Pregnant Pause.

A silence, a crystallistion of thought, a moment, a reflection, a pause filled with delicious anticipation of the next word or insight has given way to fillers in today's speech vocabulary and terminally haunts elocution experts of yesteryear as people rabbit on, rather than take a breath. I listen to industry leaders, politicians, entertainers and the odd footballer and it is rare I come away remembering more than "in between" words repeated ad nauseam connecting what should be salient messages and intelligent insights.

"You know", "ah", "like", "er", "right" and the always reliable, tried and true ubiquitous "um" are go to words for speakers waiting for their mouths to catch up with their brains, or vice versa, depending on how many goals they've just scored. Such words, grunts and unintelligible sounds, used to link thoughts and ideas, were once the realm of first time speech givers but have become the norm as communication escalates via the new media outlets. It was not unheard of, for people to fear a speech more than death and sometimes listening to bad speeches was close to dying as "ums" outnumber real words.

The considered and practiced speech or presentation has long gone the way of the lectern, as cordless mikes give people room to roam and ruminate on their favourite subjects, while mangling the "King's English". As hard as it is to shut people up, on Youtube or countless web avenues, the distraction of "disfluencies", the "ums", only end up discrediting and highlighting the lack of preparation of a speakers.

Those little, one syllable words show volumes about the insecurities and concerns speakers have, as well as communicating they have not taken the audience seriously and practiced before stepping on stage. Even if speakers are experts in their field, the "ums"and "ahs" bring forth a mediocrity of knowledge and insecurities that will not endear you to your audience. Many speech experts (have they ever "ummed"?) see these speech hesitations as lack of self confidence and sincerity and consider them a virus ruining speech at all levels.

The challenges seem insurmountable to many but there is a sure save answer to all the concerns bought forward by the disfluencies and hesitation trapdoors, stop talking. For some this is the complete answer, but for those that have to get up on stage, bring forth your inner Al Pacino or Meryl Streep and use silence rather than the ubiquitous "ah" to bring your audience forward in their seats, while you gather your thoughts for the next intelligent insight that will have them clapping at the end.

The pregnant pause, long disparaged and little used, is seeing a revival of sorts but requires a strong backbone as most speakers don't operate well in a vacuum and it's easy to insert a quick "um" into a speech to cover the overwhelming and crushing silence. So next time, think about drawing a breathe before opening your mouth and setting forth on the good ship "listen to me". Brings new meaning to "grow a spine".

After all, like, ummm, ahhh, you know, how hard, is, ahhh, talking, right?