Have you ever seen a video of yourself talking or maybe listened to the story you left on a friend’s voicemail? Did it make you cringe when you heard um or y’know or like over and over again? Maybe in the middle of a presentation at work, you catch yourself saying those type of filler words and it distracts you and throws you off your game. A wedding toast, a first date, there are a lot of situations in life when you want to have the control of a well-seasoned public speaker. Speaking smoothly, clearly and slowly—those are the men who take control of a room and steer the conversation. That’s the type of guy you want to be. Not the one rambling awkwardly and fumbling over those irritating and irrelevant filler words.
But how can you fix these saboteurs of speech? Is it simply a matter of slowing down and thinking about what you want to say? This is the number one question that Janice Tomich, an executive speaking coach, gets from her clients. And the first thing she says is to not get too worried. “When we communicate in everyday conversation, it’s natural to use a few vocal fillers like these—it’s actually weird (and a little unnatural) to not use a few, occasionally,” she says. “However, overusing vocal fillers can be a distraction and will bruise your credibility.”
Tomich says that these fillers (what academics call disfluencies) are easy to lean on when speaking. That’s why they feel like crutches. They give us a moment to collect our thoughts before we get back on track and press on. This is why they tend to come up when you’re nervous, feeling unfocused or unprepared or just talking too quickly. But when they’re overused, they will distract from your overall message and you can lose your audience. “Your brain works in retrieval mode and offers out ums or ahs to fill the time until you regulate yourself or are able to retrieve the concepts and find that ‘just right’ word you’re trying to remember.”
Using research that incorporates behavioral science, AI, and data, the people science firm, Quantified Communications, determined that the optimum frequency is about one filler word per minute, but the average speaker uses five fillers per minute—or, one every twelve seconds. That’s because we’ve been conditioned to fill the void even when we don’t have something to say. We throw in filler words merely to hold onto the “conversational floor” as we are planning what we are going to say next, with ah signaling a short delay and um signaling a longer delay.
But the solution is simple. Embrace the pause. Say nothing. It’s really okay. Research suggests that most conversational speech consists of short (0.20 seconds), medium (0.60 seconds), and long (over 1 second) pauses. Great public speakers often pause for two to three seconds or even longer. Silence, as they say, is golden. It gives your brain time to catch up and helps make you sound more composed and authoritative.
“Clients often tell me how difficult this is because they feel like the time to take a deep breath is long,” says Tomich. “If you’re standing in front of an audience sharing your ideas, it does seem like a long time—the time seems protracted—but for the audience it is simply a second or two.” And a welcomed one, giving them time to distill your messaging. She suggests when you feel an um or an ahh about to leave your lips, stop yourself. Take a breath to gather your thoughts and then continue with your next words/thoughts. This technique takes a bit of practice to get comfortable with the silence, but once you master it, you’ll find that you can truly command a conversation.
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