By Greg Dardis / Guest Editorial
It was a moment so painful that it sticks in my mind, even though it happened more than two years ago. If you were watching, chances are you remember it, too: Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s famous gaffe during a November 2011 debate among Republican presidential candidates.
“It’s three agencies of government when I get [to the White House] that are gone,” he said, “commerce, education, and, the, uh, what’s the third one, let’s see…”
Other candidates tried to help, injecting their ideas. He tried again – twice – to list the third agency. In the end he couldn’t.
“Sorry,” he said. “Oops.”
At one point Perry was considered a Republican front-runner, but this memory lapse struck a nail in his campaign’s coffin. A former campaign aide compared it to an earthquake that just kept going. Perry himself has described it a bit more aptly: a “brain fart.”
At Dardis, we like to avoid such self-styled cognitive misfirings.
But they do happen, and we know it. We also know speakers can get caught off-guard or become distracted and lose their train of thought.
Fear not. There’s a solution. We call it the “purposeful pause,” and it’s useful beyond moments of temporary forgetfulness. At its essence, it’s a pause that gives you, the speaker, time to think, recalibrate your pace and choose your words. It also may be one of the most underutilized weapons in a speaker’s arsenal. Using them effectively is the mark of a true professional.
Practice in using purposeful pauses is essential for extemporaneous speaking, such as in a debate or an interview, where you may have some responses at the ready but need to be prepared for anything. Gov. Perry’s problem was that he, upon forgetting his point, continued to speak, shoving embarrassing rambling into the void. If he had taken a moment to stop speaking and collect his thoughts, the catastrophe might have been avoided.
Speakers, it’s OK – even beneficial – for you to pause before answering a question, or if you find yourself starting to lose control of your response.
A purposeful pause tells your audience – whether it be one or one million – that you’re contemplative, deliberate and controlled.
Interviewers don’t actually expect you to launch into an answer immediately, points out Maria Volante, the senior vice president at Dardis Inc. “They want to see you think about it,” she tells our clients. “It also makes them feel that they’ve asked you a good question.”
When Maria coaches, she emphasizes that speakers have more time than they realize. What may seem like five minutes to the speaker is actually only five seconds to the audience – and the stop clock. You can rarely make a mistake with a pause. The true mistake is to open your mouth prematurely.
Many people are uncomfortable with silence and will blather to avoid it. You should not be one of them, at a networking event, cocktail party or job interview. Pause and think rather than speak and regret.
Think of it as that moment where the Olympic skier stands at the hilltop, preparing for her run. There’s a moment where she aligns her body, collects herself and focuses on the feat. Then she pushes off.
That’s her purposeful pause.
Note that the purposeful pause is different than the “pregnant pause.” The first implies thoughtfulness; the second is an often comedic effect where the speaker pauses right before something important for added hilarity or drama. That’s not what we’re aiming for, although purposeful pauses can increase the drama in a prepared speech. Think of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech or President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”). Both are rife with pauses. They allow their sentences to sink into the listener, one by one, so they can be easily understood and digested.
Ultimately, mastery of the purposeful pause takes discipline, and discipline is achieved through practice.
When it comes to speeches, heed the words of a Roman rhetorician during the time of Caesar Augustus: “Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.”
Greg Dardis is the CEO of Dardis Inc., located at 2403 Muddy Creek Lane in Coralville. For more information, visit www.dardisinc.com.
