“Fillers” are the empty words and phrases that slip into our speech…that minimize the impact and import of all the other good things that we say.
In English, “um”, “er”, and “ah” are the starter fillers …that many of us use without any thought. Amongst the ‘kids’ today, “you know”, "whatever" and “like” still seem to be the go-to fillers for the Millenial generation. (Who remembers “Valley Girl”? Frank Zappa and his daughter, Moon Unit, were mocking “like” and other valley girl-isms way back in 1982.)
For those of us in business and professional circles, we have our own Filler Favorites. “To be honest…”, “At the end of the day…”, and “If you will…” are three meaningless phrases that seem to pop up like weeds, even among those of us who are reasonably articulate.
This all hit close home to me when I read this essay by Jerry Weissman on the HBR blog yesterday, “Never ask ‘Does this make sense?” I happen to know that “Does this make sense?” happens to be in my own personal bag of fillers. As Weissman accurately points out, this phrase sends out two negative messages. It creates uncertainty on the part of the speaker about the credibility of the speaker’s content, and it casts doubt about the ability of the listener to comprehend what the speaker said. Neither of which is good.
A much better question (which I will try to incorporate) is the nonjudgmental query, "Do you have any questions?"
So what?
Why not use fillers? As linguists point out, fillers can ease the flow of conversation. So, why not use them?
In the first place, fillers are meaningless. Presumably, for those of us who are communicators, we want to delete meaningless words and phrases from our speech…leaving that which is meaningful.
Here’s another reason to delete fillers from our lexicon. They’re selfish. Here’s what I’m talking about.
During a two-way conversation, we often speak by taking turns. When someone thinks that it is their turn to talk, they do. Otherwise, they listen (or pretend to.) Inevitably, there are short periods of silence as the speaker pauses to let the other person take over. But, sometimes the speaker doesn’t want to give up the podium…and inserts a filler to signal that they want more time to speak. When the listener hears the “filler”…they continue to listen rather than start talking.
As a coach, I often listen to replays of my coaching conversations, as a means to continually improve how I communicate, coach and listen. I have noticed that, when a speaker is comfortable with silence, they don’t seem to have the need to insert the “filler” words. (There is no better way to improve your conversational speech and “kick the habit” of lazy, interruptive, or bad speech patterns…than by listening to yourself!)
Like I said...does this make sense?
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