Three benefits of pauses that will improve our presentation skills

“The most precious things in speech are pauses. ”
— Sir Ralph Richardson

Most of us do not pause enough when we speak. It might be due to various reasons: either we’re uncomfortable with the silence or we get nervous and speak too quickly. When we are anxious, we increase our rate of speech and speak faster than normal.
By not pausing, we also reduce the clarity of our message because we don’t give people time to absorb what we just said. When we pause, we give people time to process what we are saying.

If we don’t pause while we are speaking, people don’t really comprehend what we say because they don’t get any time to process the message. As a result, they don’t understand what happened while somebody spoke without pausing.

Here are three benefits of pauses that will improve how you come across in your presentation!

1. Eliminates filler words: Filler words like uums and aahs reduce your credibility, authority, and influence over other people.

2. Time to the audience: By pausing, you give people time to process what we say.

3. Time for self: Pausing also gives time to the speaker to gather information and speak confidently.

At Chatterbox, we make our students practice pause while speaking, using various techniques. We teach our students to watch the audience and find out whether the audience is processing what they are saying or not. We teach them how to slow down while responding to others. Most importantly we teach them strategies to pause effectively while delivering speeches.