The Paradox of Filler Words
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Situational Social Anxiety and how to overcome your speech problems.
If you want to sound as professional and authoritative as possible, you have to stop using filler words. They destroy your credibility.
“Uh”, “um”, and “like” are killers. They make us sound like we don’t know what we’re talking about. This lowers our authority and ruins our chances at establishing thought leadership. We suddenly become the person who is “all style and no substance”.
Often, there is a paradox at play. For many people, they use filler words in certain situations or with particular people.
I do this all the time. When I put neck out and discuss something I’m passionate about, something I’m learning, or speak during a meetings at work, they fly out of my mouth. Sometimes it feels like every third word is a filler word, even if it isn’t. I get cold-sweats and start shaking unconsciously.
All of this happens, and I get embarrassed cause I am a professional communicator.
Still, it doesn’t happen all the time. When discussing something with my friends, I don’t have this problem. Why is this?
I pin it down to social anxiety. I am a very reserved person. I prefer to analyze and observe, strategize, then discuss findings, recommendations, and build an action plan with a small group of people.
I am working on improving my speech communication to eliminate filler words, and decrease my social anxiety. In fact, I found three things that have helped me in the past, and could help you as well:
Speak every word consciously and with purpose.
Don’t let your brain go on autopilot, especially if you have poor speech habits. Make sure your brain isn’t going faster than your mouth.
To do this, you need to slow down. At first, it will seem insanely boring and you may even bore your audience.
After actively practicing and spending time working on eliminating your bad habits, those filler words will go away for the most part. This will improve your confidence and help with your social anxiety as well.
Gain more exposure to your anxiety.
In order to overcome your anxiety, try exposing yourself to your fear as much as you can.
There aren’t always opportunities to speak up and present to a decent sized group of people, even at the executive level. So, try taking a public speaking course at a local college, or join toastmasters.
This will expose you to speaking a lot, and people will help you hold your speech mistakes accountable. They will analyze your speech and call you out if you use a lot of filler words. From there, you can work on fixing those mistakes through practicing on your own and in your other speeches.
Study, Study, Study your craft
The more you know about your profession, the higher your confidence will be when you speak about it. When I have anxiety while speaking, it is usually because I am still learning something and don’t feel like I can speak authoritatively on the subject. So I use my free-time to read and write about whatever I am learning.
The only way to get passed ignorance is to study hard.
By doing these three things, your problem won’t be completely fixed. Mine still isn’t. I need to build relationships with those I am talking to so I am comfortable opening up and speaking authoritatively. But I practice, I study, and I improve everyday, and you will too.
