Verbal fillers make a speaker seem less articulate and less sure of themselves and their message. Here are techniques that can help to shed the use of verbal fillers (uh, um, so, like, you know, basically, etc.)

1. Video tape or record yourself delivering a presentation or in a conversation. Watch your videotape or listen to the recording once just counting your verbal fillers. It may be painful and embarrassing but can fuel your determination to shed the fillers.

2. Enlist the help of others - your partner / spouse, friends, coworkers, family, etc. Empower them to repeat your fillers whenever they hear you using it.

3. Listen for your use of verbal filler at ALL times, whether presenting, in conversation, on the phone, in social situations, etc.

4. Don't beat yourself up about it. Just make a mental note and remind yourself that you want to …  More On Verbal Filler >>

If you're enjoying our blog, consider applying for a workshop >>  Our work has to be experienced to truly understand its value.  Once a quarter The Henderson Group holds a "By Invitation Only" Art of Presentation workshop in San Francisco, led by our VP of Services, Terry Gault.  With that in mind, we set aside a couple of free seats for the right candidates.

 Below, Slam Poet, Taylor Mali, performs his speech 'Totally Like Whatever'

 

What does it mean to connect?

To connect with your customers and colleagues is to join with them in a shared experience. It involves sharing ideas and information; creating a sense of interchange based on common interests.

Why ask questions?

Questions demonstrate your willingness to involve another in interactive dialogue. You interrupt your own closed-loop and bring in another perspective.

Asking questions is also a subtle tool of persuasion. The listener opens to your ideas as they articulate answers. You can often make your point more powerfully than by hammering home assertion after assertion.

Would you like to demonstrate that you are interested in those with whom you interact?

Start with open-ended questions. As you move toward resolution, use specifically directed, closed-end questions.  Read More >> 

 

Below, Jason McGarva of the Providence Toastmasters club shares his insights on how to keep a conversation going using the power of open ended questions.

 

How customers view you or your products is garnered by a framework of assumptions, stories and images in their minds.

If you really want to influence someone, your first task is to understand how they think. An individual’s perspective on the world can be identified and “mapped.”

A model for asking questions:

Step 1. Neutral Prompts

Step 2. Define the Universe with Wide Questions

Step 3. Prioritizing Issues with Priority Questions

Step 4. Pursue Detail with Deep Questions

 

More About The Discovery Process In Business >>

 

Below, Toastmaster Trey Gramann gives a thoughtful and humorous speech entitled "A Map for the Soul."

 

How do you prove to a speaker that you are really listening to what they are saying?  Paraphrase in a way that captures “the essence” of all major points the speaker makes. Use the speakers’ key words.

Work on making sure that your tone of voice, gestures and energy level are commensurate with the speaker’s.  If you restate the speaker’s words in a dispassionate and detached tonality, you have not empathically paraphrased. Listen to the speaker’s emotions, sentiments and desires, then pitch your voice and use your face and gesture in a manner that reflects understanding of the speaker’s emotive state.

Subtractive: The most common way in which your paraphrase will be inaccurate: all the speaker’s key ideas are not captured. That is, the paraphrase has subtracted some of what was said. The speaker says, “I am concerned about A, B & C.” The paraphraser says, “You are concerned about A & B.”

Additive: The next most likely way in which your paraphrase will be inaccurate: we hear what we want to hear and focus on our own ideas. We then add statements that the speaker did not make. The speaker: “I am concerned about A, B & C.” The paraphraser says, “You are concerned about A, B, C, L, & R.”

Interpretive: Instead of paraphrasing what was said you offer your interpretation of what you believe the speaker meant to say. You hear A, B & C and say “I have the impression that what you are really talking about is G.”

Your empathic paraphrase is fully interchangeable when the speaker feels you have captured his thoughts and sentiments exactly. It often coincides with an excited burst of energy or an enthusiastic, “Yes!”    When Should I Paraphrase? >>

 

Below, Jacob Needleman, author and professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University, argues that the act of listening is a critical step in the development of a personal morality.  He's describing the use of Empathic Paraphrasing and "how hard that is."  It is the hardest skill we teach AND the single most important.

Feedback is a terrific tool that can bring greater awareness to our communication. It can also carry intense internal conflict when the picture we have of ourselves clashes with how we are perceived by others.

1. Develop your inner observer by noticing your reactions to feedback.

2. Resist the powerful urge to explain yourself.

3. Become a sponge. Simply absorb it all.

4. Work to accept the feedback as possibly correct. Use the 1% rule.  

Feedback provides an excellent springboard for improving skills and gaining new insight IF we can abate the ego's natural tendency to defend itself.   Read More >>       

Influence is shaping someone else's behavior without resorting to positional power. Real buy-in is achieved when others participate in the process of making decisions.

Some approach customers and clients by telling them about the superiority of their product, countering customers' "objections," then "closing" the transaction. Influence is more subtle.

In complex transactions, involving experienced parties on both sides, a more sophisticated approach is called for.

• Increase your ability to shape someone's behavior when you do not have direct control of them.
• Gather better data while building ongoing relationships in any business environment.
• Motivate others when involved in projects with virtual teams in remote locations.
• Exert leadership that transcends organizational boundaries.

Learn more about Influence>>  

“True resolution of problems and conflicts can only come through a respect for the mutual interest of the parties involved and through dialogue.” -Dalai Lama

Interactive communication or dialogue refers to interacting in ways that build shared meaning, rather than colliding in ways that foster disagreement, frustration and confusion.

A jazz improvisation is a good metaphor for dialogue. Each musician must build on what the others are already doing. The jazz musician can't just begin playing his favorite riff. He must listen to what others are playing, and then build on it. The result is something unique - no one person controls the musical direction. They improvise and initiate, but always in relationship to what others are doing.

 photo credit

Dialogue Contrasted With Discussion Discussion has the same roots as "concussion" and "percussion." The Latin origin of discuss is "discutere" - to dash or shake apart. Hence, to discuss is to shake apart what others say. In a discussion we break things down, fragment the whole, analyze the pieces, and seek to convince others of our insights. You recognize discussion by its competitive nature. If you are only listening in order to prepare your own counter-arguments, you are involved in a discussion. What Does Dialogue Look Like?

• The business issue develops keen intellectual interest.
• The conversation is suffused with laughter.
• Everyone is involved, and people are listening deeply.
• The conversation becomes animated.
• You become eager to add to what someone else has said; but you are listening more than talking.
• You sense an almost palpable excitement.
• The multiple perspectives create a sense of aliveness and possibility.
• Different viewpoints interest you instead of annoy you.

More on Dialogue>>