Curse of the 'erm'

Posted by: Ian Finch | 23 January 2007

Eight of us spent two days learning presentation and public speaking skills last week from a couple of colourful ol' fella's who are masters of their art. Many many things came out of the session but two key points for me where:

1. to... slooow... down.... let the words.... be..... DRAMATIC!
It felt so forced at first but then when you saw yourself on video afterwards you were suddenly aware of how much you simply just babble away and a few simple key statements, clearly said, are all you need to get a point across...

2. avoid 'noise' particularly that most hateful of words  'erm'
Oh my goodness!... When it was pointed out to us how often we just made this useless noise during our natural speech it started becoming to me like that U-uuurrrh! siren on Family Fortunes everytime I or someone else said it – HORRIBLE!

It did get quite amusing though when one of us just got all stressed at one point and let out more erms than vowels in one sentence they were giving! : “erm, I,erm, just, erm, can’t, eeeeeerrrrrrmm, er, ahhh, can't do this! Argh!"....

...hehe, seriously, watch out for people doing it on TV – David 'erm', Beckham is the worst!

We, as human beings can't seem to help ourselves when it comes to 'erm'  - it's crazy , so we’re now getting an 'erm' jar in the office – we must be rid of this cursed sound!

Posted in: Business Social