The Art of Manliness - Stop Saying Um (And Fix the Other Vocal Tics That Are Sabotaging Your Speaking)

00:00:00.000 We're at McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.440 Think about a time you've had to speak in front of others, maybe during a work presentation,

00:00:15.860 a wedding toast, or even on a first date. Did you struggle with using too many filler words

00:00:20.720 such as um and like, talk too fast, or awkwardly ramble? Most of us try to fix these saboteurs

00:00:26.440 of speech by giving ourselves mental mantras. Slow down. Think about what you want to say.

00:00:32.000 But my guest would say that becoming a more engaging and effective speaker comes down to

00:00:35.900 realizing it's a very physical act that requires getting out of your head and into your body.

00:00:41.240 Michael Chad Heppner, a communication coach who has worked with everyone from presidential

00:00:44.640 candidates to business executives, is the author of Don't Say Um, How to Communicate Effectively

00:00:49.780 to Live a Better Life. Today on the show, Michael explains why you need to treat speaking as a sport

00:00:54.640 and shares in body drills and exercises, from playing with Legos, to talking with a wine cork

00:00:59.140 in your mouth, throwing a ball against a wall, that will fix common delivery problems,

00:01:03.180 including eliminating ums, enhancing vocal variety, and managing your gestures.

00:01:07.980 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash um.

00:01:11.100 All right. Michael Chad Heppner, welcome to the show.

00:01:27.120 Thank you so much.

00:01:28.080 So you are a communication coach. You help people improve their communication delivery. So you help

00:01:35.120 people speak more clearly, more confidently, and with presence. You coached Andrew Yang when he ran

00:01:41.080 for president to improve his delivery. You also coach executives. You teach on the subject. I think

00:01:47.200 when a lot of people think about public speaking or even just speaking on a first date, you know,

00:01:51.600 getting ready for a first date, they're often thinking about what they're going to say. You know,

00:01:56.480 they're thinking about the content. But why do you think people should focus on the delivery as well?

00:02:01.220 Michael Chad There's a few reasons. The first is every study ever done that looks at what matters

00:02:06.400 more in terms of the impression you make on other people, validates delivery as a thing.

00:02:12.780 But that's just the first answer. The second answer, which I think is a much better one,

00:02:16.280 is that I'm not even interested in debating or trying to weigh one versus the other, content versus

00:02:23.640 delivery. What I'm always trying to do with my clients is to help them unlock a virtuous cycle

00:02:29.800 in which both things make each other better. And you can remember this for the rest of your life,

00:02:35.480 which is the following drill. Hold up your hands as though you're looking through some imaginary

00:02:41.060 binoculars. If you hold your hands up like you're looking through binoculars, you will see that your

00:02:44.780 left hand looks like the letter C and your right hand like the outer half of a capital D. So your left

00:02:50.200 hand stands for content. That's the words you say, the vocabulary. The right hand looks like the outer

00:02:55.320 half of a capital D and that stands for delivery. And that's everything besides the words. Now,

00:03:00.920 if you put your hands together, you'll see that they create this reinforcing loop. And what many

00:03:05.900 people don't know, and they discover coaching with me, is that if you just focus on the delivery and

00:03:11.600 make the delivery better, not only do you sound better in all the contexts you just mentioned,

00:03:15.840 including first dates, not only do you sound better, but you can actually unlock a virtuous cycle

00:03:22.300 in which you think of smarter stuff to say. So the instructive example, of course, is if you build

00:03:28.240 the ability to tolerate silence and allow your body to take air in and therefore have the fuel to have

00:03:38.020 vocal variety in your voice and also avoid saying um, because in that silence, you can't say um,

00:03:44.060 not only does your voice sound better and you come across with more authority, but in that gap,

00:03:48.600 you're giving your brain the only two things it needs to think of smart stuff, time and oxygen.

00:03:55.160 So this is something that people do not understand about delivery and they ignore it at their peril.

00:04:00.600 And it can be like an absolute light bulb moment when they discover it.

00:04:04.920 Yeah. I've experienced that in my own life. I know whenever I feel I'm the most fluid and the

00:04:09.680 most articulate with my speaking, it feels like I'm saying better stuff compared to when I'm not.

00:04:15.140 Exactly. And that's not an accident, by the way. We also get trapped where we think delivery is a

00:04:22.640 bunch of stuff we should paste on the outside. And part of the reason that is, is because it gets

00:04:26.680 taught typically in a really reductive way. I'll give you an example. We get told to make eye contact

00:04:32.500 for eight to 12 seconds. Why? What if your thought is longer than eight seconds or longer than 12

00:04:40.300 seconds even, or shorter than eight seconds, I should say, any of those things. And we get this

00:04:45.880 coaching that these tools are about things we should almost shellac onto the outside of us.

00:04:51.100 But that's an absolute mistake because the outputs of communication are eye contact and gestural ease

00:04:59.760 and freedom and posture and enunciation. They are outputs. They come from focusing on the other

00:05:05.340 person. And when you do that, both the delivery and the content gets better. So what you've discovered

00:05:10.540 when you're kind of in that flow state is exactly right. Speaking of common advice that people get

00:05:16.440 when they think about delivery, a lot of it's particularly bad. It's not very helpful. Like

00:05:22.340 you said, you gave the example of the one just then, but also there's other advice about, well, just don't

00:05:28.440 say, um, or be more confident or don't do this. And a lot of it's just about thought suppression.

00:05:34.520 It's about suppressing things. Why is that not a useful approach to improving your speaking delivery?

00:05:41.360 Yeah. Well, let's break this down in three ways. The typical guidance that people get about delivery

00:05:47.460 is not just not helpful. It's usually counterproductive. And the way it typically works is first,

00:05:53.940 they get some thought suppression. Then they get such general feedback that it's utterly

00:05:59.300 unactionable. And then they get a suggestion, which is a mental instruction for what is a physical

00:06:06.120 activity. And I'll walk you through this step-by-step. Let's do one that's very common,

00:06:10.940 which is when people speak at a very fast rate. Now the typical advice they get, first of all,

00:06:16.520 is thought suppression, which is don't rush. Okay. Well, as soon as you hear a don't,

00:06:22.520 the first thing your brain is obligated to do is to fixate on whatever comes after the don't.

00:06:28.760 I titled this book, Don't Say Um, in large part as a trick to get people to pick it up because

00:06:33.620 everyone wants to avoid saying um, but the challenge is that's the very worst instruction you can give

00:06:38.320 yourself. And I say as much in the preface to the book. So it's a bit of a trick to get the reader

00:06:44.220 picking it up and using it and hopefully improving because of it. Thought suppression is

00:06:49.620 the pink elephant trick, essentially. It's built off distinction. When you give yourself a don't,

00:06:55.400 you're obligating your brain to fixate on the don't versus everything else in the known universe.

00:07:02.000 So if someone says to you, don't rush, you are obligated to think about rushing and also even

00:07:08.180 more damning, who are you thinking about? You and how bad you are, as opposed to where you should be

00:07:15.240 thinking about, which is your audience. So thought suppression comes first. Then what comes second?

00:07:20.760 General feedback. And the general feedback usually is like, just slow down. Okay, when? All the time?

00:07:28.060 Every word? In between words? In the length of words? When am I supposed to slow down? Utterly vague.

00:07:36.200 And then the third thing is a mental instruction for what is a physical activity. So that sounds like

00:07:43.320 remember to breathe. But then you're giving the person you're coaching or suggesting this to

00:07:49.280 something else they have to remember in their jam-packed brains, when in fact, breathing is a

00:07:54.740 totally physical thing. So these are some of the ways in which the feedback goes dramatically wrong.

00:07:59.920 And really the problem is this, is that people who are already struggling then tend to blame

00:08:06.480 themselves. And they think, oh God, I'm such a failure because I couldn't implement all this

00:08:11.120 really smart coaching or advice I got. And it wasn't smart coaching. It wasn't smart advice. And it's not

00:08:16.580 even their fault that they were not able to do it. Going to this idea that speaking is a physical act,

00:08:22.440 that's one of the main points that you drive home throughout this book, is that we have to remember

00:08:27.500 that speaking is a full-bodied physical act. I think oftentimes we think of it as just a mental

00:08:33.800 act. Why is remembering that speaking is a physical act, the foundation of improving your delivery?

00:08:42.060 Everything I just explained about how feedback gets messed up can be remedied by what you're asking,

00:08:49.320 by a physical approach. And particularly for the listeners of your podcast, this metaphor,

00:08:55.060 either as a metaphor or even just as a thing that people actually do, will really hit home,

00:08:59.860 which is speaking is a sport. So guys out there who are listening, but anybody out there who is

00:09:05.180 listening, if you like sports, speaking is that same thing. It is moving. It takes over a hundred

00:09:11.920 muscles to do what you and I are doing right now, Brett, which is taking air into our bodies.

00:09:16.360 Our diaphragm drops down. Our lungs expand as they fill with air. Our ribs move to accommodate

00:09:22.940 those inflating lungs. And then we exhale that air over our vocal cords and it picks up some sound

00:09:29.920 there. And then that sound gets amplified and altered and altered with a miraculous act of

00:09:37.300 coordination, which is enunciation. I mean, even saying the word enunciation, you can feel how much

00:09:43.780 your lips and your tongue and even your soft palate and jaw have to move to accomplish that.

00:09:49.720 It is a physical activity. Now, hopefully that's interesting just to hear, but here is the amazing

00:09:55.840 liberation and the amazing benefit of this shift. Just like any other physical activity, like any other

00:10:03.740 sport or dance or a discipline that is physical, you can build muscle memory and get a lot better at it

00:10:10.380 very quickly and break habits that you think have condemned you to bad performance for the rest of

00:10:15.400 your life. You can break them almost instantly. Yeah. What you do, and we're going to talk about

00:10:19.340 some of these drills, you provide drills for people to help improve their speaking. They're all very

00:10:23.920 physical. You're using your whole body oftentimes in these drills. And we're going to talk about that

00:10:28.560 here in a bit. Before we got on the interview, you and I were discussing the connection between public

00:10:34.180 speaking delivery and manliness. And one of those connections has to do with the improvisational

00:10:40.520 nature of speaking. Tell us about that. Men, as a behavior that we're suggested to embrace in our

00:10:48.380 lives, and I don't think it's just men, I think it's a good behavior in general, but we're often

00:10:52.440 suggested to really embrace decisiveness in our life. Make a decision, take a risk, things like that.

00:10:59.180 Well, here's the miraculous thing about speaking. Talking is just a series of decisions. It is literally

00:11:06.540 a flow chart of words in which your brain does this miracle of choosing one word after another

00:11:15.400 and putting them together in a system that can be meaningful and powerful and persuasive to others

00:11:20.580 in your life. So embrace that decision-making that you get to do all day long every day and don't shy

00:11:26.460 away from it. I love it. I think improving your speaking can open up new vistas in your life,

00:11:32.200 whether romantically, in your career, and just also friendships. And I think if you look at the

00:11:37.000 history, we've written a lot about the history of masculinity in different cultures and time.

00:11:41.940 Public speaking in a lot of these cultures was a mark of manhood. It's how you proved your manhood

00:11:47.400 in ancient Greece, in ancient Rome, in the Viking cultures even. Your ability to tell a good yarn 0.65

00:11:54.140 was a way you kind of showed yourself as a man. So maybe we can hearken into that today and revive

00:12:00.140 that idea that speaking well is a manly thing. So let's get into some of these practices. I thought

00:12:05.420 this was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed your book because I'm a guy who makes his living speaking as

00:12:10.540 a podcast host. I thought this was very useful. And I loved about it. All your practices are very

00:12:16.580 physical. And one practice I thought was really interesting is you have people play with Legos.

00:12:22.160 So why are you having people play with Legos while they're public speaking?

00:12:26.200 Sure. The Legos are a practice exercise. And the reason I suggest people do it is because

00:12:32.740 it helps them learn to do incredibly powerful things like pause, like tolerate silence,

00:12:41.420 like be concise, like structure their ideas, like remove filler. And the way it works is this.

00:12:49.340 You consider some content you want to speak about. It could be a speech or even an elevator pitch or a

00:12:53.980 presentation, whatever it might be. And you get a stack of Lego blocks, but you don't start just

00:12:58.940 speaking right away. Instead, you pick up the first Lego block before you begin speaking. And then you

00:13:04.220 share just the first idea that you want to. You can also think of this like the first sentence of

00:13:09.680 your content. And at the end of that sentence or idea, instead of just powering through and going to

00:13:15.160 the next thing, no. In silence, you place down that Lego block and you live through that silence.

00:13:21.400 Pick up the next Lego block, still in silence, and then share the second idea that you have,

00:13:27.320 or the second sentence. Same thing. At the end of that sentence or thought, you place down the Lego

00:13:34.180 block, but this time you click it in place with the previous. So that clicking action even takes a

00:13:39.520 moment to complete. So it enforces some silence. Then you pick up the third one, still being silent.

00:13:45.740 Once you have it in the air, then you can say your idea out loud. Third thought, blah, blah, blah,

00:13:52.720 blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. At the end of that idea, in silence, you click the Lego block in

00:13:58.400 place. And you keep doing this. And then you'll probably run out of Legos. Maybe you use six or

00:14:03.380 eight or 10 or whatever it might be. And if you have more that you want to say, you simply unstack

00:14:08.900 them and continue. But what you'll probably find when you try this exercise is that you can actually

00:14:15.040 complete a lot of really powerful thoughts in just six main sentences or six main ideas, or even four

00:14:21.380 sometimes. What this is doing is using embodied cognition. So not just thinking about stuff, but

00:14:27.980 actually thinking or learning using your body. It is using embodied cognition to teach you how to do

00:14:35.280 those remarkable behaviors of pausing, owning silence, sharing your ideas in a deliberate manner.

00:14:43.600 And it's a much faster and a much better way to do that than all the thought suppression traps we

00:14:48.060 talked about. So if you have a problem with rambling, for example, this is a great drill to do to help

00:14:54.920 you not ramble anymore. And I have this problem. Sometimes I'll start a thought and I'll start speaking

00:15:01.980 it. And then I'm like, oh yeah, there's another thought I want to get to. And I just go into that

00:15:05.540 and it just sounds like a mess. What's interesting about this drill is not only is it going to help

00:15:10.200 improve your delivery, you're not going to sound like you're rambling and jumping from thought to

00:15:14.920 thought. This is an example of improving your delivery improves your content because you actually

00:15:19.760 have to stop and think about what you're going to say before you click on the next Lego.

00:15:24.660 Yeah. You know, it's not an exaggeration to say that this drill, I invented this drill in 2010,

00:15:32.080 and it's not an exaggeration to say that this drill is one of the foundational things that allowed me

00:15:38.220 to have a thriving career in this field. I started teaching at Columbia Business School in 2016 and

00:15:43.080 was giving feedback in presidential races soon after that. And that's not to brag about my journey.

00:15:49.320 I want the audience to hear this very clearly. That is to emphasize the power of this one single

00:15:55.900 exercise. Because to your point, yes, it doesn't just teach you better delivery skills, but it gives

00:16:01.500 you an opportunity to actually think of the brilliant, smart, insightful stuff that you have to say

00:16:07.820 and help you say those things. Okay. Again, this is a drill. It's not something you're not going to be

00:16:12.220 playing with Legos while you're giving your presentation or on your first date. Maybe you can do this

00:16:17.240 before so you can get some practice. So yeah, we're not telling people to play with Legos. But you do say

00:16:22.360 if you're doing like a Zoom call, for example, you could have the Legos maybe beneath you and you can

00:16:28.520 do it then because no one can see your hands. Yeah, it's a great clarification. Thank you for

00:16:33.180 bringing it up. This metaphor should really hit home for people as well, which is in sports, we

00:16:38.140 understand this. There are practice exercises you do in practice to build a certain technique that you

00:16:44.600 would never do in the game. I mean, you know, imagine a soccer player who had like a TheraBand

00:16:49.620 around their lower ankles to try to strengthen their legs in some way. Or supposedly Victor Webb

00:16:55.740 and Naya, the amazing center for the San Antonio Spurs, would practice dribbling a basketball with

00:17:02.040 gloves on. Or you've seen pictures of sprinters running with a parachute that they're dragging behind

00:17:07.320 their back. Now, none of those athletes would use those same things in the game. They're essentially

00:17:11.780 exercises to build some muscles. And that's exactly what this Lego exercise is. It's a

00:17:15.980 preparation practice exercise to build these abilities. And once you practice it enough,

00:17:21.660 what happens is you build muscle memory and you can do them without the tools. But to your point,

00:17:26.920 one of the gifts of remote communication is, yeah, you have this, what I call a digital cloak of

00:17:32.280 invisibility. And so you can do some of the exercises in the book, even real time when you're on

00:17:38.060 remote calls. Be versatile. And by that, I mean, okay, maybe if the Lego blocks are a little bit

00:17:42.980 too loud on a Zoom call because you hear some clicking, just substitute and use your hand

00:17:48.300 instead. Place your hand gently down on the table or desk in front of you. And when you do that,

00:17:53.940 your job is to actually pause for a moment and consider what is my next thought or my next idea.

00:17:59.340 So something that I struggle with and I'm pretty self-conscious about as a podcast host is

00:18:03.960 being articulate. I sometimes have a hard time saying the right word or saying the word I want

00:18:09.540 to say. So what I do is I say those filler words, um, I say like more than I'd like to.

00:18:16.680 And the thing is we edit a lot of those out before it goes live. There are other filler words that other

00:18:21.940 people struggle with. Something I've noticed talking to people on the podcast, a lot of our guests

00:18:26.900 will say sort of or kind of a lot, even when what they're saying doesn't need that sort of modifier.

00:18:33.580 And it actually doesn't make sense. Like someone will say, yeah, they're sort of pregnant. It's 0.98

00:18:37.900 like, okay, well you can't be sort of pregnant. You're either pregnant or not. Uh, so this goes 0.97

00:18:42.260 to the title of your book. Don't say, um, I know a lot of people when they're thinking about delivery,

00:18:46.660 they want to be better about not saying, um, or like, so what can people start doing? What are some

00:18:52.520 drills people can do to be more precise with their language and stop using filler words?

00:18:57.380 Yeah. So the title of the book is don't say, um, it's a trick. The antidote to that is a chapter

00:19:04.180 on linguistic precision. Now by linguistic precision, what I mean is exactly what you said,

00:19:09.280 choosing your words. The exercise, the kinesthetic exercise that I teach in that chapter is one called

00:19:15.700 finger walking. And I'll talk you through it right now. And then also talk about what filler is and

00:19:20.560 how to think about it slightly differently. The exercise is you take your second and third finger

00:19:25.840 of either hand and you, as though your hand were a tiny little person or pedestrian, you walk your

00:19:32.520 fingers across the table or desk in front of you. Walk your ideas one thought at a time. So when you've

00:19:37.840 completed a thought, bring your hands back to the front of the desk and walk them forward again. And what

00:19:42.520 you're trying to do here is you don't have to overthink it like matching syllable by syllable or word by

00:19:50.200 word. You're using the activity of walking your fingers to also walk your ideas across the table.

00:19:57.380 If you feel yourself saying, um, or a like, or a kind of, or a sorta, or have another non fluency of

00:20:03.440 some kind, you pause the fingers and you wait until you've regained your focus. And then you continue.

00:20:11.120 Now, if you say an, um, it's not a problem with your brain. It's not a problem with your mouth. Even

00:20:16.760 it's a problem with your fingers. You have not been specific enough placing your fingers. This

00:20:23.020 is an incredibly powerful drill for people because it's super versatile. You can do this on remote

00:20:28.380 calls. No one knows you're doing it. I mean, you and I could be doing it right now, every single

00:20:32.360 word if we wanted to. I'm not right now, but I certainly could because this is audio only and it

00:20:38.140 helps people do what linguistic precision is designed to do, which is choose words. I'll give you another

00:20:45.720 example. If a kid runs in front of a bus and you have a split second to try to help that kid,

00:20:50.980 no one says, uh, there, uh, uh, kind of a, uh, um, kind of sort of like kind of a, um, uh, a bus

00:20:58.180 coming because in that moment, we're totally focused on that kid and that message. And in that moment,

00:21:05.820 we choose words. So this exercise helps people unlock that profound and primal skill of choosing words.

00:21:14.080 Yeah. What I love about this drill, I've been practicing it is it gets you out of your head

00:21:18.440 because the tendency that I have when I say, Oh, I need to focus on not saying, um, I do what you

00:21:24.040 were talking about. Oh, the pink elephant. I said, don't say, um, don't say, um, and then I just end

00:21:27.520 up, I'm thinking about saying, um, all the time. So I say, um, a ton. So what this drill does, it just

00:21:32.240 gets you out of your head and into your body. And that will just lead to you being more fluid in your

00:21:36.960 speaking. Yeah, exactly. And filler language is a big topic. We can keep going about it if you want to.

00:21:42.140 I don't know. You want to dive deeper on filler? We've got a lot we should get to. So we can also

00:21:46.280 move on if you want. Yeah. A little bit more. What is something else about filler that you think is

00:21:50.360 important for people to understand? Yeah. Well, the first thing is folks be nice to yourself out

00:21:55.560 there. And the reason I say that is because let's break it down with some math for a moment. Let's say

00:22:00.640 you say, um, every five seconds, which probably strikes you as a lot. Um is a single syllable. It's a

00:22:08.040 single sound. Average rate of speech is something like this. I'm speaking very generally here, but

00:22:13.200 it's something like this. Let's call it three words per second. Let's call each word an average of two

00:22:19.980 syllables. So in a single second, you're saying about six syllables. So that means every five seconds,

00:22:26.300 you're saying about 30 syllables. I hope everyone stuck with me on that math. Now let's say you say

00:22:32.620 one um every five seconds. That means one out of every 30 syllables is a filler sound. And I'm

00:22:39.880 guessing if in other parts of your life, you had a habit that only affected 3% of a given thing,

00:22:45.660 you wouldn't be that hard on yourself about it. So they may not be as big of a deal as you think.

00:22:51.000 That does not mean it's not worth trying to be better at becoming more linguistically precise and

00:22:56.100 choosing your words, but be nice to yourself while you go on that journey. And as you're going on that

00:23:02.260 journey, I also invite you to broaden your idea of what filler language actually is. I'll give you

00:23:08.200 a couple criteria to think about it. If the answer to both of these questions is no, then this word is

00:23:16.140 a filler word for you. Here's the first question. Is it grammatically necessary? If the answer is no,

00:23:22.760 let's move on to the second one. Are you aware that you're doing it? And if both of those answers are

00:23:28.860 no, then that word is probably filler for you as well. Here's a ridiculous example. I one time 0.73

00:23:34.200 coached a client who used the word viscerally as filler. I swear every couple sentences viscerally

00:23:41.180 would appear. Didn't make any sense at all. Didn't fit grammatically. And he wasn't even aware he was

00:23:45.800 doing it. So keep in mind, there may be a bunch of words that you're overusing and that are not

00:23:50.500 necessary and that are crutches. Going to that point of being nice to yourself,

00:23:54.940 something that maybe I'll let people know. I've interviewed a lot of people on the podcast,

00:23:59.360 over a thousand. And a lot of those people are in the media. They're on radio. They have their own

00:24:04.520 podcast. They're on television. And even those individuals, they have a hard time with um and

00:24:10.580 like and well and the like. So if even the pros have problems with it sometimes, it's okay if you

00:24:16.420 have problems, but we can make improvements to it. So yeah, don't beat yourself up if you do say

00:24:20.740 I think that's useful because I think beating yourself up just will cause the problem to grow

00:24:26.240 even more. It doesn't solve the problem, just makes it worse. Yeah, this is my exact point.

00:24:30.240 Instead of feeling bad about the same behavior for now years or decades even, if there's something

00:24:36.040 that you feel bad about, stop feeling bad about it by actually doing something about it. So as

00:24:42.200 opposed to obsessing about your ums, no, just practice the finger walking drill and practice it

00:24:46.460 a bunch. And pretty soon what will happen is you will make improvement. And that improvement all

00:24:51.200 of a sudden makes you actually feel great, makes you have an appetite to improve further. And that's

00:24:56.180 the entire point about taking such a physical approach in the book. We're going to take a quick

00:25:01.080 break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. All right. So another delivery issue I

00:25:08.860 have, I'm going to use this as some private, this podcast as some private coaching, but another

00:25:13.360 delivery issue that I've been battling for a while is enunciation and speaking too fast. Sometimes

00:25:18.860 I'm the micro machine guy. Remember the micro machine guy on the advertisements? You're talking

00:25:23.560 my generational language right now. So yes, I do. Yes. You talk about how improving your

00:25:27.840 enunciation can actually help people slow down their speaking. How does that work? And what are some

00:25:32.380 drills for that? Yeah. Well, you don't have to believe me. You can just test it. Say some huge bit of

00:25:40.300 technical jargon or some multi-syllabic phrase. Now notice that in order to enunciate that multi-syllabic

00:25:47.800 phrase, it takes some time. Enunciation takes time. I'll give you a silly example, actually. Only silly

00:25:55.220 because it's a single word. If I don't give a little bit of time on the M in the word time, it could

00:26:02.700 sound like I'm saying tide or tight or type as in typing on a typewriter or a computer. Enunciation

00:26:10.280 takes time to actually make these sounds different from each other. And that's just a single syllable

00:26:14.640 word, time. So you could even think that saying time takes that thing, time. But what about a

00:26:22.780 multi-syllabic word like hypochondria or exceptionalism, things like this? To get through those words with

00:26:32.560 multi-syllables, you actually have to take the time to make all of those precise movements. If you were

00:26:37.280 thinking of a sport, again, in order to do a complex move in basketball or dribbling or something,

00:26:42.520 it does take time. So the very act of learning to enunciate more dynamically and committing to your

00:26:49.900 enunciation actually can slow you down. This is profoundly important to people because part of

00:26:56.700 why language is so incredible is it is onomatopoetic. And by that I mean words often sound like the thing

00:27:04.480 that they are. Slap, bell, snake. These are words that sound like the thing that they are. But if

00:27:12.860 you don't enunciate them, your audience will not feel the emotional impact of these. So the question

00:27:18.800 becomes then, if enunciation is important, which it is, and if focusing on it can actually have the

00:27:24.220 side benefit of slowing you down, if you are a very, very rapid speaker, how do you use or how do you

00:27:30.500 practice drills, I should say, to help enunciation? Now, in this book, everything that you're going to

00:27:36.040 read is things that I've invented. So lots and lots of drills that I've developed working with

00:27:41.580 professionals. But the next one that I'm going to tell you for enunciation has nothing to do with me.

00:27:46.960 I can take no credit for it. I will give a shout out to Andrew Wade. He was a voice and speech teacher

00:27:52.440 I worked with at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, but he's former head of the voice and speech at the

00:27:56.980 Royal Shakespeare Company in London. But even he doesn't get the credit because he learned it from

00:28:01.380 someone who learned it from someone. And the principle goes all the way back to ancient Greece

00:28:06.220 and an orator named Demosthenes. But we only know about this ancient orator named Demosthenes because

00:28:11.880 Herodotus wrote down about what he was doing. So it probably goes back even further than that.

00:28:18.120 So if that does not give it some historical cred and you want to try it, I don't know what will.

00:28:22.780 Anyway, you put an impediment in between your teeth. And if a toothbrush works, end of a pen,

00:28:29.340 your pinky finger, a slice of wine cork is a great one to use because it has a little give.

00:28:34.760 So you have a little cushion there. But people, very important, safety first. If you use the wine

00:28:40.340 cork, do not inhale the cork. That would not be a good outcome for speaking. Okay. But you put the

00:28:45.800 impediment in between your teeth just over to the side. So not right in front where it might block your

00:28:50.820 tip of tongue sounds like T and D and N and L, T, D, N, L. Put it just to the side. And then you

00:28:59.200 practice navigating around that impediment and making sure that every single syllable is totally

00:29:04.560 clear, even with that impediment. And of course, what happens is your enunciation gets supercharged.

00:29:10.040 And of course, your rate of speech slows too, because you have to navigate around that

00:29:15.580 impediment, whatever it is, in order to speak. Yeah, I've done that before. I think it's a very

00:29:21.460 powerful tool. Another tool that actors have used for a long time are tongue twisters. Unique New

00:29:27.800 York, unique New York. Is that something else you have clients do? Yes, absolutely. And by the way,

00:29:34.680 back to the sports metaphor, folks, this is not a wacky thing of like, oh yeah, I saw Ron Burgundy and

00:29:40.540 Anchorman do it. How silly that is. No, people. If you accept this brave idea I'm putting forth that 0.95

00:29:48.460 speaking is physical, it is a sport, then you would never do a sport without warming up. You might pull

00:29:54.700 a muscle, it might hurt yourself, or you just might not perform at your peak. Speaking is the same thing.

00:30:00.500 So it stands to reason if you are relying on the muscles of speech to perform well and accomplish

00:30:07.380 whatever goal you have as a communicator, it stands to reason you should warm up. So those tongue

00:30:13.020 twisters, those are a type of warmup. And there's a whole bunch of them. I'll give you the funniest

00:30:17.180 one, which this is not for the faint of heart, folks. Do not try this at home. You might get

00:30:22.020 injured. Here we go. I am a pleasant mother pheasant plucker. I pluck pleasant mother pheasants. I'm the

00:30:27.820 best pleasant mother pheasant plucker. Whoever plucked a pleasant mother pheasant. You can see why that has

00:30:34.120 some pitfalls. Yeah. Would you do that with the cork in your mouth too? Is that something you can

00:30:39.180 do to increase the strenuosity of the drill? Yeah. You all have seen Steph Curry of the Golden

00:30:44.180 State Warriors doing his pregame prep when he dribbles multiple balls and makes the job harder

00:30:49.100 and harder and harder for himself. Yeah. Increase the level of difficulty because you are a communication

00:30:55.340 athlete. And here's another fun thing. If you have a smartphone or even a cell phone, I'm guessing many

00:31:01.420 people listening to this do. That gives you camouflage to do tongue twisters and warm up

00:31:07.660 anywhere in the world, anytime, and no one knows that you're doing it. So memorize some of the

00:31:13.460 tongue twisters you can find in the book or on our website and talk into your phone and just do these

00:31:18.600 tongue twisters like you're having a conversation with someone else. And the reason I say this is

00:31:22.760 because I really want to remove any excuse you have that would prevent you from embracing this life

00:31:28.240 practice because it's a great one. That's what I love about your book and your ideas is that it

00:31:34.500 gives you something to do. Oftentimes when you read public speaking books or how to improve your

00:31:37.900 delivery, they don't give you anything to do. So it's just you read it and you're like, okay,

00:31:42.180 I'll try to remember that next time. We've got stuff to do. I love this. Let's talk about vocal

00:31:48.320 variety. That's another thing people often think about when they're presenting. It's like,

00:31:51.740 am I being too monotone or am I doing too much vocal variety? How should people think about vocal

00:31:59.020 variety in their public speaking or should they not think too much about it? They should think

00:32:04.560 about it for the next two or three minutes when I teach them about it. And then they should forget

00:32:09.000 it for the rest of their lives. And here's a cool reason why you know it, you know how to do it and

00:32:13.500 you know it in your bones because humans use vocal variety for some really important things like

00:32:19.640 communicating the meaning of what they're saying, like communicating the emotion of what they're

00:32:24.660 saying, like framing things with some context or orientation. And also crucially to surprise each

00:32:32.380 other. We use vocal variety to keep people engaged. Monotone voices actually don't use any novelty.

00:32:40.200 When there's no novelty, our brains tend to disengage. Think of this like the white noise of a fan in the

00:32:46.340 background. Soon you hear that pattern will never change. And so now that you know it won't change,

00:32:50.880 you can ignore it forever because it's no longer danger or delight. You hear that? So this is not

00:32:57.020 something you should have to be dramatic. This is a core part of how humans reach each other.

00:33:03.580 How do you improve it then? So here's a quick system and then you can forget it.

00:33:08.320 Vocal variety is something humans have been doing a long time. I just established that. So I didn't invent

00:33:13.060 that at all, but I did invent this naming system. You're about to learn to make it alliterative

00:33:17.580 and therefore hopefully easy. Pace, pitch, pause, power, and placement. Pace is speed. Pitch is high

00:33:26.640 and low. Pause is silence and varied lengths of silence. Power is volume. So that's loud and soft,

00:33:36.620 loud and soft. And then placement means where the sound is placed in your body. We are musical

00:33:45.060 instruments. We have a reed in our throat. That's our vocal cords. They vibrate and they get amplified

00:33:52.340 throughout our whole entire body. So we can have our voice placed differently. If you have a friend

00:33:59.700 with a really nasal voice, what's happening technically is the sound is only amplifying in the

00:34:05.080 mask of the face and the nasal passages. So we all can relate to that. Of course, what we're aiming

00:34:10.560 for here is more vocal variety for the most part. Most people contract their vocal variety when

00:34:16.420 they're nervous or giving a big presentation or public speaking of any kind, or to your point,

00:34:20.660 the example of being on a date, even when we're under pressure, we tend to contract our vocal variety

00:34:25.420 and we should instead be trying to expand it for the most part. You can go too far and we could talk

00:34:31.240 about that if you want to, but that's very, very rare indeed. For most people, the trick is to

00:34:36.940 expand it. And the cool thing is they're very interlocked. So you honestly can expand any one

00:34:42.420 of them. And what they tend to do is bring all the others along for the ride. And I can tell you a

00:34:47.160 couple of exercises to do that if you want to know. Yeah. What are some exercises that people can

00:34:51.740 start doing today to improve their vocal variety? Yeah. Here's a fun one. It's called silent

00:34:56.180 storytelling. I want you to talk, but you don't get to use any sound. So you have to basically

00:35:02.360 mouth the words or lip sync the words. You have to move your face a lot, lots of facial expressions

00:35:08.600 to help an audience know what you were saying. And you have to allow your hands to gesture with

00:35:13.140 freedom and ease because you don't have the advantage of sound. So think of this like lip syncing

00:35:19.200 a little bit. You're not playing charades. Let me be clear about that. You're not acting things out

00:35:23.340 per se. You're just heightening all of the physical aspects of your communication because

00:35:28.480 you don't get to use sound. So you're lip syncing words, but as expressively as you can. Do that for

00:35:35.560 a few minutes and then put sound back into the equation, but you're not allowed to contract

00:35:41.100 everything. Okay. Your enunciation and dynamic lip movement has to be just as big. Your facial

00:35:46.980 expressions, just as big. Your gestural ease and freedom, just as expanded. And what happens?

00:35:53.340 Like magic is all of a sudden your voice has much more vocal variety. I'll teach you a phrase I

00:35:59.880 learned from Ralph Zito who taught at the Juilliard school when I trained with him. And the phrase is,

00:36:05.720 your voice is your body. And I'll say it differently. I'm going to pound my chest for a second. You can

00:36:11.420 hear this. Your voice is your body. And I'll plug my nose now. Your voice is your body. So if you change

00:36:20.100 how your body is operating, your voice changes dramatically too. And the silent storytelling

00:36:24.140 exercise does that.

00:36:26.640 I love that. That's a great one. Okay. So we've talked about things we can do to improve our delivery

00:36:30.980 with our voice, enunciating, slowing down, being more precise with our words. Let's talk about

00:36:37.320 eye contact. I know a lot of people when they're speaking in front of a group or a large audience,

00:36:43.520 they might be thinking, okay, where am I supposed to look? Do I just look at the back? Do I look at a

00:36:47.780 random spotlight? Do I look at a group of people? So how do we do eye contact when we're speaking to

00:36:55.260 a group? And why is it important to even think about eye contact when you're speaking to a whole

00:36:58.560 bunch of people? It's essential to think about it because the way we talk about eye contact,

00:37:04.660 it's a misnomer. I mean, in fact, I don't even like the phrase eye contact because it sounds like

00:37:09.980 it's something you have. Brett has good eye contact, like it's a possession or a trait even.

00:37:16.900 But it's not. Eye contact is an activity. It is an activity of evaluating if your message is

00:37:23.380 reaching your audience or not. That's why we do it. And you can think of a whole bunch of thought

00:37:27.920 experiments, talking to a lost tourist or helping a person who doesn't speak English understand

00:37:32.760 something. You would be looking at them and looking at them directly to learn as much information as

00:37:37.700 you can. So eye contact is crucial. And it's crucial when you're talking to large groups as well. And this

00:37:44.260 is one of the places we hear the worst kind of feedback, which is, again, the reductive make eye

00:37:50.180 contact for 8 to 12 seconds. Okay, why? Why that length of time? People have watched people, they say,

00:37:56.520 well, that's about how long they do it. So I guess we should make that the average. No. Look at

00:38:02.340 individual people and try to elicit some kind of nonverbal response or cue from them to see if your

00:38:08.560 message is resonating. And look at different people around the room. Now, if it's a huge audience,

00:38:12.860 you don't have to look at every single person. If it's an audience of thousands, you will never be

00:38:17.580 able to look at everybody. But if you do reach individuals in various places of the audience,

00:38:23.260 what happens? Because of how we're put together as communication instruments, your communication

00:38:29.440 will improve because of that eye contact. It will unlock a virtuous cycle because as you work harder to

00:38:36.080 reach that person, you're going to gesture, you're going to enunciate more, you're going to use vocal

00:38:40.960 variety and breathe. All of these things will unlock. So look at individual people. Try to

00:38:46.800 elicit some kind of a nonverbal cue from them. You may not win, by the way. You may not get that.

00:38:52.620 That's okay. Even in the act of trying, you'll still get some success. And then throw out all the

00:38:58.120 garbage 8 to 12 seconds, four different quadrants of the room. Look at people's foreheads so you don't

00:39:03.620 get distracted, scan above their heads. All this conventional wisdom that I would posit is not wise

00:39:11.140 at all. Let's talk about one thing that a lot of people maybe think too much about when they're

00:39:16.280 public speaking. They often get like, was it Ricky Bobby and Talladega Nights where they're like,

00:39:20.800 I don't know what to do with my hands. So what are you supposed to do with your hands and gestures

00:39:25.500 when you're speaking? Yeah. Here's a hilarious thing, folks. There's a good reason that you're

00:39:31.020 confused about that because you can probably think on your own of two, three, five, 10 don'ts about

00:39:38.280 gestures. It's like, don't point at your audience. Don't make distracting hand gestures. Don't cross

00:39:44.240 your arms. Don't fidget your fingers. Don't keep your hands in your pockets. Don't jangle the coins

00:39:49.560 in your pockets. Don't put your hands behind your back. That looks like you're hiding something.

00:39:53.360 I mean, it just goes on and on and on. And so soon you have the question like, well, okay,

00:39:57.540 what the heck should I do with them? And all those don'ts back to the idea of thought suppression and

00:40:01.800 the title of the book, of course, just makes people chronically self-focused, which is why you end up

00:40:07.580 with these limbs hanging off your shoulders and you have no idea what to do with. So this goes back to

00:40:13.600 the same idea of other focus. You have to figure out how you use your hands in real life when you're

00:40:19.160 focused on reaching the other person, not thinking about what you're doing with your hands. For most

00:40:23.960 people, that means moving your hands more than you might think. I am not a fan of the don't

00:40:30.460 make distracting hand gestures advice for all of the reasons I just said, but one of the most brutal

00:40:35.500 is this, is that when people tend to constrain their gestures, they tend to constrain everything

00:40:40.820 else too. So their vocal variety vanishes. Their face becomes totally stoic and still. Oftentimes

00:40:47.240 their enunciation even becomes less dynamic and they just look like a more boring version of

00:40:51.620 themselves. Who wants that? So what should you do? Well, you should try to liberate your hands to

00:40:57.820 do what they want to do, to speak with gestural freedom and ease. Now, I'm not saying make just

00:41:03.180 like general hand waving repetitive motions. I'll give you a funny example. I one time was involved

00:41:09.480 somewhere where they had some curriculum that suggested that people think about gestures like

00:41:13.960 keeping a beach ball aloft. Okay. So everyone dutifully stood up and waved their hands like

00:41:21.200 they were keeping a beach ball aloft, but they just kept doing the same gesture over and over again.

00:41:25.240 Now, the idea of course, was to try to get them moving their hands a little bit, which is good,

00:41:29.800 but the image and the activity was so arbitrary that it didn't actually unlock how people speak in

00:41:35.180 real life. So instead, what I would suggest is there's, there's two exercises in the book that I

00:41:39.940 list. One is the silent storytelling drill that I already described for vocal variety. And again,

00:41:47.000 how this drill can work is you speak, but without sound. So you exaggerate your facial expressiveness

00:41:53.460 and yes, use your hands as much as possible to try to illustrate what you're talking about so that

00:41:59.200 an audience watching with no sound could understand your message. And what happens of course, is your

00:42:05.340 hands get liberated to move quite a lot. And then once you've done that a bit, let it go, put sound

00:42:11.340 back into your speech and then enjoy the freedom that your hands have just realized. So that's one.

00:42:18.160 This next one is for you athletes out there. Get a ball, a bouncy ball you can throw against a wall,

00:42:23.560 like a racquetball, tennis ball, something like this. And then practice speaking, whatever content you want

00:42:29.760 to, but throw the ball at the wall and catch it on the rebound. But now this time, try to throw the

00:42:35.640 ball in as big and as wide a range as possible. So you have to really reach to catch the ball on the

00:42:41.740 rebound and then talk while you do this. Now it's going to be difficult because your brain's doing

00:42:48.080 two things, catching the ball and talking. So it'll take some coordination to get it down. But then what

00:42:53.240 you're going to realize is, oh my gosh, my hands have this huge range they can actually occupy.

00:42:57.260 And then hold the ball in your hand, don't throw it anymore, and continue to speak. But allow your

00:43:04.100 hands to tell a story too. All of those tools are to liberate people who tend to constrain their

00:43:09.840 gestures way too much. The rare over-talkers with their hands, it's not that you're over-talking,

00:43:16.880 it's that you're telling the same darn story over and over again. They're just doing the same thing. 0.93

00:43:22.400 So instead of giving yourself thought suppression of don't make distracting hand gestures or don't

00:43:27.020 talk with your hands. Instead, challenge yourself to be better. Make your hands tell a better story.

00:43:34.900 And those would be some tools for gestures.

00:43:37.100 I love that. So we've talked about some really concrete drills that people can start doing today

00:43:41.440 in their daily life to improve their delivery. No matter how much you prepare, there's a change

00:43:46.420 you'll still get nervous when you're speaking. Any advice for people to help manage their nerves when

00:43:52.400 they do arise when they're in a public speaking situation? Or even it could be a first date

00:43:56.920 situation. Yeah. I want to answer this with as much generosity as I can. And to prove that point,

00:44:05.220 if you go to the book's website, don'tsayum.com, you get the Navigating Nerves chapter for free.

00:44:11.960 And I call it Navigating Nerves because that should be the goal. Not stopping, not preventing,

00:44:17.660 not battling, navigating. And we're going to keep that chapter free because whether or not people

00:44:24.380 buy this book, I desperately want to help folks who have been stuck in some sort of self-defeating

00:44:30.680 cycle for a long, long time to get some liberation about nerves in their life. So I called it Navigating

00:44:39.460 Nerves because most people make the first mistake by being in opposition to their nerves. So all those

00:44:46.140 combative verbs, battle, suppress, fight, all they do is make the nerves worse. Again, it's back to

00:44:53.360 this idea of thought suppression. So if you're telling yourself, don't be nervous, don't be

00:44:57.200 nervous, stop being nervous. Or even putting some self-judgment on there. Like, why are you always

00:45:02.080 nervous? Why do you get so nervous? Why are you so bad at this? Don't be nervous. Stop being nervous.

00:45:06.640 You can hear the voice. All you're doing is actually amping up your nerves and also amping up

00:45:12.500 your feelings of failure about that. So step number one, you're going to be nervous. And you might in

00:45:17.800 fact be nervous for the rest of your life. And they might even get worse. Why? Because you are

00:45:25.340 going to attain bigger and bigger victories in your life. Your career and your life and your goals and

00:45:30.640 everything about your life will get better and better, folks. Especially if you do all the lessons

00:45:34.880 they're learning on the Art of Manliness podcast, you're going to get better and better, which means

00:45:40.020 you'll attain bigger and bigger heights. And when you do that, guess what? It might feel even more

00:45:45.600 nerve-wracking to be at that new height. That's good. It means that you care. It means that you're

00:45:52.240 invested. It means that your central nervous system, by the way, is very reactive. These are good

00:45:57.040 things. So stop trying to fight them. You will be nervous. Now that you've reset them, your goal is not

00:46:05.260 to distract yourself with something utterly arbitrary, like just imagine your audience in

00:46:10.320 their underwear. Because now your brain has to multitask. Naked people, and what am I trying to

00:46:15.160 say? Naked people, my message. Naked people, my message. Naked people, my message. Naked people, ah. 0.90

00:46:21.840 Instead, find something physical and unmistakable and measurable that you can focus on that gives you a 0.90

00:46:28.540 positive point of focus. That could be grounding your feet. That could be really being mindful of your tip

00:46:34.320 of tongue sounds in your enunciation. That could be your eye contact and trying to elicit a reaction

00:46:40.580 from various faces in the room. That could be breathing, feeling your backside ribs expand as you

00:46:47.700 allow air to come into your body. It could be any of those things, but put your focus on something

00:46:52.360 physical and then allow that to help you navigate through the nerves. And the better and better you get

00:46:59.880 putting your attention a hundred percent on that thing, what happens is the nerves begin to fade

00:47:06.260 away. But not because you fought them, but because you've put your focus elsewhere and somewhere more

00:47:12.660 productive. Well, Michael, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more

00:47:17.240 about the book and your work? Yeah, for sure. Well, you can follow us on social if you're a social fan.

00:47:22.540 You can just search for GK training and all the various socials you might want to,

00:47:27.520 but more specifically for the book, the book's website is don't say, um, just the same title,

00:47:34.100 don't say, um.com. And my company is GK training. And the URL there is just GK training.com. And that's

00:47:44.340 where you can find all the warmups and tongue twisters and exercises I talked about earlier.

00:47:48.300 Fantastic. Well, Michael Chad Heppner, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:47:51.740 My pleasure too. Thank you.

00:47:54.020 My guest today was Michael Chad Heppner. He's the author of the book, don't say, um,

00:47:57.280 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information

00:48:00.600 about the book at the website, don't say, um, .com. Also check out our show notes at

00:48:04.720 aum.is slash um, where you find links to resources, where you delve deeper into this topic.

00:48:08.960 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:48:20.140 at artofmanlies.com where you find our podcast archives and check out our new newsletter.

00:48:24.160 It's called Dying Breed. You can sign up at dyingbreed.net. It's a great way to support the 0.87

00:48:28.640 show. As always, thank you for the continued support and 10 likes times. Brett McKay

00:48:32.340 reminding you to not listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:48:38.960 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - January 14, 2025

Stop Saying Um (And Fix the Other Vocal Tics That Are Sabotaging Your Speaking)

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