How can I help support a colleague who stutters?
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How can I help support a colleague who stutters? I volunteered to be a resource for a colleague who is learning a new software. They have just joined our company and we are both working from home. We have been talking by email or zoom chat. Today they asked to do a zoom call to troubleshoot something that is a little more complex. When they requested the zoom call they mentioned that they stutter and that it is worse over zoom. We had the chat and we talked for a while and worked through some things, I think it was a really positive interaction. My question is what can I do in conversations with them to be supportive? When they would start to stutter my instinct was to guess what they were trying to say but I thought that might seem condescending or impatient and since I was trying to help them learn the new software I wanted to hear exactly what they thought and I didn’t want to put words in their mouth. So I just waited for them to finish before responding. Was that the right thing to do? Right before the call they messaged me to let me know they stutter, I didn’t comment or say anything about it we just immediately started our zoom call. Should I have said something like “Okay, thanks for sharing that with me”? Is there anything that I should do or not do, or say or not say to help them feel comfortable? Sometimes when I am on zoom with people I will be multi tasking and I will be talking but turned away from the camera to look at my other monitor while I take notes etc. Is it better to consistently maintain eye contact with them on zoom? Or would breaking eye contact sometimes be helpful? Or is there anything else in my facial expression or body language that I should be aware of? I want to do whatever I can so they feel comfortable coming to me with questions. It seems like a really difficult thing to deal with as a new person at a company when everything is remote and they haven’t had a chance to meet much of our staff face to face. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.