In my time coaching presenters and speakers, I've observed that one of the characteristics of nervous performers is their collective fear of silence: it seems to be regarded as something bad and that as a speaker they ought to be doing just that and if they're not, then they're somehow short-changing their audience.

It's at this point I draw to their attention that I prefer not to use the word "speaker" - sure, I know the term has almost universal acceptance and so I'm "swimming upstream" on this one, but the point I want make is that our job (as either speaker, presenter, trainer, teacher or lecturer) is to perform a piece of educational theatre and in theatre we find humour, drama, tragedy, menace, relief, amusement - and we also find points of (dramatic) silence.

For us as human beings to take a message on board, the message has to be heard, then decoded and then assigned some significance.  Silence is a wonderful punctuator and can help us hugely in the decoding process.

Think of it as giving our ears time to smell the roses...