Savor Silence
Have you ever watched a seemingly interesting and informative presentation and felt like you were missing something…or everything? Just as you were about to understand a concept…click…on to the next one?
I recently sat through a series of team presentations on various projects. Nice, well laid out and easy-to-follow slides. Results clearly explained. I was learning quite a bit about a variety of interesting topics. Until, during each presentation, I wasn’t.
Clearly lots of time and effort had been spent on the teams’ work and the presentations describing it. Hardly any effort had been put into learning and practicing how to deliver an excellent presentation. The plan seemed to be to get through it as fast as possible. I struggled to keep up.
We’ve all seen this many times. Lots of good work ruined by an inability to appreciate the needs of those listening…or to spend the time gaining the skill and putting in the practice to meet these needs.
It happens often. Great ideas sabotaged by poor presentation.
Most of us need some time to absorb what we’re seeing and hearing, particularly when it comes to business and other complicated presentations. We need a brief silence between points to consider for a moment what was said. Racing through a slide or talk with nary a pause defeats the purpose—to share information in an understandable and usable way.
Why do presenters do this? Because they fear silence. They haven’t learned that silence is powerful, that a pause will accentuate a point; a pause will give the audience time to catch up or simply to finish reading the slide. And most importantly, pausing will give your listeners a chance to think about and internalize what you said.
We can only take in so much before our brains are overloaded. We need silence in order to consolidate information and be ready for what comes next.
Use silence to highlight something particularly important you want your listeners to consider. Instead of burying a critical idea in the middle of an unending stream of words, surround it with silence. Highlight it. Make it more powerful.
Research shows that our short-term memory only holds a few pieces of information. We need silence to clear the brain for what’s coming next.
It’s hard to be silent when speaking. Adrenaline kicks in and your mouth races.
Silence is a learned skill. It doesn’t come easy. Exceptional speakers have worked hard to learn how to use it as well as they do. It’s often the most meaningful and powerful aspect of their presentation.
Give your words more power.
Don’t fear silence.
Pause.