After my previous article I got sent the following question; “How do we practice repeatedly at the work place where there are not many opportunities to ’screw-up’”

You’re right about “practicing” at work. Just like going out on course with your serious golfing friends is not the best time to practice you swing by throwing down an extra ball or two. Again, in golf, you prepare and practice for the ’serious’ rounds on the driving range and/or going out alone on a quiet, uncrowded course. Work is your ’serious’ speaking round for which you must practice in easier situations that have no consequences.

Having said this, in a serious round of golf where you start playing poorly and have no chance of a decent score/winning, the best thing to do is look at it as a ‘practice round’ and forget about the score. At work, if your stammering / stuttering has overwhelmed you and your fluency is falling apart, what are your choices? You can either continue to struggle for ‘fluency’ with tricks and avoidances, but we all know this only makes it worse, or, you can do an attitude re-adjustment and use it to practice those tools, if you have tools, that will lead to better performance/speech.

In our programme, we encourage each other to make a ‘disclosure’ saying something like: “boy my speech is really falling apart today, I’m going to have to concentrate on some things to get it back. just bear with me.” Most times the colleagues are very supportive and understanding and appreciate something being said (rather than you/us continuing to try to hide the problem). If you get ridiculed, it’s time to take a good look if this is a job you would want to keep as such disrespect/lack of support is probably not limited to your speech.

Another thing about practicing is what I said about “feared word/sound” = “feared club”. Just like you have to hit maybe hundreds of balls at the driving range to gain confidence in a club that has let you down, you have to make many many contacts (phone and street) using the word or sound that caused you to block/avoid or use tricks in order to regain confidence. and this will carry over to the work-place to improve your speaking performance.

Dave McGuire

In part one, I described and made comparison between tough golf courses and tough speaking situations, loss of confidence with certain clubs and loss of confidence with certain words or sounds, and how this can spread to big stuttering / stammering blocks other words, sounds, and situations. So what to do?

The driving range and calls to supportive friends/practice contacts. 

Let’s start with golf.

Interesting how the psychological stress of a difficult course or challenging opponent manifests itself in ‘hitches’ to swings. Pro players after walking 18 holes in a tournament will go right to the driving range to “re-groove” their swings especially those that fell apart on the course. You see this with professional tennis players even after a 4 hour clay court match who go directly to the practice courts to correct those strokes that lost them points.

“Directly” because bad habits tend to put down roots if you don’t take care of them right away.

Okay, after 18 holes, I’m not in the mood, as a beginning amateur, to go right to the driving range. I’d prefer a gin and tonic and good dinner . But were I a professional, where my livelihood depended on how well I play, you better believe I’d get to the driving range after my round. As a (fairly serious) beginner, I’ll go to the driving range the next day. (There’s a serious analogy to this ‘beginner/pro’ stuff later.)

Starting with my easiest club, usually a pitching wedge, I’ll go back to basics, even breaking my swing down to three phases, until I can hit at least 5 in a row where I want with good, clean contact. Then I’ll go to the next easiest club, gain my confidence, then end up with those clubs that gave me the most trouble the day before on the course.

I will hit many more balls with my ‘challenging’ clubs than with the others. Sometimes I can get my confidence back that same session, but usually I’ll have to go back the next day and possibly the day after to totally regain confidence (at least on the driving range). Going back on a course before confidence is gained on the driving range is usually (but not always) productive.

And now to stuttering / stammering:

Call your supportive friends (for people in the McGuire Programme, use the phonelist and coaches) asap.

First an important point: Mentioned above, professional golfers will get to the driving range/putting green immediately. Amateurs usually don’t go immediately. We who stammer / stutter need to play this sport on the professional level … after-all, our livelihood depends or will depend to a great extent on how well we can verbally communicate. Therefore, we need to get to the equivalent of a driving range (phone calls and contacts) right away. Procrastinating until it is convenient or you’re not so tired is for amateurs.

Starting with those words you still have confidence in that didn’t fall apart in the pressure situation, use them in short sentences while exaggerating the speaking technique you know will lead to improvement. (In the McGuire programme this means pause, take a full costal breath, speak with deep and breathy resonance, and fully release residual air, practicing also hit and holds and block release.) Very effective is to use a lot of voluntary stammering (which we call ‘deliberate dysfluency’) on these less challenging words.

Move from the easiest words to the ones that gave you the most trouble and have becomed feared. 

 Now move up the stairway of feared situations. Starting with your support network, get these to the place where there is such an absence of fear that saying these once panic-striken words is so easy, it’s boring. 

Like with getting your swing back on the driving range, this might take a couple of days/sessions. But do it. As you repeadly experience that you can indeed regain your confidence, both with feared clubs and feared words, it will take less time on the driving range/ making contacts, to get it back.

Dave McGuire

I many times hear from those of us working to get on top of our feared words (words that trigger the stuttering block) “why do we have to make over a hundred contacts”? We know this in the McGuire Programme as “overkilling the word or sound”.

Being a beginning golfer, I experience the same thing mostly on a golf course called “Glen Annie” here in Santa Barbara. Substitute ‘feared word’ for ‘feared club’ and you got the picture. Because of the difficult fairways at Glen Annie, where the slightest slice or hook puts you in unplayable rough, i very seldom finish the course thinking “Wow, that was a great round of golf”. On the contrary, most times my thoughts are of giving up this lousy sport and putting that time into my tennis. Psychologically, Glen Annie is tough because of it’s ability to trigger frustration, self-doubt, and confusion all of which creates a downward spin.

One dynamic is my confidence in using certain clubs (usually the ones that put me in the rough, duffed the ball, etc.) takes a big nose dive resulting in reluctance to use that club in the future. Right now it’s my formerly trusty 5 wood. Avoidance. Oh yeah. And if I don’t do something about it, that fear of the the 5 wood will, ahem, “metastisize” to other clubs.

Sounding familiar? Let me spell out the comparisons:

Golf/stammering comparison #1:

Glen Annie = That tough situation full of confusing dynamics resulting in approach avoidance conflicts resulting in some stuttering blocks (chunked, sliced, hooked, skulled shots), resulting in the cycle of panic/frustration, resulting in even more blocks and loss of confidence.

Golf/stammering comparison #2

5 wood, 7 iron, etc. = The word that became charged with fear because it fell apart because of the tough situation.

Golf/ stuttering comparison #3:

Loss of confidence on one course will lead to loss of confidence playing on another course = Loss of confidence in one speaking situation (where stuttering/ stammering blocks went out of control) leads to loss of confidence in all situations.

Golf/ stuttering comparison #4:

Loss of confidence in a few clubs will lead to loss of confidence in all clubs including putting (and golf in general) = Loss of confidence in saying certain words will lead (metastisize) to loss of confidence in all words (and speaking in general).

Dave McGuire