What We're Reading Now

Reduce Your “Ums” When You Present

25 November 2025

Barbara read Don't Say Um: How to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life by Michael Chad Hoeppner and learned some new public speaking tips.

Tags: barbara read, communication, public speaking

I used to coach physician executives on effective presentation skills for the American Association for Physician Leadership. They would fly to our office in Tampa where I had a video camera set up, and we would work for three hours. They brought a prepared speech. I would record them and then we watched their presentation together.  After the first time of watching themselves, they would immediately notice what they needed to work on and then I would ask a few more questions to help them to pick some things to change and make recommendations. After four to five times of presenting and watching themselves, they were always better and more comfortable by the end of the session.

If you are serious about improving your presentation skills, practicing on camera is always my first recommendation. However, now I’ll also encourage people to read Don’t Say Um by Michael Chad Hoeppner. His exercises are excellent, and his book is much more affordable than hiring a coach!

Hoeppner said, “This book is solely concerned with delivery—not only because it matters more (which it does), but also because it is the fastest, most innovative, and most memorable way to improve the content, too.”

Hoeppner grabbed my attention when he immediately contradicted the title of his book, “Don’t Say Um” and said not to say “don’t anything” again. He calls the habit of saying what you don't want to do thought suppression and believes that it doesn’t work. Instead, Hoeppner gave physical exercises to get the result you want from your body when you are communicating live in front of a large group, small group, one on one, or virtual.

When I started my career of public speaking in 1987, not everyone had video cameras, but my husband had one at his office. I went there on a Sunday with a prepared speech and practiced. I gave it and watched it over and over each time making corrections to my voice, body, and content.

After three hours of presenting and watching myself, I not only got better, I carried an image in my head of presenting the way I wanted to. I also loved that I was the one giving the feedback to myself instead of someone else. I eventually bought a video camera to have at home. I set it up and practiced every time I had to teach a new program and especially when I started teaching the Allison Partners Resolving Conflict course because that topic has always been more challenging for me than others.

Barbara Linney presenting at the Charlottesville Chamber of Commerce Business Women's Round Table in 2011

Your smartphone makes the whole process easier now that you take a video camera everywhere you go. However, you’ll still need to repeat the process of recording and watching yourself until you achieve a version of your presentation that pleases you. Even though I never liked doing it myself, I also recommend that you ask a few people to watch you and record yourself at the same time. Then you can ask that trusted audience to watch the recording with you and give you feedback. It may sound torturous now, but I think you’ll be pleased with the results. Too often people just practice in front of others without recording themselves. Watching yourself on film until you improve the things that are important to you is what transforms practice sessions into something more effective.

Hoeppner was passionate about what it takes to change and positive you can do it if you practice what he describes. He said, “Oral communication is a physical art. Becoming a better speaker takes muscle prep and practice.”

If you do what his book recommends, you’ll learn how to stand, make eye contact, and breathe and how to avoid “um,” mumbling, monotone, a quivering voice, and many other things. You can teach your body what to do rather than just telling yourself what not to do.

Hoeppner described every muscle exercise in detail and asked you to stop reading and do the exercise. Then he became a bit bossy in the next sentences and asked almost every time—"Did you do it? If not, stop, do it now." At this point, his tone and style started to get on my nerves, but I appreciated the exercises, so I persevered.

Here are a few examples of some of the strange things he’ll ask you to do and then the three exercises that were the most helpful to me.

• Throw a ball against a wall to get more comfortable using hand gestures rather than clutching your hands in front of you.
• Stack Legos or sticky notes on top of each other at the end of each sentence to help you pause at the end of a sentence and avoid a habit that grates on my nerves—upward inflection. “Upspeak is the common term for a very specific habit of inflecting the voice up in pitch at the tail end of sentences and phrases.” He said it makes you sound “like you’re asking for permission.”
• To work on vocal variety, he recommends you make your hand into a fist, hold it up to your mouth, pretend it is a horn sort of like a kazoo and sing a song saying “doo doo doo” pushing the sound all the way to the end of your hand.  Then take your hand away and speak some of your speech content in high and low notes rather than in a monotone. You can watch a video of all the exercises on his website dontsayum.com.

I tried everything he recommended through Chapter 8. Then I was tired of doing the exercises and quit as I read Chapters 9-12, but I perked back up in Chapter 13 on posture.  

He had detailed instructions for posture and standing. Stretch up as tall as you are, relax your Achilles heel, bend your knees slightly, loosen your jaw, let your shoulders relax downward, imagine small sandbags in your hands. When I tried this, I immediately realized I lock my knees when I stand. I’ve tested his technique in a 25-minute post office line and felt much better. I look forward to trying it at my next social event. 

Another of his concepts that was very helpful to me was his cure for vocal fry. I didn’t even know the term. Vocal fry is a gravelly sound in the back of the throat caused by not getting enough air over your vocal cords. Breathing well can fix it. You also need to sit up straight if you are seated.

I’ve attend a Zoom writing group almost every Thursday night from September to May since 2020. We read aloud the pieces we have brought. Recently, I noticed two things: I was having difficulty enunciating and getting my lips to form words fast enough. Since my husband died in 2022, I don’t talk as much as I used to. This has actually been okay with me emotionally, but I realized I was losing my strong speaking skills.

I tried one of Hoepnner’s suggested vocal warmups— "Red leather, yellow leather," and ones I used to do—Peter Piper picked a peck of pickle peppers and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. With just a little practice, I went back to my normal speech pattern and felt much more comfortable in our next writing group.

My method for coaching people on how to eliminate the “ums” when presenting was to almost memorize your talk, so you are not uming as you search for your next word. He made the cure physical. To get rid of filler words such as "um/like/kinda/sorta/y’know," walk your first two fingers across a table or desk only going forward and don’t move a finger or make a sound until you think of the precise word you want. You can watch him explain this exercise by searching for Finger Walking on his website that is available to anyone who buys the book.

Many of his exercises involve improving your breathing. I also think everyone needs a breathing technique to calm themselves before they present and especially if they find themselves getting anxious during their presentation. My daughter Allison explained one of our favorite tools in her five-minute DisruptHR Charlottesville talk last month, Control Your Breath: Unlock Your Power.

 

At the end of the book, Hoeppner addressed the issue of AI and how everyone will have access to the same well-researched content and good writing. He said, “The communicator who can say the spoon-fed content from the AI earbud convincingly will be perceived as better. The communicator who says the same stuff as everyone else but with superior delivery will look like the original one, even though the content is similar.”

More importantly, I think people would like to feel less anxiety before they present and maybe even like the experience while they are presenting. That may feel like a stretch, but I believe doing Hoeppner’s exercises, practicing deep breathing, and watching yourself on video before your next public speaking event will make for a powerful and enjoyable presentation.

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