[Briel]

How you speak. It's something that almost all of us have to do everyday for work and our personal lives and how you speak has a huge effect on how your message is perceived, and each of these interactions over time shapes your relationships.

Since many of us are taking online calls now, this is a great time to record your side to hear how you really sound like. You may be quite surprised - it's not just that your voice sounds different, how often you use filler words, repeat yourself, ramble and the tone that you used can be quite different than what you thought it was. From there, you can identify your weak points, practice (speak on your own and record it) and improve.

[jimhefferon]

I've been making some YouTube videos, and editing the automatic cc makes very clear how many um's, and stutters I have. It is a bad habit I have gotten myself into. Shocking.

[mavelikara]

What are effective ways to improve on this aspect?

[alexanderdou]

I would recommend recording yourself speaking.

I'm currently between roles (COVID layoffs), and I got feedback on my webcam interview demeanor and speaking style.

My approach for this was to practice my answers to common interview questions out loud while recording myself with Photobooth and then watching the recordings.

There are a couple of dimensions in which I've found this helpful:

   * Sheer number of reps. These help me get more comfortable with telling my career story up until this point, and I've found that my comfort has a direct impact on my interviewer's comfort
   * I spot tics and habits that I wouldn't have otherwise. I noticed that I had a tendency to start my answers with "so, uhhh...". In some cases simply realizing the presence of a tic/habit was enough to get rid of it
   * The recordings reduce the channels from 2 (output + input) to just 1: this helps me analyze what I'm saying and how I'm saying it without having to also think about what I'm going to say
   * Recordings also provide a historic record that I can look back on and see improvement, which helps keep me motivated when the job hunt gets me sad

As a note, if you're anything like me you'll probably hate the sound of your voice. The thing that clicked for me was realizing that this is just the voice that everybody else hears and my friends & family love, and so there's nothing to be ashamed of

[keenmaster]

1. Talk to people who don't dominate the conversation. Talking to conversation dominators is anti-practice: you're practicing how not to finish your thoughts and express yourself fully.

2. Read smarter material.

3. Write more and edit your writing more than you normally would. That will force you to think about where you can improve your verbal expression.

[oblio]

> 1. Talk to people who don't dominate the conversation. Talking to conversation dominators is anti-practice: you're practicing how not to finish your thoughts and express yourself fully.

I guess the opposite is true if you're the one dominating conversations :-)

[chordalkeyboard]

your comment and its parent reminded me of this:

https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html