Eliminating Distractions from Your Speaking Style
(Author’s Note: We are coming back to a topic we covered recently, because the reaction to it was so strong. And the most common question the previous post spurred was some version of “what can I do to limit my distractions?” So here we are again…)
Have you ever listened to that person who says something like “um” over and over and over? After a while, all you hear are the “ums.”
How about the person who says “like,” or “you know?” Hard to listen to that.
How about the person who qualifies everything they say with a “sort of” or a “kind of” or a “pretty much”? You’re never quite sure what they are confident about, because they hedge everything.
How about the person who speaks really fast, and never seems to take a breath? If there was a stenographer in the room, the dictation would include zero periods, because the speaker never actually stops speaking, ever… exhausting.
How about the person whose voice is so monotone that you literally can’t keep your eyes open. Their voice is like taking a sleeping pill.
We all hate these speech patterns. But do any of these apply to you? Are you sure?
Anything that distracts your audience from actually listening to, and hearing, your message, is a bad thing. The best speakers do lots of things well. But chief among them is that their speaking style doesn’t get in the way.
So how do make these kind of changes? There are two ways to attack the problem:
When someone else listens to you, ask them this question: “Is there anything in my speaking style that you don’t like or that distracts you?” And if the person is going to be honest with you, you’ll get some great feedback.
Alternatively, you could simply record yourself when you speak, and ask yourself the same question. Every smart phone has a voice recorder built in. Use it.
The goal with either path is to train your brain to hear your own distractions in real time. Because once you start to hear them yourself, now you have a hope of correcting them. When we allow these distracting speech patterns to exist in our subconscious, then there is little hope anything will change. We have to bring them forward into our conscious brain. Then, and only then, can we hope to make ourself less distracting.
Once you start to hear your own distractions, and in a way, once you start to become annoyed by them, then it becomes possible to self-coach these behaviors out of your pattern.
Good luck!
