Speaking Without Thinking

Do You Talk As You Think or Think, Then Talk?

Do you think through what you say before you say it or do you talk it out as you go I asked that question of a coaching client many months ago and he spent (no kidding) 12 minutes uninterrupted by me talking and thinking it through finally I interrupted him and said “I’m going to ask you the exact same question again and you have to answer using no more than 10 words” he thought about it for a few seconds then laughed and said “I guess I talk first and think later” he was right everyone has his or her own style and there is nothing to suggest that one method is better than another just that one is more annoying than the other imagine if a customer asked you a question and that had to endure several minutes of you speaking before she got her answer imagine being in a sales meeting with a rep who has very few unspoken thoughts imagine reading a blog without punctuation or capitalization for that matter it would read like one big long run-on sentence as if the blogger was chronicling a stream of consciousness instead of carefully considered bullet point thoughts that would sure be annoying wouldn’t it?