How do I stop saying um and uh when I present?
Filler words are a speech habit, not a sign of weak thinking or poor preparation. Research shows ums don't come from nerves, but listeners still assume they do. The fix is trainable: record yourself to hear the habit, then replace the filler with a small pause placed after a complete thought. The goal is control, not zero.
Most executives I work with are not worried about their ideas. They are worried about the sounds between their ideas. They finish a board update and the first thing they tell me is: "I said um a hundred times up there."
My latest client came to me with exactly this. His sentences were full of "ah", the sound he made while his brain was catching up with his mouth. So we worked on his breathing, and I taught him to take a small mini pause at the exact moment where the "ah" used to go. A short silence while he thinks, then he continues. And the pause doesn't only help him. It gives the people listening a moment to absorb what he just said.
Here is the first thing I tell every client, and it surprises everyone: filler words are not caused by nerves.
In 1995 a researcher called Nicholas Christenfeld asked exactly this question, in a study published in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior under the title "Does it hurt to say um?" His answer: ums are not a product of anxiety or poor preparation. They are part of how the brain plans speech. But when he asked listeners what they assume about a speaker who says um, they assumed exactly that: nervous, unprepared. The sound is innocent. The assumption it triggers is not.
That gap is the whole problem.
What the research actually says
Everyone does it, and listeners are built to handle it. Um and uh are so normal that listeners use them without noticing. In a study published in Memory and Cognition (Fox Tree, 2001), hearing "uh" actually helped listeners focus on the word coming next, because they took it as a signal for a short delay. One or two fillers in a presentation are invisible. Nobody's career ever ended over a single um.
Heavy use still costs you, even when nobody consciously counts. In Christenfeld's experiments, the ums shaped how audiences rated the speaker even when the audience couldn't report that the ums were there. You don't hear your own fillers, and your listeners don't count them, but the impression forms anyway. It forms as a feeling: this person is less sure of their material than the person who spoke before them.
But don't just delete the um and freeze. This is the most important nuance in the research, and most advice on the internet misses it. When Christenfeld edited a recorded talk, replacing the ums with silent gaps, the silent-gap version left a worse impression than the version with ums. The version with no gaps at all left the best impression. A frozen pause in the middle of a sentence reads as a person lost. A deliberate pause after a complete thought reads as a person in command. These are two different animals.
The deliberate pause is what senior speakers actually do. A case study of Barack Obama's most persuasive speech found his pauses were placed after a complete message, held unusually long, and paired with a reflective expression. The pause was not dead air. It was part of the message. Listeners read it as self-confidence.
Here is something I teach on top of the research. After a strong emphasis, or after a strong quote, leave a space. Silence. You just said your most important sentence. If you keep talking, you step on it. Give the room a moment to absorb it, then continue. That silence after your best line is what makes people remember it.
Fast is not the same as fluent. A classic study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Miller and colleagues, 1976) found that faster speech was rated more credible and more persuasive. People take this as permission to rush. Rushing is exactly what creates the gaps your mouth fills with um, because your brain can't plan the next sentence at the speed you're speaking. The credible pace in that study was a fluent, unbroken pace. Not a panicked one.
The fix is trainable, and the studies used the same method I use. In work published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (Mancuso and Miltenberger, 2016, replicated in 2019), speakers learned to notice their filled pauses and to answer each one with a silent pause instead. The fillers dropped, and the improvement held up in front of real audiences. Awareness, then a replacement. That is the whole recipe.
Why it doubles in a second language
If you present in English and English is not your first language, your fillers multiply. Research comparing native and non-native speakers finds that filled-pause patterns are among the clearest markers of second-language speech, because planning a sentence costs more brainpower in a language you're still carrying. While your mind searches for the English word, your mouth buys time with a sound.
This is not a flaw. It is arithmetic. And it means the drill below matters even more for you than for a native speaker.
Every language has its own filler. Arabic speakers reach for "ya'ni." Portuguese speakers reach for "tipo" and "ne." In conversation these are natural, even warm, and I'm not asking you to strip them out of your life. In a boardroom, in a language that is not your strongest, they cluster at exactly the wrong moments: at transitions, after questions, and right before your most important number. The goal is control, not zero.
The most common filler words
Every language has them, so you are in large company. While you do the drill, these are the ones to listen for.
- Sounds: um, uh, er, ah, mmm.
- Crutch words: like, you know, I mean, basically, actually, so.
- Checks: right?, okay?, you know?
- Hedges: sort of, kind of, I guess.
- Openers: well, so, look, listen.
- In other languages: ya'ni (Arabic), euh (French), este (Spanish), tipo and né (Portuguese), ne (Japanese), ähm (German).
You don't need to banish all of these. You need to know which two or three are yours, and the drill below is how you find out.
The drill: one week, ten minutes a day
- Record yourself for 90 seconds. Answer a real question from your work, out loud, phone on the table. Don't perform. Talk.
- Count your fillers with a tally. Play the recording back and make one mark on paper per um, uh, like, you know, or your home-language filler. Don't judge them. Just count. This tally is not self-criticism; it is the exact awareness step the studies used.
- Find the two or three spots where they cluster. Almost everyone has the same ones: the first sentence after a question, transitions between topics, and the moment before a number or a name.
- Replace, don't delete. At each cluster spot, take one slow breath in and let there be silence, placed after a complete thought. You are not removing the um. You are giving the room a beat to absorb what you just said. Practise placing the pause at the end of a sentence, never in the middle of one.
- Re-record and re-count daily for one week. Same question or a new one, same tally sheet. Watch the number fall, and notice how the pauses start to feel less like holes and more like presence.
Toastmasters clubs have run a version of this for decades: a designated "Ah-Counter" tallies each speaker's fillers and reports at the end of the meeting. Decades of club practice and the published studies agree on the same two ingredients: awareness, then a replacement.
How this works in the sessions
When I work with an executive on fillers, I first find out where they cluster, because the cluster points to the cause. Fillers that spike after questions are a thinking-speed problem. Fillers that spike at the opening are a pressure problem. They're trained differently.
From there, the work has three layers. First, the emotional side of the moment, the part of the method I call Confident Presence: breathing, grounding and techniques drawn from NLP and hypnotherapy that change how your body reacts when the room turns to you, so you stop rushing and the gaps stop appearing. Second, delivery: pace, pause placement, and the record-and-count drill above until the new habit holds. Third, structure, so your transitions are planned signposts instead of bridges your mouth has to build in real time.
Frequently asked questions
Will one um ruin my presentation?
No. Research shows ums are not a product of anxiety, and listeners handle a few of them without noticing. The problem is heavy clustering, which quietly shapes the room's impression even when nobody counts. Aim for control, not zero.
Will a pause feel awkward?
To you, yes. A two-second pause feels like ten from behind the podium. To the room it reads as composure, especially when you place it after a complete thought and stay physically settled through it. The research on charismatic speakers found exactly this: long, deliberate, post-message pauses read as self-confidence.
Is rushing really that bad if my content is strong?
Rushing is what creates the gaps your mouth fills. Studies find a fluent, brisk pace sounds credible, but a panicked pace does the opposite, because it produces the ums, the backtracking and the swallowed endings. Slow down by one notch and most of the gaps close on their own.
