Real. Smart. Now.

Pace has been my major concern with speakers for years. Whenever
I work with people on presentations, a significant aspect that always
needs work is speaking slower.

I’m about to tell you something that will feel completely weird
to begin with, but it’s the best piece of advice I can give you
from coaching more than 3000 presentations.

I think people talk too fast because:

~ they have adrenalin flooding their system
~ they’re scared of boring people
~ they’ve heard what they’re saying before

Plus it takes some work to be able to calibrate how fast you’re
talking, and then you need to know how to actually slow down
in the heat of the moment.

Up until a couple of days ago, my best advice was to speak so
slowly you can’t believe you’re not boring people.

Well, I have something both more useful and more accurate.

My advice now is: Slow down until you can hear each individual
word that you’re saying.

I’ll say that again.

Slow down. Until you can hear.
Each. Individual. Word.
That.
You’re.
Saying.

This serves a purpose for you and a purpose for us.

For you, speaking slower than you think means you can make
sensible editing choices as you’re going along, instead of
gabbling or uhmming and erring. In addition, powerful people take
their time, so you taking your time multiplies your credibility
by 5000. Or so.

For us, your listeners, we’ve never heard what you’re saying
before, so speaking slower than *we’re* thinking gives us time to
digest what you’re saying.

Just this one practice can radically change your relationship
to presenting.

It’ll also make you stand out as someone who is interesting and
easy to listen to.

All for something so simple, huh?

Caveat: Don’t experiment with this too much at home. It’ll drive
your family nuts. Think meetings, presentations, that kind
of thing…