You will also find that they develop a confidence in you when they can see that you are bold enough to hold their attention for those few moments.  Each time you pause, you are also giving yourself time to think through your next point. Your audience will feel and appreciate that you are able to manage their attention and understand their needs.

For your pauses to be even more effective, you should look your audience in the eye as if to say, “Are you with me so far?” By doing so, your presentation becomes a two-way traffic instead of one-man talking to himself. 

The same way. 

When you advance from one slide to the next, it is very important that you pause in between. The greater the amount of information on the new slide, the longer your pause should be.

I have often tried this technique and it always works for me. Conversely, whenever I dive into a new slide without pausing, I find the audience is not with me. Why is this so?

This happens because they are still grappling with the new information that is displayed on the screen. And if you, like many others out there, love to display your entire four pointers at one go, then you find yourself doing somersaults to draw back their attention.  Remember, your must never display all your points at one go.

It will be like that sip from a fire hydrant. Wet, overwhelming and unpleasant.  Always use the “On-click” feature in PowerPoint’s animation section to hand hold your audience point by point. When you do this, they will walk away with a better understanding of your presentation.

So there you go. Remember to make those pauses and give your audience a time to reflect.  You can watch a demonstration of what I have shared here with you on YouTube. Just click here.

Till our next newsletter,
Kelvin Lee