How To Have Your Message Land

You’ve spent ages doing your research, getting all your facts and figures together, waiting for your opportunity to pitch your idea to your boss, or at a meeting. The moment arrives, you do your thing, but don’t feel that your idea has landed. Why?

There’s nothing wrong with your idea.

There’s nothing wrong with your facts and figures.

You spoke confidently.

So why didn’t it land?

Whether I’m training people on how to perform at interview, or conducting WomanSpeak training to help women deliver their message powerfully, one of the simplest strategies to employ is:

The power of the ………… pause.

Quite often we’re so enthused about delivering all of the important information we’ve been researching over many hours, days or weeks, that we tend to speak continuously, bombarding people with quality information and ideas, driven by energy, passion and excitement. However, imagine being on the receiving end of this information. These people are quite often hearing all of these facts for the first time and need time to absorb what you are saying. They’re listening, analysing, deciding and formulating questions all at the same time. The rate of absorbing information is much slower than the rate of you delivering it. We need to give people time to assimilate what we’ve said. Pausing after statements is a key way to enable this to happen. We use pauses as punctuation. Silence shows strength, it shows confidence. It allows what you say to land.

So don’t be disheartened and think you’re missing the mark, not important enough to be heard, not valued. It might just be in your delivery. I’ve noticed that since I’ve incorporated the power of the pause in my training and presentations, although I’m saying the same message, I’m receiving more comments about what I’m saying, and what people are getting out of it, and better feedback about the quality of my delivery.

One tip, when you first start to incorporate this technique, you might feel that a few seconds pause may feel uncomfortable, but you will soon notice that you start to feel more powerful during your presentation, more relaxed and that your thoughts will flow more readily.