As a child, my favorite commercials growing up were the Kellog's frosted flakes commercial. Tony the tiger persuaded millions of parents to buy overly sweet sugared cornflakes for their children. He was a man of few words but they were powerful words.
Frosted Flakes aren't just good..they're GRRRREEEATTTT!!!!
The reason I tell this story is because of a meeting we had at work yesterday. Two of our presenters gave speeches to our group about technology. One of the men was very smart but used the word "umm" so much that I began to count each time he used the word. He gave us great knowledge but it was cloudy due to his filler words he was using. I began to think about the times I used filler words. I've thankfully, never abused the word "umm" but my filler word has always been "you know."
Hearing "umm" so many times you're probably getting annoyed with reading it in this post. I'll stop. It was tough to hear his whole presentation and I honestly don't remember a whole lot of what he said.
The next presenter was a typical sales guy but used different filler words. I noticed after every phrase, he would say "right." If he made a solid point he would say, "great." He replaced filler words with positive words that made his conversation flow smoother. People would rather hear a "right" than an "umm." I can remember most of what he said and he wasn't even the most technical guy.
We all have our filler word we use to help us figure out the next phrase or sentence. Sometimes, silence is golden. Ads rarely use filler words and we remember these ads much more than the every day conversations we have. I definitely don't condone being a monotone robot, but perhaps we can create our own positive filler word that invokes confidence.
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