TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

1 Apr 2018 · 2 min

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1:41

TJ Walker, in a live-stream titled 'The Habit Influencer' (April 1, 2018), critiques common methods for correcting verbal tics ("uhs," "ums") in public speaking—especially ring-the-bell or glass-clink techniques used by some Toastmasters chapters. He argues these tactics are counterproductive because they shift the speaker's focus to eliminating tics rather than communicating ideas; instead he recommends not counting or reacting to ums during delivery and to address them only afterward if desired.

Chapters

The problem of people using UHS and UMS, ERs, other verbal tics has been around a long time and there have been a lot of solutions and a lot of well meaning people and organizations. Stop that. Have you ever seen someone do this? I have and it makes it even more nerve wracking. Someone trying to be helpful sits in the back of the room and rings a bell when you say ah or ah. This is awful. Now I love the folks at Toastmasters. It's a great organization. I recommend my clients go to Toastmasters. But there's one thing I really don't like and don't think is effective with Toastmasters is that in many chapters they either ring a bell or they'll take a knife and hit a glass and a ringing sound and they'll count every single little. To me, this is counterproductive. It gets someone focusing on the ums, not delivering actual information. When you're speaking, you want to focus on your ideas coming alive, being interesting and engaging to the people or the person you're speaking to. You don't want to be sitting back thinking, oh please, please, please don't let the o I've done it again, so I beg you, don't count your uhs and ums while you're speaking. If you want to record it and do it after, that's fine. Don't let anyone else do this. Don't be aware of it as you're speaking. When you're speaking, you need to speak.