Speed Trap

You can talk faster than an audience can listen. I attended a large birthday celebration at which several people spoke. One man took the microphone to relate some amusing anecdotes about the birthday person. What I could catch was funny. The problem was that it all went by so fast that I missed a lot of it.

Even if the speaker’s diction is clear (which it often isn’t when people speak quickly) effective speaking takes time. The listener’s brain must register sound waves, decode them into discernable sounds, piece together those sounds into words and then weave the words together to create understandable concepts. Yes, it only takes a split second, but it does take time. Your listeners want to catch what you are saying. They want to travel with you mentally, not have to run to keep up.

In my last article, I talked about enjoying the pauses, giving yourself a moment of silence in which to think without filling in with “um” or “you know”. Pauses benefit the audience, too, because that’s when they have time to absorb what has been said. If you are someone who speaks quickly, pauses are even more important. They give your listener’s brain time to catch up. Speeding ahead with no pauses leaves your audience in the dust, and they stop listening.

The “talking too fast” villain is usually nervousness, isn’t it? The presence of adrenaline, the “fight or flight” hormone, in your bloodstream, speeds up your heart rate. Unfortunately it can also speed up your mouth. That’s because it slows down your perception of time. Everything seems to be moving in slow-motion. I fell off a horse once, and the jolt of adrenaline as I felt myself slipping gave me time to think, quite calmly, “This can’t be happening to me!” before I hit the ground. What seemed slow to me was actually happening very fast. So it is with speech.

Another fast-talking villain is familiarity. We know what we’re saying, so it sounds clear enough to us, and we just rattle it out. I find this is particularly the case when people tell me their name, either in person or on the phone. They know their name; they’ve said it a million times. But I don’t know it. For me, it’s new information. If it comes at me too fast and all run together, I miss it.

Humour, especially, requires pacing, pauses in significant places. If you are telling an amusing anecdote, don’t be in a rush. Give your audience time to enjoy it, and the humour will come through.

A speaker must connect emotionally with the audience for their ideas to be heard and considered. Without that connection, the path to the listeners’ thinking mind is short-circuited and their attention wanders. Emotional connection takes a little time. If the words are going by in a blur, it simply doesn’t have time to happen.

Those who say, “I just get nervous. I can’t help talking fast,” are unwittingly making their own concerns more important than those of their audience. You need not be a victim of habit.  If your primary interest is the quality of your audience’s experience, you will be motivated to make whatever changes you need to slow yourself down a bit. Besides, it’s enlightened self-interest. You want them to understand you!

My first strategy, always, when I feel a build-up of adrenaline, is to slow down. Move slower, walk slower, eat slower, talk slower. It calms me and brings my perception of time back into perspective. Another strategy is to breathe slowly and deeply. If you talk fast, when you pause for breath, take the time to inhale fully before you resume speaking. Do it consciously. Part of the problem with people who speak too quickly is that they are not aware that they are doing it. Listen to yourself. Ask for feedback from friends – people who will be lovingly honest, not just flatter you. If you are conscious of what you are doing, you are empowered to change it. It does take practice, but you don’t have to get caught in the speed trap.