Caroline Kennedy has gone public with her desire to take Senator Clinton’s soon-to-be-vacant New York seat – and with her ‘you knows’.  On one two-minute YouTube clip a buzzer notified us of each one, and there were more than 30. 

What’s going on?  How serious a public speaking flaw is the verbal tic?  And what can Kennedy do about it?

Caroline Kennedy is not ready for prime time.  She needs a coach.  She should have done the work before the opportunity came up.  Apparently everyone up to now in her life has been too polite to mention her verbal tic, but our magnificent unfettered free press suffers from no such handicap and the damage has been done.

That said, how serious is the verbal tic?  It’s only serious if everyone notices it, and in this case they have.  Ums, ahs, you knows, and so on, are the verbal staples of teenagers, and they drive their parents crazy, but as long as they’re talking to other teenagers, it’s part of the tribal identification and it’s OK.  It’s not OK for Caroline Kennedy, because we expect more from a public figure than we do our teenagers. 

I’ve been asked many times by and about speakers whether or not ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ – the grown-up equivalent of ‘y’know’ – are fatal for speaking.  Again, the answer is only if people notice.  President-elect Barack Obama has a fairly serious “ah” habit, but few people notice, and his general reputation for eloquence and charisma means that he doesn’t get called on it.  Not a problem for him.  And anyway, we want our President-elect to choose his words carefully now, right?

How can you work on a verbal tic?  The first step is to have someone point it out to you.  I was giving a speech on public speaking a number of years ago, when a charming Southern woman near the front raised her hand (about 2 minutes into my speech) and said, “You claim to be an expert on public speaking, but I’ve counted half a dozen ‘ahs’ in the first 30 seconds of your speech.  Why should we listen to you?”

I banished ‘ahs’ from my speeches after that incident.  But my immediate response at the time was to ask the audience if anyone else had noticed, and they hadn’t.  In fact, they took the woman to task for her rudeness and her disruption.  She later apologized.  But I was grateful for the learning opportunity.  Really.

The next step is to begin to monitor yourself, closely.  Every time you’re tempted to say ‘you know’ or ‘ah’, simply become silent until the next word is ready.  You’ll soon find that the annoying tic is gone from your speech patterns. 

And if you’re slow to succeed, get a friend to fine you a dollar every time you slip.  You’ll be amazed at how fast that works.