When communicating, timing is truly everything.
When you read an article or a book, you come across many forms of punctuation" commas, periods, dashes, colons and semi-colons.
In oral communication, you don't have punctuation but you should. You don't have commas to signal a series, or periods to signal the end of a sentence.
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Bob Elliott of Boca Grande
All you have are pauses.
The length of the pause is determined by the kind of punctuation you would see in written communication.
Use a slight pause for commas, a little longer for periods and colons, and longer still for paragraphs.
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Editors' note: Bob Elliott, creator of the Boca Grande Camera club and board member of the Boca Grande Art Alliance, spent a career improving communications at large corporations such as Pfizer, Cigna and Westinghouse, where he witnessed many of the faux paus detailed in the book "Make Your Point," which he co-wrote with Kevin Carroll. As a communications consultant he developed relationships with top American companies such as General Electric, MasterCard and Wal-Mart and also worked with personalities such as model-actress Cindy Crawford and tennis star Jimmy Connors. The preceding was an excerpt from "Make Your Point,"which is available at amazon.com.
And really long pauses when the topic changes.
Let's say your talking with someone and you're reciting a series of three things, such as yesterday, today and tomorrow. In offering this orally, it should be: Yesterday (slight pause), today (slight pause) and tomorrow (slight pause).
Don't rush it. Take your time to make it work.
Pauses signifying commas, periods and dashes may be one second or less so longer pauses of two to four seconds should be used to signify a change of topic.
Here's an analogy. When you read a book, you'll notice when the chapter ends, there is a partial blank page or sometimes a full blank page. This gives the reader to regroup and refocus before moving on to a new idea.
Long pauses do the same thing for listeners when you change topics.
Pauses also allow a speaker to catch his or her breath. Pauses are not dead air. They are ways to punctuate your talk.
John Menzer, CEO of Wal-Mart International, said he learned the importance and acceptance of pauses while in Japan. An interpreter fed his speech to the audience. He was forced to speak one sentence at a time by necessity and then wait for the interpretation sentence by sentence,
It was then he found pauses can be effective.
Great speakers can mesmerize us and have us hang on every word as they manipulate us with their pauses and timing. As a colleague of ours once said: "I don't teach public speaking. I teach public pausing. Anybody can speak in public but it's really hard to pause in public."
Some of the best presenters sip water while they are speaking. This is not only to lubricate their vocal chords. It also forces them to pause.
Editors' note: Bob Elliott, creator of the Boca Grande Camera club and board member of the Boca Grande Art Alliance, spent a career improving communications at large corporations such as Pfizer, Cigna and Westinghouse, where he witnessed many of the faux paus detailed in the book "Make Your Point," which he co-wrote with Kevin Carroll. As a communications consultant he developed relationships with top American companies such as General Electric, MasterCard and Wal-Mart and also worked with personalities such as model-actress Cindy Crawford and tennis star Jimmy Connors. The preceding was an excerpt from "Make Your Point,"which is available at amazon.com.
