Boring Meetings Suck: Get More Out of Your Meetings, or Get Out of More Meetings

“Um … aah” Sucks

“Aah, and here, as you can see, um… is the, aah, same diagram but with the, aah, added cost of, um, advertising. And, aah… if we continue to grow this group then, um, we, aah, need to control this expense.”

Put me down now! I can't take it. You are boring people to death at 60 aahs per minute. Wanna lose your audience's attention quickly and make sure your meetings suck even more? Then just, aah, keep aah, um, doing this, and you'll be guaranteed to succeed.

While a few of these aah and um speech habits are common and have meaning beyond revealing a speaker's discomfort, a multitude of them can drastically affect your ability to keep audiences engaged in your presentation.

What are they? Linguists call them neutral vowel sounds, and they're said to be the easiest sounds to make in the English language. Yup, that means other languages have different sayings: In other languages, you may hear “eh,” (Spanish) or “etto” (Japanese). You may also hear in English phrases such as “you know” or “like” inserted into speech.

People use um or aah in conversation when they anticipate a delay and want to avoid a silent gap in speech that could be confusing to a listener. Similarly, a presenter might emit a growl-like uh or aah sound to avoid that confusing moment of silence. The problem occurs when these stall tactics take on lives of their own and not one single sentence can be uttered without an um, uh, or aah. Attendees not only see you as continually searching for words, ...