Ermmm.. a presentation filler or killer?

I’ve read a lot of stuff over the years, online, about so-called ‘filler words’.  You know the kind of thing “Erm”, “Ah” and so on. I’m going to put them in the same box as longer fillers made up of proper words – habit such as putting “So…” at the beginning of a sentence or “Y’know” at the end.

“So… we need to get this sorted out by Friday at the latest, Y’know?”

Organisations like Toastmasters even go so far as to count the number of this fillers in a presentation. Someone sits there and instead of listening to the overall effect of the presentation, simply listens out for the killer/fillers!

Now all this is very well, but I’ve got two problems with that approach.

Firstly, there’s the “so what” element.  Weighing pigs doesn’t fatten them and testing school-kids doesn’t teach them anything… and counting the number of times I say ‘err’ in a 20 minute session in front of my audience doesn’t teach me how to stop doing it.

To be honest, speaking as a musician as well as a speaker, my experience is that simply drawing attention to my faults simply makes me more likely to stumble of them.  Without a tool for dealing with it, knowing there’s problem simply makes me nervous!

There’s an argument, perhaps, for knowing the size of the problem but the line between knowing about it and making it worse in the process is a pretty thin one. Frankly, I’ve never seen a formal counting process that helped.

(I’ll go further: in places like Toastmaster, I suspect it’s part of a semi-deliberate attempt to build up a myth of public speaking – but I’ve no proof of this and this is a side-point… don’t let it distract us from real argument.)

More importantly, however, is the second issue – that of the whole thing being an irrelevance anyway.

Let’s face it, if the only way you can tell that there’s a problem with overusing one word is to have someone sitting there formally counting the use of that word, you don’t have a problem!  It’s not about how many times the presenter does, or doesn’t use a particular filler word – if it’s not a problem to the audience.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there aren’t time when fillers get in the way -  there certainly are – but it’s not as big a problem as people seem to think, judging by the number of websites I’ve seen about it.  The reason, basically, is that filler words – up to the tipping point where it all goes wrong! – potentially serve a positive and useful function for the audience.

Remember that a presentation isn’t about what the presenter says: it’s about what the audience hears (and remembers). With that in mind, fillers can be very useful ways of giving the audience time to assess and assimilate what they’re hearing.  You’ll know from personal experience, I bet, that people who give you too much information, too quickly, or with too little personal involvement, don’t hold your attention.

That means you forget what they say, assuming you even understand it in the first place!

In short, fillers can be good.  They can make the presentation more natural, as well as easier to understand and absorb.

So what’s the issue here?  Well firstly, let’s stop panicking and pretending the world’s going to end.  Secondly, can we also stop counting for the sake of counting?

Thirdly, check with audiences to see if there is a problem.  Then – and only then – should we work in it. But as I’m at 600 words, I’ll stop and put that in another entry! :)