If you are under 30, or you have loved ones under 30, please listen up. I decided to end my long relationship with the motor vehicle this year, as a kind of one year test: life without a car. As a result, I’ve been taking the bus to school. This particular bus is loaded with undergraduates chatting freely to each other. So of course, I eavesdrop, mainly because it is fun. What I hear worries me.
Here is my message for our aspiring leaders. Stop using the words like, totally and so. Now there is nothing wrong about the words like, totally and so. However, if they are used as a substitute for thought, they make you sound kind of innocent, unsophisticated, uneducated and young. You know what I’m talking about, comments such as, “She like, told him off, like.” or “He was totally drunk last night”, or “She sounded so sick”. Recently I heard a young man talking to a young woman for about 5 minutes. After the first minute I started counting. He used the word like 47 times in the following 4 minutes. After a while, you don’t even notice your language tics.
The problem with language tics is that they are habitual, and can be very hard to shake. I am still working on getting rid of the filler word “uhm”. The sooner the words like, totally and so are erased from your vocab, the better. This is particularly important for young women, who are already fighting a number of stereotypes. Women are already subject to the perception of incompetence much more than men are, and the “valley girl” language of the 80s will only reinforce that impression. For both young men and women, who are struggling with an unforgiving job market, these small behaviours can change your life, because, whether it’s fair or not, you are being judged about the appropriateness of what you look like, what you say and how you say it.
Listen to how leaders you admire speak. Do you every hear Hillary Clinton or Emma Watson say like, totally, or so? How about Bill Gates or your favourite professor? Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of former presented John F. Kennedy ended a campaign for the U.S. Senate after a botched speech replete with filler words. We trust people who are articulate. Who sound sophisticated. Who sound mature.
Undoing the habit of filler words is tough. I found a blog with some good tips to help you shake filler words. So start now, enlist the help of friends and family, to erase the career killing filler words.
Categories: Communication, Learning, Women in Management
Thinking is Hard Work 
I so totally like this post. Thank you!
Reblogged this on Adventist Schools Victoria – Learning and Teaching and commented:
I wonder what language tics I have? Do you have a language tic? This brief post shows how one’s unconscious use of a language tic or three might leave a negative impression on potential employers! Worth a read.
You refer to leaders and their articulate non use of filler words. All too often they have a prepared speech void of any tics. Left on their own without any visual aid as guidance it soon becomes apparent that they, like the majority of us, fall back on those filler words. However some people just can’t seem to communicate without overpowering a sentence with filler words.
I agree that we all have filler word tics, and that without prepared scripts we fall back on them. What I’m talking about isn’t the occasional use of “like” but, like, the like constant use of the word. That said, we’re all human, so we all have our communication challenges.
Identifying and eradicating filler tic words is a worthwhile endeavour and I agree with you, it might even lead to being seen as fit for hiring. However, the endeavour is doomed to failure if you don’t understand where you picked up your inability to speak to the majority of the human race.
Besides nerves, as stated in the article you referred to, a large portion of filler tics are picked up from the culture that you grew up in. Every culture, and sub culture, has its own set of filler words and it simply may be used to be “Cool” or to belong. A California surfer, for instance, can have a five minute conversation while uttering fifteen to twenty seconds worth of coherent dialogue. Farmers in conversation over coffee tend to use the expression, “YEP, Yep, yep!”, at least once every minute. From our high schools have come most of what you were talking about in your blog. I was once told that in elementary school we learned “You know!”, in high school we advanced to “Like!”, and finally we had to enter university/college to pick up the ultimate, “Man!”. If you didn’t you simply were not a part of the “In” crowd.
Interesting that once you leave the halls of education your “In” crowd status instantly makes you part of the “Out!” crowd status. Knowing where you picked up your filler tics and why can go a long way towards eliminating their use.
There, also, is an exception to the rule (as always). The creator of the tic is the only one who knows its value and proper use. This person can usually fit in anywhere and for them the tic is not a filler it has a purpose.