TJ Walker says the biggest distraction in public speaking isn't saying "um" or moving your head. It's being boring: reading slides, staying abstract, skipping stories. Audiences tune out stiffness and lecterns more than minor verbal habits.
Chapters
How can you avoid distracting public speaking habits? Let's focus on the difference between what people think are distracting habits versus what are actually distracting. In my impression, people think that distracting habits involve moving your hands. Wrong. If you hold your hands in fig leaf position or behind your back, the so called military at ease position, that's actually distracting because it makes you look nervous. The number, number one distracting thing speakers do is they're boring. They're reading bullet points off of a PowerPoint screen and ignoring their audience. They're being too abstract. They're not giving stories and examples. That's far and away the number one distraction. Because if you're boring, what do people do? They check their email and now you've lost them forever. Other things people think are distracting but actually aren't. If you say, uh, or occasionally, once every minute and a half, in my experience, no one will be distracted. No one will even notice. It is true if you have um coming out 7 in the first 20 seconds and it continues at that pace, it will be distracting. But that's relatively rare. I find more people fixate on having three ums in a 10 minute speech. What they should be worried about is distracting their audience by being boring. The other thing that distracts people is just being too frozen, too stiff, Grabbing the lectern, grabbing papers, standing in one place. People think that that is somehow more professional. It's not. It's just boring. So keep in mind you do want to avoid distractions, but let's avoid real distractions. Another fake one. People see their head moving and they think, oh my gosh, I'm being distracting. I'm moving my head. Wrong. When you freeze your head, that's when you look scared and stiff and uncomfortable. So yes, it is possible to distract your audience. But the things so many of us think are distracting are not the things that actually distract our audience. I'm TJ Walker. I help people speak more effectively. If you'd like to improve your own speaking skills, please contact me. We have online public speaking courses, live public workshops every month in New York City, and private workshops conducted all over the world.
