Eliminating the Source of Your Speaking Discomfort Once and For All

• 00:05 Am I crazy?
• 00:06 Are people staring at my beady eyes and making fun of me?
• 00:10 We all are sometimes too close to ourselves to really have an accurate,
• 00:15 dispassionate perspective on how we're coming across.
• 00:19 It may be that you do have a huge problem with ahs and ums and ers and verbal tics.
• 00:27 But maybe not, I'm not saying it's all in your head.
• 00:30 You're in this course, so there's some issue there.
• 00:33 But what I want you to do is test.
• 00:36 Now, what you don't want to do is speak and then go up to someone and say,
• 00:39 tell me how bad I am, how many ahs and ums, it was really awful, right?
• 00:43 You don't want to coach someone.
• 00:45 What you want to do is give a presentation, give a talk,
• 00:48 and then ask someone, what do they remember?
• 00:52 That's most important.
• 00:53 Next, what did you like?
• 00:56 That's also very important, then ask them,
• 00:59 anything stand out that you think could be improved?
• 01:03 If they say something like, well you didn't seem quite comfortable,
• 01:07 then you want to dig and probe.
• 01:10 See if they'll actually tell you that they're hearing too many ahs,
• 01:15 ums, ers, you knows, and likes.
• 01:18 Finally if they don't mention it, ask them.
• 01:21 If they say, I didn't even notice you saying uhh or umm.
• 01:26 Look, I trust you but I trust your audience more.
• 01:29 They're a lot more credible than you are, when it comes to how you come across.
• 01:35 Quite often when ums and ahs and ers are coming out of your mouth,
• 01:39 it's a sign that there's a problem.
• 01:42 It's a sign that you're feeling uncomfortable.
• 01:44 Well, one of the biggest reasons for
• 01:47 being uncomfortable is fear of not being interesting to your audience,
• 01:51 fear of being boring, fear of not being understood.
• 01:54 Well guess what, that's a legitimate fear to have, because so
• 01:59 many people when they give speeches, briefs, talks are in fact boring.
• 02:05 So, it makes complete sense that you're uncomfortable.
• 02:08 So, I want to us to go even deeper, and go beyond the superficial causes and
• 02:12 look at what's really causing us a problem sometimes, the problem is,
• 02:16 we have a boring speech.
• 02:18 The solution is you need to practice your speech,
• 02:22 we'll talk about that more in just a moment.
• 02:25 Practice a speech that you know is interesting, that you know is memorable.
• 02:30 That is a speech or presentation, a talk, even a voicemail, you personally
• 02:35 would want to listen to, that you would understand and that you would remember.
• 02:40 If we solve that problem, if we get you to the point where you're confident,
• 02:45 you've gotta great message, interesting ideas that the person you're speaking to,
• 02:50 the group you're speaking to will find interesting, understandable and memorable.
• 02:56 That's going to make you so much more relaxed, and when you're relaxed,
• 03:01 you kind of forget to say uhh and umm and err and you know.
• 03:05 I'm hoping you have a much stronger sense of how to really come across your best.
• 03:11 Please note I didn't say, now you know how to never ever say umm or err or you know,
• 03:15 that's not our focus.
• 03:17 Our focus has got to be really communicating ideas important to
• 03:22 our bosses, colleagues, other executives, family friends.
• 03:28 Then and only then should we even think about not having that annoying
• 03:33 clutter, the ahs and ums and ers.
• 03:35 I hope you've gotten some good techniques from this course.
• 03:38 And I want to wish you tremendous success and
• 03:41 all your communications in the future, and coming across not perfect,
• 03:47 but confident, comfortable, relaxed and in your own style.

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