Improve Your Public Speaking by avoiding annoying vocal mannerisms
Annoying mannerisms can be a real turn off to audiences no matter how good your content. Here are some pointers on how to recognise and avoid two of the worst….
I was listening to presenter this morning and what they had to say was really good. The only problem was that they had the irritating habit of saying “is this making sense?” at the end of EVERY chunk of content. I was tempted to count how many times they repeated this phrase but I am afraid I lost count!
Their intention was sound, to check if what they were saying was being understood, but the way they did it, drove some, if not all of us, to distraction! All he needed to do was have a range of different ways to ask the same thing – Is this making sense? How am I doing so far? Are you following me? Are you with me? etc.
2) Uhm’s and err’s
Everybody uses these now and again but when they become to frequent ermm, like at the end of every sentence, ermm, they can get, ermm, how shall I put it?ermm, just a tiny bit irritating!
Many of us are not conscious that were are doing this until somebody else points it out. It’s an unconscious habit where our brain fills the silences between ideas with a filler sound or word, OK?
The good news is that, for most of us it is a simple matter to correct.
Step 1: Notice when you do it – awareness is the key to changing the behaviour
Step 2: Don’t beat yourself up when you do notice it, instead praise yourself for noticing . Once you notice it you can do something about it, right?
Step3: Deliberately aim to replace the filler sound with a pause or a silence instead. The earlier you start to catch yourself the easier it gets to “edit out the uhm” and replace it with a silence instead.
I hope these tips help you become an even more compelling presenter. If you want to learn more, why not contact me at gmeikle@inter-activ.co.uk and I’ll be happy to correspond with you over the phone (my Skype identity is gmeikle) or by email.
Regards
Gavin Meikle
