Hi everyone I have a question. I recently started a business procuring joint venture partnerships that requires a good deal of public speaking. I have been working on my presentation by recording myself doing the presentations and playing them back to see what I can improve on.
At first I had a lot of pausers in my speech. Full of Ums, ahs, and and, and such. I've gotten rid of the pausers but now it comes across as speech disfluency. Like there are a lot of short silences or holes in my speech where these pausers used to be and it is very hard to listen to. I need to fix this because there is a lot at stake in these meetings. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a term for it that I can ask about from a speaking coach?
Pauses
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by Richard@DecisionSkills » Mon Jul 03, 2017 2:59 am
All that means is you are not yet comfortable with the material. Keep practicing, keep repeating the material.
Forget about the horrible message, but do you know why Hitler was such a phenomenal speaker? Because he only gave three speeches, repeatedly. Like most politicians, he knew his message so well, inside and out that having delivered the same three speeches again and again and again he didn't have any issue with needing to pause and think about what he was going to say next.
One suggestion is to write a list of possible questions from your target audience. Practice responding to those questions. This will also help when delivering the initial pitch.
Forget about the horrible message, but do you know why Hitler was such a phenomenal speaker? Because he only gave three speeches, repeatedly. Like most politicians, he knew his message so well, inside and out that having delivered the same three speeches again and again and again he didn't have any issue with needing to pause and think about what he was going to say next.
One suggestion is to write a list of possible questions from your target audience. Practice responding to those questions. This will also help when delivering the initial pitch.
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by Jeffrei » Sat Jan 20, 2018 4:50 pm
Pauses actually aren't a bad thing. It's just miss use, over use, or no use that is a killer. Strategic pauses can be used to add emphasis, give your audience time to think, and produce a more natural speaking style. I'd recommend inserting some intentional pauses, and varying speech patterns/inflections.
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