TJ Walker, a media trainer, shows how to spot filler words in your speech by transcribing interviews and presentations. He discovered he started every answer with "well" and fixed it by putting a sticker with a red slash on his phone and watch as a reminder to pause instead.
Place a sticker with the word "well" crossed out (red circle/slash) on phones, watches, and computer screens as a visual cue to pause.
Chapters
Are verbal bad habits creeping into your presentations?
Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.
So folks, I want to give you some new tools for diagnosing problems you might have in your presentations, whether it's a live speech, a talk or a media interview. Now, it gives me no great sense of joy to tell you how I found this out. In fact, it's highly embarrassing. Here I am, I'm supposed to be the big presentation expert. People come up to me after days of training or speeches and say, wow, T.J. you're so articulate. You didn't say uh or um once. Well, guess what? I have my own problems, my own blunders too. I'm going to tell you how I diagnose those, how it's brought to my attention in just a moment.
Do you have a speaking related question for number one USA Today best selling author TJ Walker? For more than 30 years, Walk Walker has been a public speaking coach and media trainer to presidents of Countries, Prime Ministers, CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize winners, professional athletes and Ms. Universes. Send your questions to infoediatrainingworldwide.com or on Twitter jwalker.
So all of you have heard me say again and again and again to figure out what's working, what doesn't work. Video record yourself, watch. Figure out what you like, don't like, and your flaws will become apparent. There is one small problem with that approach. There are certain things that are just not necessarily noticeable to the ear or the eye that you can notice. If you see a transcript, that's really the big tip of the day is to have what you say transcribed, whether it's a speech or whether it's a media interview. Now, you're not looking for the transcription to see perfect grammar, perfect complete sentences. In fact, good presentations typically have a lot of short sentences, a lot of repetition, a lot of phrases that aren't really full sentences. And yet it still works as a speech. But what it can reveal certain filler words you use. And they might not be the obvious ones, the big ones that so many people notice. Uhs, ums, ers, you knows. And I'm pretty good about not doing that, pat myself on the back. I've never had anyone come up to me and say, wow, tj, you say so many uhs and ums. Those of you who are regular listeners or viewers of this program will probably notice I don't say a lot of uhs and ums. It's pretty rare. And none of them are edited out. There's no editing done on this program. So I was feeling pretty cocky about myself until just the other day, a Google search came up with my name. I clicked on it, and it was a transcription from a radio interview I had done in the previous week. Now, some of you may not know it, but one of the other hats I wear is that clients sometimes hire me to be their spokesperson to go on talk radio and TV show. So this was a client that had hired me to be a spokesperson for their product. And I looked at the transcription. I was about to think, wow, this is going to show how smart and how articulate and how wonderful I am and how I hit all my message points with great sound bites. So I was looking for it, reading this story in text, kind of looking to confirm my own biases that, wow, T.J. you're the master. Imagine my surprise when I started looking at the answers. And here's what I found in six out of the eight or nine questions that I was asked, I started my answer with, well, some of you old enough to remember may have images of Ronald Reagan, who often started press conference answers with, well, now, I wasn't doing it, mocking Reagan, but somehow this had creeped into my speech patterns. It's not a tract. It's not the end of the world, but it isn't adding anything. It's a pause. It's a filler. It's my version of an A. And of. Now, many of you have read in my books or seen on other audios or videos or online courses that I have this technique for getting rid of uhs and ums. And I'm holding it up for those of you who are watching the video version. I'm just. Those of you listening to the audio, I'm simply holding up a little sticker, and it has the word om with the international red no sign around it. I peel off the sticker and put it on clients watches and cell phones and computers. And after a week, it reprograms the brain so that you're not filling up the sound with this clutter. Now, this problem occurred to me about five years ago. No one had ever pointed it out. Four or five years ago, I was doing a TV interview, I believe I was at the ABC network in midtown Manhattan or on the upper west side of Manhattan doing an interview for a Canadian network. And my wife pointed out to me, I guess my then fiance, now wife pointed out to me, T.J. you're starting all of your sentences with wow. I didn't believe her, but When I looked at the tape, she was right. I didn't like it, didn't want to admit it, but it was true. The tape doesn't lie and the transcript doesn't lie. So what I did four years ago is I just typed up a word, well, put a red circle around it and then I put it on my cell phone. I'm holding up those of you watching on the video, those of you listening for the audio podcast. There's nothing fancy to it. I just typed the word well, drew a red circle and a red slash through it and then taped it on the bottom of my computer screen and my cell phone and I put it on my watch. Now, time went by. These fell off. I thought I had the problem licked, but apparently I did not. More in a moment.
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The problem had not gone away. I think it had temporarily gone away, but it did come back. I wasn't aware of it, but I wanted to do something. And you know what? Even though I'm a full time professional presentation media training expert coach, nobody's perfect. Everybody needs help. And I put myself into that category as well. I'm not perfect. I can do better. So that's why I taped the anti well, tick buster on my phone. Because I look at my phone dozens of times a day and I'm going to be checking a transcript again. Now nobody has time to check a transcription every single time an accurate one. There are inexpensive ways of doing it. You can certainly use certain apps will do that. If you create a video on YouTube, you can ask YouTube to transcribe it and you can look at it, although their transcriptions are not 100%. But if you feel like you're a good speaker, a great speaker, a great media spokesperson, and you want to just like you, go to the doctor once a year for a physical, give yourself a thorough diagnostic. I would recommend getting a full transcription of both a speech, a Q and A after a speech session and a media interview. You might be extremely happy with what you find, but you might be surprised. There's simply a different experience reading the text versus watching it. Because I will confess, when I've watched videos of myself doing interviews or presenting, starting with well did not jar my ears, it didn't stand out. But when you look at it in print, it frankly looks ugly. And that's why I'm trying to improve myself. What are your ticks? What do you do when you want a second to think or pause or reflect and you're not even aware of it? Do you fill it up with er, you know, or do you use well or some other word? Whatever it is, get rid of it and just pause. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a success.
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