How to stop using filler words in meetings

You hear yourself on a meeting recording and every "um" sounds louder than the sentence around it. So in the next meeting you police every word, lose your train of thought, and come out sounding worse than before. Counting fillers while you talk splits your attention at the exact moment you need all of it.

This article covers where filler words come from, how to figure out which moments trigger yours, and how to replace the sound with a short pause. Work on one habit at a time, because monitoring everything at once is what made things worse in the first place.

The advice comes from Tristan de Montebello, co-founder of the speaking school Ultraspeaking; Wes Kao, co-founder of Maven and altMBA, who coaches executives on communication; and Matt Abrahams, who has taught strategic communication at Stanford's Graduate School of Business for 25 years. Two peer-reviewed studies fill in what "um" actually does to listeners.

Why you say um in the first place

Filler words show up at boundaries. You started talking before choosing your first sentence, you're reaching for a name or a number, you're not sure how the next point connects to the last one, or you're making sound so nobody takes the floor while you think.

They aren't purely bad, either. Speech researchers have found that listeners treat "um" and "uh" as a heads-up that a delay is coming, and in some experiments people recognized the word right after a filler faster than the same word without one. An occasional "um" in ordinary speech does you no real harm. The damage comes from a pattern: a filler at every transition delays your point, pads your answers, and can make you sound less certain than you are.

So aim at the clusters that bury your point, not at a count of zero.

Find the moment that triggers yours

Pull up a recording of a recent meeting and mark ten fillers. For each one, write down what was happening right before it. Most will fall into one of four buckets:

• Starting. You began speaking before you'd chosen the first sentence.
• Searching. You needed a name, a number, or the exact word.
• Connecting. You didn't know how the next point related to the previous one.
• Holding. You made sound to stop someone from jumping in.

The bucket tells you what to practice. A starting problem needs a prepared first sentence. A searching problem needs notes in front of you, or permission to pause while you look something up. A connecting problem needs structure before the meeting. A holding problem needs shorter turns plus explicit signposts like "there are two reasons," which tell people a pause is coming and the floor is still yours. And if your fillers mostly appear while you circle around for a point, you're dealing with rambling more than with fillers; the stop rambling playbook covers that side.

Fix what's causing the fillers

Tristan de Montebello spent years training speakers at Ultraspeaking, and he treats filler counting as working on a symptom.

If you can't tolerate silence, you'll keep finding sounds to fill it. Stop saying "um" and you'll start saying "so," or "right," or stretching your last word out. So pick one upstream change and run it for a week. If you rush, speak at about 85 percent of your usual pace. If you start before you're ready, wait until the first clause has formed. If you're afraid of being interrupted, announce the size of your answer up front: "I have two observations." And if silence feels dangerous because meetings make you anxious in general, the meeting confidence playbook works on that directly.

Prepare your point without scripting it

Preparation cuts fillers at the source: if you've already decided what to say, there's less planning to do out loud and fewer gaps to fill. Before any meeting where you expect to speak, write three lines:

Wes Kao tells the executives she coaches to do a version of this even when they have less than a minute between calls.

Write your first sentence out word for word and leave the rest as bullets. A fully scripted answer backfires: the moment the conversation moves somewhere you didn't plan for, you're searching again, and the fillers come back.

Replace the sound with a pause that has edges

The mechanical swap works like this: finish the phrase, close your mouth, take a quiet breath, then start the next complete thought. Don't stretch the final word and don't bridge with "so" while you decide. Closing your mouth matters because you physically can't say "um" with your lips together.

For length, aim for about half a second at ordinary transitions and one to two seconds before an answer that matters. The pause feels far longer to you than to anyone listening. Record yourself once and you'll hear that the gap you thought was awkward sounds deliberate.

The breath in the middle does double duty. Matt Abrahams points out that nervous speakers breathe shallow, and since the voice is, in his words, "a wind instrument," shallow breathing makes you sound tighter and shakier than you actually are. His fix is specific:

Deliberate silence is a skill of its own, useful well beyond filler removal. The pauses playbook goes deeper on how to hold a pause without losing the floor.

Practice in conditions close to the meeting

Reading about pauses changes nothing by itself, so run this drill a few times a week:

1. Record a 60-second update on your current project, using point, proof, next step.
2. Listen once for meaning. Could a colleague repeat your conclusion back?
3. Listen once for transitions. Mark only the fillers that hide a boundary between thoughts.
4. Record it again. Keep the content and replace each marked sound with silence.
5. Take one target live. In your next meeting, focus on a single thing: your first sentence, or one deliberate pause.

One natural "um" inside a clear answer does less damage than a polished minute that never reaches a conclusion. Measure whether you got to the point sooner and sounded settled while doing it.

What to say when you need time

Some fillers are covering a real need: you genuinely have to think. Say so instead.

These buy the same time an "um" buys, but out loud and on purpose, so listeners hear someone choosing their words carefully.

Frequently asked questions

Should I ask someone to count my filler words?

A count gives you a baseline, but ask them to note the situation too. You need to know whether your fillers cluster at starts, transitions, hard questions, or searches for a detail, because each one has a different fix.

Does speaking more slowly get rid of filler words?

It usually helps, because you get more planning time per sentence. It won't fix unclear structure or nerves on its own, so pair the slower pace with a prepared point and deliberate phrase endings.

Do filler words make me sound less confident?

They can, when they delay the answer or come bundled with hedging. Listeners forgive fillers quickly when the answer itself is clear and supported, so put your effort into the conclusion first.

How long should a pause be?

One quiet beat between thoughts, and up to two seconds before an important answer. Record yourself, because a pause almost always sounds shorter than it felt.

The one-page plan