In CANADIAN PUBLIC SPEAKING by Melanie Novis, 2003

I want to share a secret with you… my biggest fear in public speaking: something I flee like a postman from an angry dog, like a mischievous child from a swarm of bees, like a tourist in Pamplona from the charging bulls, like a mouse from a cat, like a cat from a dog, like a fly from a frog. (Deep breath.) I think you know what it is … the pause.

 

I know the pause is important, even crucial. It’s just when I’m speaking that I forget.  

 

Listen to a speech by a great speaker and notice the pause.  John F. Kennedy didn’t say, “My fellow Americans ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”. He said, “My fellow Americans (pause), ask not  (pause) what your country can do for you (pause) but what you (pause) can do for your country.”

 

That’s four pauses. It takes me three speeches to accumulate that number of pauses.

 

The irony of public speaking is that to speak well you have to stop speaking. Not forever but long enough to catch your breath and let your audience catch its breath. When I started as an articling student I was sent to a hearing. All I had to say was “Your honour, we consent to the adjournment.” I practiced this line carefully on the way to court but when my turn to speak came, I couldn’t get out a single word. It was all pause. Finally, the judge asked if we consented and I nodded. But in general, you should err on the side of a longer pause than you might think necessary.

 

The pause is to speaking what the sauce is to pasta. Without it you are just eating noodles.

 

Let your words linger in the air like the aroma of a fine dish or like a pleasant ocean breeze billowing in the curtains of a Mediterranean villa on a hot summer day.

 

The pause gives your audience time not only to hear your words but to listen to them, to think about them. The pause is to your speech what digestion is to your meal. Without it your audience might as well be a group of boa constrictors swallowing a lamb.     

 

 Secondly, the pause tells your audience your speech is worth listening to … that you have something important to say.

 

And finally, the pause makes your speech sound natural … like you are speaking to a group of close friends. So use the pause and sound natural — like you’re just talking with your best buddy, even though 300 people are analyzing whether your tie goes with your shirt. Its like the ads for good makeup — you have to put it on to look natural.

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The pause is so important I give it a separate category in public speaking. It’s the third “P” in preparation, presentation, … pause.

 

Preparation comes first. No great speaker routinely speaks off the cuff. When Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial he had meticulously chosen his words and practiced them on many audiences.

 

Presentation is how you look, how you sound, how you act. It’s the only thing some people pay any attention to. 

 

But the pause, the gap, is what brings it all together. It is the difference between talking to people and communicating with individuals in your audience.

 

I am not the only one who is stingy with pauses. James Hume in his book on public speaking says some people rush through speeches like they are running a gauntlet of swords on a pirate ship.

 

This analogy gave me an idea. When I am running the gauntlet on the pirate ship I will stop to engage one of the pirates in battle. After a brief struggle I will run my sword through the murderous villain’s belly, throw him overboard … and continue my speech. No one needs to know what I am doing during the pause. 

 

There are two reasons why I so fear the pause.

 

The first reason I fear the pause has to do with divine retribution. During most of my life it was during the lull of a pause that I fell asleep … during university lectures, mass at church, even during conversations. My reputation for dozing was so famous that it became the subject of intense wagering among my classmates. In one class another student routinely came late and a game was devised where my classmates bet on whether I would fall asleep before the other student arrived.

 

I no longer fall asleep in class. Probably because after decades of snoozing, I am well rested. But I do fear people will doze off during my pauses, so I rush though my speeches.

 

The second reason is a bit more complicated.

 

You’ve heard that one of the ways people try to feel comfortable as speakers is by imagining that their audience is naked. It’s a very Freudian technique. You just want everyone dressed like you feel. 

 

You feel terribly vulnerable … standing up there all alone. Whatever insecurities you have are amplified. I’m too short, too skinny or too fat, not good-looking, not smart. … 

 

You are facing the audience but you are also facing yourself.

 

You heard in the introduction about my work in Guatemala. Some of our trips were physically challenging; sometimes there was risk involved. But frankly, those dangers were nothing compared to the risks inherent in public speaking. You see, the dangers I faced there were definable, external dangers. It was 25 kilometres to the next village: you made it or you didn’t.

 

In the same way, the dangers the audience poses are fairly easy to calculate. Some won’t care what you have to say, some are preoccupied with family issues, some will dislike you … But how we react is harder to deal with, harder to control, and harder to overcome. That’s probably why studies show people fear death less than public speaking. Death is more easily measured — about 6’ feet under for most of us — than public speaking.  

 

I rush through my speeches and avoid the pause because I fear people will get bored — that I have nothing to say. That’s my insecurity. Others fidget, umm, their heart races, they sweat … perhaps because they doubt themselves or are convinced they will fail…

 

When you were three years old you could captivate any audience just by saying the dumbest things. And you weren’t nervous. So you must have learned the fear along the way. In part, public speaking teaches us how to mask those insecurities. We learn techniques … bite your tongue if your mouth gets dry, breathe deeply, fight pirates…

 

Once when I was playing ice hockey I said to a friend, “I love playing hockey because I can forget all my problems”. He replied in a very paternal voice: “Wouldn’t it be better to deal with your problems?”

 

I suspect most of us are here not only because we want to learn the techniques of effective public speaking to deal with what’s out there … but also because we are willing to deal with what’s in here. It has been a long journey. 

 

We the brave … the few who have faced our fear … our fears. Our reward is the ability to move men and women to donate money for a good cause, to move men and women to change their ways and their ideas, even to move men and women … to move mountains. For good or for evil, great speakers have always had the power to change the world. This, my adventurous friends, is the journey we have started and the power that lies ahead.