Pause with purpose to add meaning, clarity and impact to your speeches and presentations. In the words of Mark Twain: “The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”

I love a good pause and there are many to choose from, each with its own particular purpose and impact.

Opening pause

This is my favourite and brings a number of important benefits:

First, saying nothing is attention grabbing, it won’t be long before your audience realises no one is talking and will stop what they are doing or thinking about and focus on you. Second, and a related benefit, your silence will pique their curiosity and make them wonder what will happen next. Third, you have the silent time to calm yourself, take a few deep breaths and ready yourself to speak. Fourth, this opening time allows you to gauge the room and get a sense of how the audience is feeling and whether you need to make any adjustments to, for instance, energy levels, engagement, interaction, etc.

To maximise the impact of the opening pause, it needs to last at least five seconds and be delivered with confidence, including a solid and stable stance and good eye contact with your listeners/audience.

Filler-free pause

Er, um, like and other little sounds that can creep into our speech, especially when we are nervous. The odd one here and there gives a sense of spontaneity and a relaxed, conversational style. However, too many can be annoying and even distract an audience from listening to what you have to say.

Taking a small breath will help you reduce the ers and ums and come across with greater clarity and confidence.

Creative pause

If you invite the audience to imagine, reflect, picture or create an image or situation, give them time to do that. They will conjure up their version of what you are asking them to imagine/picture, etc. This is not only much more vivid than you describing in great detail a scene from your life, but it also enables people to join you in your story, using their frameworks and experiences.

Reflective pause

When you are presenting some difficult or unfamiliar ideas, give your audience time to absorb what you have said. In similar vein, if you ask them a question (even a rhetorical question) or ask them to think about something, such as a choice, give them time to consider and decide where they stand.

Punchline pause

Pauses are an essential part of creating humour in a speech. This is especially the case with humour built on misdirection. This involves telling a joke, story or anecdote in a way that misdirects your audience to anticipate the next line. While you pause they complete the joke as they expect it to end. You then deliver a different outcome, surprising the audience and (hopefully) making them laugh. Without the pause, the listener doesn’t have time to consider what they expect you to say and the humorous moment is lost.

Dramatic pause

This is especially powerful in storytelling. By pausing, you heighten the tension in your story and keep your listeners fully engaged as they long to hear the outcome.

And, critically, don’t forget to remain silent while your audience laughs. If you cut them off by speaking over the laughter, the chances are that they won’t laugh again and you will have severed a compelling connection.

Punctuation pause

When you write, you punctuate with commas, full stops, etc. This invisible punctuation needs to be audible when we speak otherwise we can sound as if our words are running away with us. Some short pauses add to the clarity and control of your narrative.

Emphatic pause

If you want to bring some additional weight or gravitas to a word, phrase or point, pause and then speak at a lower pitch and slower pace. The silence signals the start of something different and the change in pitch and pace indicates the nature of the differentiation.

Word-congruent pause

Very similar to an emphatic pause, congruency uses pauses to reinforce words. For instance, “Hesitatingly [breathe], he moved forward” or “Wracked with pain, she paused [breathe] …” before continuing to speak.

Show-me pause

A picture paints a thousand words. As the speaker, you can become the picture and use facial expression to show your audience exactly how you feel about something. A pause while you show them is generally far more evocative and memorable than using narrative to describe the feeling.

Visual aids pause

For most of us, vision is our primary sense. This means that if you put up slides or other visual aids, we are more likely to look or read than to listen. As such, if you speak at this time, your words will almost certainly fall on deaf ears. Keep silent while people absorb the visuals and then continue with what you have to say.

Pause for thought

This is a moment you take to think about what you want to say when you find yourself faced with impromptu questions, eg Q&A, panels, job interviews, untabled questions in a meeting, etc. By pausing, you buy yourself some time to think about what you want to say and how you want to say it.

Petrified pause

So many ways to pause with purpose, but there is one that you don’t want in your speeches or presentations and that’s the petrified pause. Sometimes, when we’re really nervous, we can find our brain freezing and we simply can’t think what to say. Anxiously pausing and searching for words conveys a lack of confidence and perhaps a lack of preparation as well. In this situation, it is important to do some work on managing your nerves so that they generate positive energy for your talk.

Fortunately, pausing with purpose is generally powerful and positively impacts your speeches and presentations. The challenge is to deliver these pauses.

Practise pausing

When we are nervous, we tend to speak too quickly and pauses simply don’t happen. We need to get comfortable with using them. What feels like eternity from your standpoint in front of an audience, feels like no time at all to everyone else in the room.

When you are preparing and practising a speech or presentation, try to insert pauses and the appropriate length for each one. When you pause, count the number of seconds you have allowed. Record yourself and play back to see how long those silences really sound. Could some of them be longer to achieve their purpose? With practise, you will come to enjoy the impact of pausing with purpose.