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Does it affect your performance or limit your capabilities at work? How do you handle meeting or conference calls? Or presentations?
On the flips side, do you work with anyone that does?
As an immigrant in the US, I don't find this affects me much. A lot of people just assume this is my accent, though some wonder why my accent is not same as others from my native country.
Growing up in my country, it was a bit rough, people including grownups & teachers loved to point out that I sounded funny. Sometimes, it was worse. I can guess it would have impacted my confidence & career significantly if I was professional back home.
I love it that people are more polite in the West especially in the US. Sometimes people have difficulty understanding me and they are very apologetic about it.
I try to speak slower and louder in business especially on phone. I might slightly exaggerate pronunciations. And if I see confused look on a listener's face, I would pre-emptively apologize for my accent and repeat or spell out the word. I find this is better for conversation than being defensive about my accent.
I have fear of public speaking but I am slowly working to overcome it. If I have to do presentation, I just slow down a lot, take a lot of breaks in between sentences to let audience process a new strange accent. Usually, my presentations are with my coworkers, so they are used to my accent.
If I was in sales or public facing position than it might have impacted me more. I am lucky to be a programmer.
Also I worked with someone stutter a lot. Everyone was super nice, and they would let him finish talking. If arguments started and he didn't get a chance to say much, my manager would step in and ask him direct question if he had anything to add.
For me the biggest issue was bullying. My first name is Robert, so I became known as Wobert. What also didn't help was that I was born in England and moved to Northern Ireland in the mid-80s. My non-rhotic English accent made me a target for bullying like you wouldn't believe.
I spent my teenage years working on fixing it by myself. Just sitting practicing my speech. Eventually I lost my English accent and sort-of fixed my rhotacism. I say sort-of my Rs sound like Rs, but they ae very flat and I can't roll them at all.
Occasionally I'll mispronounce an R as a W, but usually that only happens when I'm tired or very distracted.
When I don't make an effort, my words aren't pronounced as well as they should and people have to ask me to repeat what I said (or intended to say).
My job doesn't involve phone calls or presentations so there fortunately isn't a need to speak for a long period of time.
I dread making or taking phone calls and even though I'm confident on my programming knowledge the anxiety prevents me from looking for another job where I can be making what I think I'm worth, on the flip side I would like to be a salesman talking to people all day and not having a desk job but my anxiety prevents me from doing so, anxiety worsen my stutter which in turns makes me more anxious ( a never ending cycle)
I'm a stutterer and English is my second language so I get even more nervous when trying to speak, it does affect my work because I can't really communicate what I'm trying to say without going back to a whiteboard explaining a programming concept or something so I usually resorts to not saying anything even when I know what other people are saying is bs. I dread making or taking phone calls and even though I'm confi…
I get nervous anticipating any form of public speaking outside of a small group people that I feel comfortable with.
Fortunately, my team mostly uses slack for intra department communication but slack can't be used for everything. The worst for me are round table meetings where participation is mandatory, i.e going around and taking turns to introduce yourself, or conference calls with new people.
If I stumble on a word more than twice I just use a synonym, or a description. Get some smiles in meeting crowds, but no one really cares. It can even be a helpful "calm everyone down" thing, since people can really get stressed out.
I definitely think it has had an impact on my personal and professional life, to what degree I am not sure. I try to avoid giving group presentations or talking on conference calls when I don't have to.
It has never cost me a job or prevented me from being successful as a developer (CTO now) but it is constantly on my mind and makes trivial situations more complicated. I have learned over the years that a lot of it is in my head, and most people will never know, but it still affects how I conduct myself on a daily basis.
If you do suffer from blocking I recommend always trying to be prepared for any speaking situations you might be in. Do your best to stay relaxed (face, mouth, lips), speak slowly and consistently, taking normal breaks regularly so that any blocks don't seem out of place. The best therapy is really just practicing speaking blocking words aloud by yourself or with a partner/friend.