More on the Uh and Ah Dilemma
Aim for Perfection
I have a friend who is a world class rifle shooter. He even represents the USA in international competition. I would trust him to shoot a quarter out of my hand at a hundred yards. If my life depended on a rifle shot I would want him to take that shot. That being said, he will occasionally miss. Not by much but his standards are very high; he aims for perfection.
If you want to perfect your public speaking skills then you have to treat ums and ahs the same way that my friend treats his occasional miss. You put it out of your mind and focus on the words (shots) that you haven’t said yet. In short, you don’t beat yourself up over mistakes but you always try to avoid them in the future. You may have to come up with a way to deliberately practice in order to solve the problem. Perfection is the name of the game.
My good friend, and communications coach, Alan has added to the conversation. Seems he had a student ask about this in class today.
People who willingly accept disfluencies are setting themselves up to be less effective speakers. As Bert Decker mentions in his book, “You’ve got to Be Believed to Be Heard,” effective pausing will help to minimize the occurrences of these pesky non-words. Eye contact will help as well. It seems that many people don’t um and ah while making meaningful eye contact. So if you decide not to worry about this problem you may be missing an opportunity to learn these skills.
That being said, a few ums and ahs are probably not going to ruin your presentations. Probably? There is the chance that the person interviewing you for a job, or that venture capitalist, or that guy/girl you are interested in has a low threshhold for disfluencies. 10 or 15 in a 1 hour presentation are not going to annoy many people. 10 or 15 in a minute will… don’t take a chance. You can learn to avoid them.
Hi Jeff
I think there’s also a difference between somebody who presents just every so often as part of their job, and a professional speaker (or trainer). I think if you just present occasionally you don’t need to eliminate every um or ah (though I agree that if it is distracting to more than a few people in your audience then you do need to do something about it). However, if you’re a professional speaker of some kind, just like being a world class rifle shooter, you should be working on continuously improving every part of your speech – including eradicating ums and ahs! Olivia
Hi Olivia,
Thanks for the comment.
A few ahs and ums are not going to ruin many presentations. That being said, it is still worthwhile to strive for perfection. If my friend always strives to hit the X ring (bullseye) and misses he will likely hit the 10 ring. That’s still a great shot and he is still in the game. The minute he starts accepting just hitting the 10 ring then a miss is in the 9 and he starts losing.
Professional speakers and trainers are guilty of this as well. In fact, there are many professional speakers and public speaking gurus who just aren’t that good at speaking. Ditto trainers.
Whether or not anyone agrees with what I am saying here is up to them. They must decide for themselves how good they want to be. I am just saying that ahs and ums should not be accepted regardless of the number because they are probably being caused by a more pressing problem: lack of effective pausing, a poorly thought out train of thought or lack of eye contact.
That being said, one or two ahs or ums isn’t going to cause a lot of trouble. Accepting them, on the other hand, probably will.