what you are looking at. So if you’re in the audience, you are looking at the stage. If you’re on stage, you’re looking at the house. (And if you’re one of my whitewater paddling friends, you already know River Left and River Right is the perspective as you look down river.) Here is a video explaining it:
Read the full article about it here.
Now how do you use this info? Most cultures read from left to right and observe the passage of time going from left to right. So for clarity to your audience your story should follow that flow. So if you are talking about an event that came first, you would stand or point to Stage Left. As you refer to events through time, you move across the stage to Stage Right. You may make several trips through time this way and your story may come to a conclusion in the present which you would come back to front and center to deliver final the message.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Toastmasters Pathways Program(updated 2018-Mar-26)
Have you signed up for the new Pathways program yet? Did you already choose a path and start preparing to do your Ice Breaker speech? You might even intend to be the first person to complete DTM under the new program, yes?
On the other hand, are you one who might be stuck trying to decide which pathway to select? Wondering — maybe fearing even — what projects await when you commit to a choice and unlock your first Pathway; uncertain if it is really the right one for you? No worries, I have what you are looking for. Read on.
Right about now you may feel as if you’ve been thrown into the movie “Divergent” and now you must choose what faction you will join, hmm?
Or like the young wizard Harry Potter, you don the sorting hat at Hogwarts School of Wizardry whispering “Gryffindore? Hufflepuff? Ravenclaw? Slytherin?”
Some Toastmasters may find solace that during the first 30 days after you have selected a Pathway, you can change your selection. But that doesn’t make it easier to decide which path to choose and it doesn’t help understand what each pathway contains. For that matter, having 30 days to switch doesn’t really help because you can’t see what all of the projects are that lie ahead. You can only see the projects of the current level you are on. The projects for the next level are not revealed until you complete the projects of the level your are on and unlock the next level (and your Vice President of Education has processed it.) This can be quite frustrating for those of us who thrive on seeing the “big picture”. As Morpheus explains it in The Matrix…
Not being one to accept artificial limitations imposed by others, I set out to discover what I could about each pathway in the new Pathways program. And for the sake of my fellow Toastmasters who demand to know more, I will share with you what I have discovered.
Toastmasters has published these descriptions of the 10 pathways:
You might also read this guide that was published.
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Within each pathway there are 5 levels. Applying the gaming metaphor to this (and yes, Pathways is definitely the gamification of the Toastmasters program), each level has several missions (projects) to complete before unlocking access to the next level. Each level has a mix of mandatory and elective missions to be completed. The details are as follows:
Level 1: 3 Required missions (projects) – These are the same for all paths
Level 2: 3 Required missions – These vary by path
Level 3: 1 Required mission and choose 2 electives
Level 4: 1 Required mission and choose 1 elective
Level 5: 2 Required missions and choose 1 elective
That is a total of 14 missions to complete to finish a pathway.
Complete 2 pathways to earn DTM.
Special thanks to Frank T. Storey, DTM from District 18.
Checkout his website for comprehensive more info. It even shows all 59 projects currently available. Scroll to the bottom of this page and view the .PDFs 1-4 posted. I would link them directly here, but he is constantly updating them.
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The following table contains a list of the mission titles and which Pathway each applies to. Special thanks to Ann DeMarrais and Kenneth Karru-Olsen for their work compiling this list!
Hopefully this offers a bit of help in deciding which pathway to take. The differences between the various pathways does not appear to be as significant as I had expected. Yes, it would be nice to have more details of each project, but at least this is a start. I will post more details as I find it. I encourage you to share the link to this article and to post what you have learned about Pathways in the comments below.
Important secret detail about upcoming IamLUG conference in St. Louis next month
Lotus IBM professionals, have you made plans to attend IamLUG? Perhaps you never get to attend Lotusphere / IBM Connect because it’s so expensive for the travel and the conference fee? This is your chance to get all of the meat of the Big conference without all of the fluff. You won’t get an evening trip to one of the theme parks. You won’t have all the hoopla and grandeur of the Opening General Session or the intellectual entertainment of the Closing Session. But you’ll get all the same great, useful insightful presentations from many of the same speakers. And the cost is…
FREE!
You just have to get there. Costs would include travel to/from St Louis, a ride from the airport to the hotel, Room for 2 nights at $100/night. (Split it with someone else attending and that’s $50/night!) Eat cheap while you’re there and you can get 2 days of intense professional development for next to nothing. Throw in the extra day of TackItOn sessions for just $500 and you get a complete trip of 3 days of training for a fraction of the cost of IBM Connect. Do whatever it takes to be there. When it comes to conferences outside of Lotusphere/IBM Connect, it doesn’t get any better than this. Did I mention many of the same speakers who presented at IBM Connect this year will be at IamLUG sharing all the now-released version of Notes 9 Social Edition?
Actually, there will be at least one new presenter: me. Yes, for the first time I will officially have my own microphone. In the past, you may have seen me at a mic in the audience at Lotusphere/Connect, asking pointed questions during the “Ask the Product Managers” session or in the “Ask the Developers” session when I was made an honorary developer and brought on stage, handed a laptop, and put to work. Well I finally decided to put my mouth where my blog is, to step up to the podium and give back to the community live and in person. I’m diving in with both feet too. I submitted two abstracts and they were BOTH accepted. This will be a true test of my Toastmasters training. If you’re in the audience, be kind, please.
Both sessions are on system administrator topics. The first session, “Be a Domino Detective: Hunting the Gremlins” is all about finding the problems hiding in your systems. I am so lucky to be sharing the stage with Kim Greene, a seasoned presenter! She will be hunting the gremlins that are constantly at work gnawing at your system’s performance while I will be hunting the ones that are quietly lying in the shadows, waiting for the worst time to jump out and bite you. I’m hoping this session will be both fun AND educational.
The second session, “What’s in it for me? How Your Life as an Administrator will Improve When Your Company Moves to the Cloud” is intended to provide a bit of insight into what you can expect as a system administrator if you migrate to IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. Really, the cloud can be your friend, not the end of your career. Speaking of friends, I will be co-presenting this session with my longtime friend and administrator of a broad range of systems, Greg Walrath. I look forward to seeing you in the audience!
This user group conference has grown dramatically in just 4 years. Most of the speakers you have seen many times before and know them for their expertise. IBM will even be there presenting an entire track on Social Business. This one is truly becoming one of the biggest and best. I am humbled to get a chance to share time at the podium among such rock stars in our profession. It will be fun! See you in St. Louis!
Grand Canyon: Final Preparations are complete!
Next Post: On the Road
Previous Post: The Story Begins
Thursday evening, October 20.
All the gear is laid out and ready to be packed into the truck. We’re finally ready to start the adventure.
Gathering the gear
Actually this story began October 10, 2008. I was leaving to go on my first Grand Canyon adventure when my 9-year-old daughter begged to go with me. “No honey” I said, “not this time. I need to check it out before I bring you. But I promise I will take you the next time I go.” I had been on the waiting list for 12 years before I got my 2008 permit. That was the last year before the National Park Service switched to a lottery system for awarding permits. (You can apply for a permit too. See the National Park Service website for details: http://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/whitewater-rafting.htm ) I had no idea I would win a permit through the lottery just 2 years later! Well, I promised Ariel I would take her the next time I went, so at age 12 she’s going to get the opportunity of a lifetime (and she will get out of school for 2 whole weeks!) I will be on the river for 3 weeks and away from home for a full month, but 2 weeks is long enough for her. She will take out near the halfway point, at Phantom Ranch, the only place where it is possible to hike out from the river once you’re in the Canyon. Her mother will take her home from there. I cleared it with the school the day after I won the permit. I will be working with her teachers to get as much of her work done beforehand as possible. The rest she will make up when she returns.
Though my October 25, 2011 launch date was awarded in February 2010, I couldn’t commit to going on this trip until April of this year. That left only 6 months to assemble a team of 14 more people (a permit is for 16 people), help them prepare for the trip, get the group equipment rented, the menu secured and a shuttle to/from the river with an outfitter, not to mention doing all the personal preparations for me AND Ariel.
The most important part of being a trip leader is selecting a good team. Having only 6 months to do it made building the team even more difficult. At least 6 people had committed to the trip only to have to cancel later. One person even had emergency surgery. The final members were added to the trip less than a month before the launch date. It’s going to be interesting. I would normally take more time and get to know everyone better before inviting them on an expedition like this. Group harmony and teamwork are critical to having a successful and enjoyable trip for everyone. Only one person from my first trip is able to go this time. No surprise. How many people can get 3+ weeks off from work, much less do it twice in 3 years? So I’m working with a whole new team. This time I am relying on the judgement of the members I already know to make good choices about the people they recommend. There was a lot of “well I have a friend who knows someone who might like to go…” But from the discussions I have had with everyone, I’m comfortable with the team.
It has been an intense 6 months, but I believe all of the planning and preparations are finally complete. The crew is set. The outfitter has received our final payment for the equipment rental (4 x 18′ rafts, kitchen equipment, groover, meals for 21 days for 16 people and other miscellaneous gear and shuttle service to/from the river.) The trip itinerary is complete with our target campsites and planned hikes while on the river. The emergency contact plan is set for all trip members. The truck is prepped and ready with a fresh oil change, new roof rack, and new stereo. Ariel’s gear is ready including new gaskets for her dry suit, a new sleeping bag, a hard case and a custom dry bag for her cello (yes her cello is going too!). I have a new dry box for my violin. My friend Steve, who plays violin for the Seattle Symphony and has rafted the Canyon 23 times(!) with a string quartet, even told me of all the best places to play our music, effectively an acoustical map of the Canyon. I borrowed a video camera (mine was damaged on the previous trip.) Logistics for hiking out to meet Ariel’s mother have been set. There will be no way to communicate with her once we set off from Lee’s Ferry until we are face-to-face at the South Rim trail head 9 days later. The refrigerator and pantry at home have been emptied of all perishable foods. I even got a haircut. There was much more to prepare the group and myself, but you get the idea. It’s not as simple as a weekend getaway with the wife and kids.
Tomorrow morning I will be giving a speech at Toastmasters, go to work to wrap up loose ends, then leave early to get Ariel after school and head out of town. Oh, wait. It’s 10:00 PM and I still have to load everything into the truck! Guess I’ll have to finish preparing for my speech while I load up. Tomorrow the rain is supposed to come. Looking forward to putting Seattle in the rear view mirror.
Loaded and ready to go!
Public speaking tip for presenters at Lotusphere and elsewhere
Eight months ago I joined Toastmasters. I will never be able to watch a Lotusphere session (or any other presentation) the same way again. Did you ever wonder what it’s like to present at Lotusphere? On the positive side it must be rewarding just to be selected. You’ve been chosen by IBM as one who stands out among your peers. On the other hand, giving a presentation is challenging and even more so when presenting somewhere like Lotusphere in front of your peers where you are expected to be the subject matter expert. More people fear public speaking than anything else, even more than dying. For most technology experts, their expertise lies in the technology, not in public speaking. They may give presentations just a few times a year. Even without the fear of public speaking, it is difficult to be good at it without frequent practice. Imagine if you only administered your servers or wrote code a few times each year? Quite a challenge. So as you watch their presentations, keep that in mind. It’s not easy.
On the other hand, if you find yourself speaking at Lotusphere or anywhere else for that matter, consider this: you’re already an expert at your subject matter. So if you’re trying to improve the quality of your presentation, you’ll probably get the biggest return on investment of your time by honing your communication skills rather than your topic competence. There are a few speakers out there like Chris Miller and Mat Newman, who have somehow mastered the techniques AND know what they’re talking about. But for the rest of us, it takes lots of practice and feedback. And I have stumbled upon what I think is the best venue for this. It’s Toastmasters. If a Toastmasters club meets somewhere near you, join it. Toastmasters is one of the very best paths to develop good communication skills that you will find. Toastmasters is an international non-profit organization of people who want to improve on their communication and leadership skills. It’s a fantastic way to minimize your weaknesses in public speaking in a positive, supportive, and fun environment. You will uncover things like
- How many times do you say ‘uh’, ‘um’, ‘so’, or ‘you know’ while giving even a short 5 minute presentation?
- Do you commit “death by Powerpoint” (or Symphony Presentations)?
- Do you ramble on without pauses for emphasis?
- Talk monotone without any inflection or energy in your voice?
- Are your slides packed with text and complex graphics?
- Do you read your slides to the audience?
- Do you use gestures and body language and make use of the whole stage or do you lock yourself in behind the security of the podium and stand motionless?
- Do you read from a script (e.g. Open General Session!) or worse, do you try to memorize your speech?
You get the idea. Whether you are currently a presenter or aspire to become one, until you have mastered all of the skills (and even the best speakers practice to improve), you should practice and get feedback from people who know the intricacies of public speaking and can help you can improve. (I’m not talking about the feedback forms at the end of the sessions. They mostly cover content, not delivery, and the observers are not watching with a critical eye for communication skills, they are there to learn the content.) Toastmasters is a great place to do this is.
I have been in Toastmasters for less than a year and while my peers in the club give me great praise and support, I learn every time I give a presentation or evaluate someone else giving theirs. If you think you’re good enough already, check out this list of famous people who are in Toastmasters.
The Notes Guy in Seattle 