Speak with Impact

by Allison Shapira

  Every language has its own filler words, placeholders as people think about the next thing they want to say: French: euh, Spanish: e, Italian: cioè, Hebrew: ke’ilu, Arabic: ya’ani.

  Minimizers

  In addition to filler words, there are minimizers, which play a similar role. Certain phrases and words minimize the impact of your speech by downplaying what you say. Maybe this is irrelevant, but . . . I may be way off base here, but . . . or single words, like sorry or just: I just think that we might want to take another look at that issue . . . Sorry, but I just want to say . . .” Just is my personal pet peeve because it trivializes what you say next.

  There’s a lot of attention focused on women using excessive minimizers, with articles calling on women to stop using them and counter-articles calling on society to stop telling women what to do. For women working in mostly male environments, minimizers become especially dangerous because many women already feel like they are fighting to be taken seriously in that environment; by using minimizers, they devalue the power of their ideas. In my experience hearing minimizers in both men and women, the cause is either linguistic contagion (everyone’s doing it) or a lack of confidence. Neither men nor women should devalue the power of their ideas.

  Sometimes, however, minimizers are intentional. In one workshop, participants pushed back when I tried to minimize their minimizers. They said, “Given the politics of our organization, we have to use these words when providing feedback to leadership.” In that case, the use of minimizers becomes strategic. You decide when and if to use them—but be intentional about it.

  How do you reduce the frequency of both fillers and minimizers? There are a few techniques I use.

  Pause and Breathe. In between sentences, physically close your mouth and breathe in and out through your nose. You can’t say a filler word if your mouth is closed!

  Knock on the Table. In coaching sessions, I might knock on the table every time I hear a filler word. Yes, it’s incredibly distracting for about ten minutes, but then the fillers naturally fall away. The speaker learns to pause and breathe instead of using a filler and sounds more thoughtful. You can do the same thing with a practice buddy.

  Use an App. Speak out loud using an app like Ummo to count your fillers. Ummo will make a chiming noise each time it hears you use the fillers, which gives you immediate feedback. When you hear the filler, pause and breathe and repeat the sentence. Note: Only use this app while practicing, not during an actual speech.

  One Minute of Ums. Here’s an exercise from my colleague Trudi Bresner that is both effective and fun. Record yourself for one full minute speaking about a topic (perhaps your upcoming vacation) with as many fillers as you can. Go ahead, let them all out. This will make you more conscious of what they sound and feel like. Then, record yourself for one full minute speaking about the same topic without using a single filler. Practice with someone else and have them force you to start over when you use a filler. (This will teach you how to suppress them and pause and breathe instead.) You will sound much more purposeful and thoughtful.

  Focus on reducing these fillers and minimizers in the practice stage, not when you actually give your speech. If you remove them in practice, they will start to go away during the speech itself. I once observed one of my clients’ internal business reviews with the head of his organization. He caught himself using a filler and instinctively knocked on the table as we had done in our sessions. He paused, said, “That was an inside joke,” and quickly moved on. Luckily, I had also worked with the head of the organization, so she also knew our technique! Don’t think about it while you’re actually presenting.

  Uptalk

  Uptalk happens when your tone rises at the end of a declarative sentence, making it sound like a question instead of a statement. It’s also known as high rising terminal or rising inflection. You often hear it when people introduce themselves: “My name is Allison Shapira?” Visit www.speakwithimpactbook.com to hear an example of uptalk.

  Imagine you’re pitching an idea to an investor or prospect. You’re an expert in your field and have researched your subject thoroughly. You believe strongly in the value of your work. But then you say, “We have thirty years of experience in this area?” or, “We believe this is the best solution to your problem?” When you let your voice rise into a question, you undermine the entire message.

  Around the world, uptalk can be a natural part of the accent. In fact, when my team and I teach public speaking outside the United States, we rarely discuss this subject. But in an English-speaking context in the US, the UK, and elsewhere, uptalk can come across as a lack of certainty or a lack of confidence. You sound like you’re questioning your own credibility.

  People will also use it when they are unsure of their answer. Instead of stating a fact with certainty, they let the uptalk reveal their uncertainty. They will also use it when they are unsure of their social position within the group. A younger professional will use it more often when he’s unsure of his right to speak up.

  Some people use uptalk to sound more collaborative, akin to asking, “Are you with me?” at the end of each sentence. I hear it a lot among women, especially given our socialization to “play well with others.” Either consciously or unconsciously, we are trying to make sure people agree with us. As with filler words, we pick it up from others. I once coached a Turkish woman to help her adapt to working in an American corporation. When I asked her about her constant use of uptalk, she said, “Well, that’s the way all the women in my office sound.”

  I hear both men and women use uptalk and believe it can be dangerous to your credibility regardless of your gender—although it can be even more damaging if you are one of the few women in a room.

  Every time you speak, you have an opportunity to build a relationship of trust with your audience. When you sound like you’re questioning yourself, you reduce the audience’s trust in you.

  How do you reduce uptalk? Record yourself and listen to your tone of voice. Does your voice rise at the end of sentences even when they are not questions? Ask yourself if it’s due to a regional accent, and ask yourself how it will sound to an English-speaking audience.

  Practice ending your sentences like you are coming down a set of steps, says voice coach Helen Moses. Record yourself and listen to the difference.

  When you practice your speech or presentation, make a conscious effort to reduce uptalk in your introduction, your main points, and your conclusion—the most critical parts of your speech—so you don’t introduce uncertainty. It’s absolutely fine to introduce doubt into your speech when discussing numerous sides to a complex issue. Indeed, it shows your ability to look holistically at an issue. However, when you make a statement on something about which you feel strongly, don’t make it sound like a question.

  Vocal Fry

  Vocal fry happens when you squeeze your vocal cartilage together, making the vocal cords flutter instead of vibrate smoothly. This produces a low, gravelly sound. If you haven’t heard vocal fry before, take a minute and go to www.speakwithimpactbook.com so you can recognize the concept. Some people speak with vocal fry constantly while others use it only sparingly; I can turn it on and off—on demand—in order to demonstrate what it is.

  Why do we do it? Sometimes we are lazy in our breathing, especially at the ends of our sentences. Sometimes there has been physical damage to our vocal cords, which produces it. Oftentimes, we pick it up from others, especially when pop culture stars like Kim Kardashian or musicians like Katy Perry use it. But it’s not only women: men use it, too. And while female on-air journalists may get hate mail from using it, male journalists use it as well.10

  What’s the effect on our listeners? It depends on your audience. Since it’s more common in young people, a younger audience probably won’t even notice it. But if your audience is more mature, it can affect your credibility.

  A 2014 study by researchers at Duke University and the University of Miami found that vocal fry had negative repercus
sions in the job market that disproportionally affected women more than men. “Relative to a normal speaking voice, young adult female voices exhibiting vocal fry are perceived as less competent, less educated, less trustworthy, less attractive, and less hirable.”11 Unfortunately, this is another example where something both men and women do is perceived as more hurtful to women.

  If you have something powerful to say, let your voice convey that power. If you reduce your voice to a croak and let it drop off at the end of a sentence, you’re taking the air out of your words.

  In the next chapter, I’ll show you how breathing will reduce vocal fry.

  We’ve covered some critical ground in this chapter to help you harness the power of your voice, but no discussion on voice is complete without understanding how to breathe. Let’s dive right into the next chapter to understand how you can use breathing to calm your nerves and power your voice.

  CHAPTER 7

  Pause and Breathe

  Calm Your Nerves and Strengthen Your Voice

  OVERCOMING SPEECH ANXIETY

  Do you ever get nervous before a speech or presentation? Even if you’re not afraid of public speaking, I’m betting you still get butterflies in your stomach before you speak. Most people (myself included) get nervous before a speech, presentation, or important meeting. How nervous you get depends on a lot of factors, such as how often you speak in public, how well you know the subject, and how important the occasion.

  In my travels, I encounter this fear again and again. I could be in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, or Latin America, and the questions will be the same: How do I calm my nerves?

  Why do we have this widespread, universal fear of public speaking? Some theories say the reason is primal. Millions of years ago, banding together in communities protected us from predators and allowed us to thrive. Glenn Croston, author of The Real Story of Risk, says, “When faced with standing up in front of a group, we break into a sweat because we are afraid of rejection. And at a primal level, the fear is so great because we are not merely afraid of being embarrassed, or judged. We are afraid of being rejected from the social group, ostracized and left to defend ourselves all on our own. We fear ostracism still so much today it seems, fearing it more than death, because not so long ago getting kicked out of the group probably really was a death sentence.”1

  Psychologist and speaker Guy Winch explains, “The same areas of the brain become activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain,” and we remember social pain much more vividly than physical pain.2 That’s why, twenty years later, we still cringe when remembering that embarrassing thing we said or did in public.

  Luckily, there is much you can do to calm your nerves. When I work with clients, I try to identify the exact cause of their anxiety to see if we can address it directly. I’ll use the words anxiety, nerves, and fear in this section, but if you suffer from severe anxiety or anxiety disorders, then it’s a good idea to consult a mental health professional.

  We feel anxiety physically as well as emotionally. Our heart races, our hands shake, and some of us blush or develop nervous tells. In Chapter 8, I’ll share my pre-speech ritual to help you reduce those physical feelings of anxiety. Meditation and mindfulness provide incredibly powerful tools to center your mind, and deep breathing will do wonders to calm your nerves.

  Here are some common causes of public speaking anxiety along with my solutions for how to handle them. Once you identify the source, you can look at specific, practical ways to calm your anxious feelings. Even after isolating all the below factors, you will still be nervous, and that’s normal. Fear and excitement both produce adrenaline, so reframing your nerves as excitement helps you use that same hormone in a productive way.

  Lack of confidence. If you don’t believe you have anything of value to say, then you will probably avoid public speaking. Why would anyone listen to me? Go back to the Three Questions in Chapter 2 and remind yourself of your Why you? Find an authentic passion or interest related to the subject, and let that boost your confidence. Later in this chapter, do the Core Value Statement and read that statement out loud before every speech.

  Not enough time to prepare. This is one of the most common reasons people are uncomfortable speaking in public: they didn’t have enough time to prepare, or they didn’t prepare the right way. Look at Chapter 3 about preparing a speech and, specifically, how to prepare a speech in thirty minutes. It’s not about spending endless time preparing; it’s about having a tried-and-true process for using the time you have effectively.

  Not enough knowledge of the subject. This is a big factor when speaking to people who know more than you. You worry that your audience will pick apart your argument or think you don’t know what you’re talking about. You could do research and shore up your knowledge, you could limit the scope of your speech, or you could plan ways to bring your expert audience into the speech. For instance, you can ask the audience: “Since we have so many experts in the room, what have you found to be successful?”

  Negative experiences or feedback. Maybe you had a traumatic speaking experience in middle school, or perhaps a teacher or parent discouraged you early on. Those early (or even recent) negative experiences can stay with us and color the way we look at the world. Talk through those experiences with a coach, friend, or therapist. By speaking about them out loud, you start to recognize that they describe a past experience, but they don’t define who you are. Ask yourself Why you? and look ahead at the Core Value Statement to find your confidence.

  Negative work environment. If you work in a toxic environment where speaking up means being criticized by your boss or peers, you might fear public speaking. It will feel risky to speak up because it is risky. Determine who your allies are within your organization or your community. Who will stand up for your work? Practice your speech with that person and get their feedback on how to phrase your language in a way your colleagues will relate to. That person can then publicly praise your speech or presentation as a way to demonstrate public support for your position.

  Don’t like being the center of attention. Introverts will tell me they are not afraid of speaking, but they don’t like to be the center of attention. In that case, reframe the purpose of the speech. Rather than thinking of the speech as being about you, think of the speech as an opportunity to highlight an important issue. You are no longer the center of attention, your idea is the center of attention. When he spoke at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC, Rabbi Scott Perlo said it beautifully: “If you carry a message of hope and healing, your greatest responsibility is to get out of the way and let the message work its way through you.”

  Lack of control. When you give a speech or presentation, there are things you can’t control: the room’s audiovisual, the audience’s reaction, and (sometimes) your own imagination. There are two solutions that you can implement simultaneously. First, control all the variables that you can. What if the AV doesn’t work? Get there early and make sure you have a technician present. What if there’s traffic? Plan that into your schedule. For each “What if?” worry, find a solution. Concurrently, recognize that you can’t control everything. Even if you test the AV beforehand, it could still stop working. Things will still go wrong, so identify ways to calmly deal with them. If the audience sees you as cool and collected even when there’s a problem, you retain your credibility as a speaker.

  Fear of your mind going blank. I often hear people say they are afraid they’ll forget the words, or that their mind will go blank in front of the audience. It’s happened to me as well. Before you go onstage, ask yourself Why you? to refocus your attention on your sense of purpose instead of on your nerves. Bring notes or an outline; I use that for every single speech or presentation. I might not look at the notes, but the fact I have them calms my fear. If you need to, write out the first and last sentences. Print your notes in a large font with plenty of white space and make the paper single-sided so you can easily move from one pa
ge to the next. There’s also fascinating research showing that chewing gum before a speech or test improves immediate word recall. Just remember to spit out the gum before you go onstage!3

  Don’t do it often enough. It’s understandable that if you don’t speak in public often, you won’t feel comfortable doing it. The solution is to speak up more! There are so many opportunities for you to speak. I have found Toastmasters clubs to be the best value for practicing your public speaking in a safe, nurturing environment. Refer back to Chapter 1 to find more places to speak.

  Don’t know how to do it. Many people fear public speaking because they simply don’t know how to do it. It’s as if you had to play a new musical instrument in front of a group of peers for the first time. Of course you’d be nervous! The solution is: learn. Read this book. Take a course. Work with a coach. Public speaking is a skill, and the more you build this skill, the more you build your confidence and overcome your fear.

  Talk. Talk through your public speaking fears with a friend or colleague. Talk about ways to overcome them and recognize there’s a lot you can do. Read the list above to identify your concerns, and try out a few of the tips.