When it is time for you to talk, make yourself effortless to be heard and easy to listen to. Eliminate from your speaking useless filler words that make you sound uncertain, unprepared, even uneducated: “you know… uhm… huh… ah… okay, okay…” At the very least, if you must say them, say them silently to yourself when speaking out loud.
Research in the past has shown that people believe what they see over what you say. A recent study reported in the Wall Street Journal showed that people believe what you say based on how you say it at a two-to-one ratio.
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Benton and Wright-Ford, co-authors of The Leadership Mind Switch (McGraw-Hill, 2017)
D.A. (Debra) Benton has been helping great individuals and organizations get even better for over 20 years. Just as exceptional athletes rely on excellent coaching to hone their skills, Debra's clients rely on her advice to advance their careers. She focuses on what is truly important to convert what you and your organization want to be from a vision into a reality. TopCEOCoaches.com ranks her in the World's Top 10 CEO Coaches noting she is the top female. And as conference keynote speaker she is routinely rated in the top 2%. Her client list reads like a “Who's Who” of executives in companies ranging from Microsoft, McDonald's, Kraft, American Express, Merrill Lynch, United Airlines, and PricewaterhouseCoopers to the Washington Beltway and U.S.Border Patrol. *She is the author of ten award-winning and best-selling business books including The Virtual Executive and CEO Material. She has written for the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Fast Company. She has been featured in USA Today, Fortune, The New York Times, and Time; she has appeared on Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, and CBS with Diane Sawyer. To learn more Debra advising leaders, coaching, facilitating a workshop, or speaking: www.debrabenton.com
