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If you want to be more articulate, choosing your words more precisely, enunciating more clearly and avoiding fillers like “um,” put a wine cork in your mouth while speaking or borrow some Lego. Not in the office, of course, but at home, when practising.
Most of us would think the key to overcoming this difficulty would be to simply be careful, concentrating on avoiding the stumble. But communications coach Michael Chad Hoeppner says if you – or someone else, coaching you – plants a notion like “don’t say um” in your mind, you will likely say it more frequently. You need a work-around. That’s where Lego, the wine cork or letting your fingers walk slowly across a desk comes in.
“Speaking is a skill. It can be learned, practised and improved. Just like a pianist learning a new fingering for a difficult run of notes or a chef learning how to caramelize a sauce,” he writes in his book, Don’t say Um.
Spoken communications can be broken down into content and delivery. We fuss about content, but Mr. Hoeppner argues how you say something matters more and is also the fastest and more memorable way to improve your spoken communications. Improving fluency, slowing your delivery, replacing your quivering voice with resonance and tackling other foibles can power you and your ideas ahead.
If you want to be more concise – better distilling the essence of your ideas – ask a child if you can borrow some Lego pieces. Pick a topic to practise, hold one Lego piece in your hand, and then speak the first thought that comes to mind – effectively your first sentence, although we speak in thoughts not sentences – and then place the Lego on a table. Pick up the next Lego piece, hold it in the air, speak your next thought and click the Lego pieces together.
The exercise, which is kinaesthetic, slows you down. Instead of rambling through a torrent of ideas that come to mind, it forces you to think more carefully. It might lead you to pause more, eliminate filler words, improve your structure and end your sentences with more finality. It helps make you more concise, and over time, the practice will change your delivery at work he insists.
Within each thought, of course, are words and you want to be more linguistically precise. This isn’t about having a more extensive vocabulary, but of choosing your words with care rather than rambling, backtracking and using lots of filler words.
He stresses there are filler words and filler sounds. The sounds are uh, um, eh and em that come up in our meanderings. Common filler words include kinda, literally and frankly.
For greater linguistic precision he recommends a Finger Walking drill. Speak on a topic while your fingers “walk” across a table or desk. Choose each word deliberately. If you find you don’t know what to say next, pause your fingers, pause your words and don’t continue until you have selected the right word.
This is a practice drill, but you can also use it when speaking in the office, letting your fingers walk imperceptibly. At the same time, he urges you to cut yourself some slack; the filler words and sounds that bug you are probably not as bothersome to your audience.
To speak clearly and avoid mumbling – enunciation – you need a wine cork. It serves as an impediment forcing you to work harder to get your words beyond the obstacle. “Over time – just like an athlete using resistance training – your enunciation muscles actually get stronger. But there are also instant benefits. One of them is obvious: For the fast talkers among you: It makes your speech slower,” he writes.
Enunciation, he stresses, is not just about being understood. It’s about leaning into words and emphasizing sound. You can say the word snake, or sssssssssssnaKE. Big difference.
In that vein, practising breathing from the diaphragm helps. He calls it putting breath into action. Just as the clarinet sounds best when the player feeds sufficient air through the instrument in a sustained way, you want to practise putting breath into your speech. Along with his other techniques, it can help you improve your delivery and communicate your ideas more effectively.
Quick hits
- To approach mastery in your communications, consultant JD Schramm recommends three actions: Take advantage of the power of pause; check what the other person has heard; and for routine communications like a newsletter, after it’s delivered ask how it could be better.
- The best way to complain is to make things better, says entrepreneur Seth Godin. It shouldn’t be whining, which exasperates others because it is a grievance without benefit or action. Complaining can be a form of intimacy, building a community action.
- In his memoir Animation Nation, entrepreneur and producer Michael Hirsh shares this lesson for him from his father, Jack, a Holocaust survivor: Don’t hold grudges. Focus your life on the future, rather than be mired in the past.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.