That’s a tough question to answer. If like many people you find your knees buckling, hands sweating, and voice quivering each time you step in front of a large audience, you will say No! Others seem naturally comfortable when speaking in public. Every word seems to come out just right. To them it must be easy.
But what about technical presentations? Are they ever easy? While some people may have a knack for technical improvisation, we claim that good technical presentations are never easy. Many things must come together for success, including knowledge, clarity, confidence, integrity, and interest. Such a combination can only be expected from solid, intelligent preparation and much careful practice. If that sounds like a lot of work, consider the alternative.
Steve has always been the outgoing type. With a resonant voice, lively gestures, and friendly smile, he can entertain and even lead large groups of his friends in ordinary conversation. But recently Steve had to give an oral presentation in his junior level thermodynamics course. Feeling confident, he decided to “just be himself” and take a stab at the fifteen minute talk without notes, slides, or any real preparation. Five minutes into the talk, Steve realized he was struggling to make sense of his topic. He turned away from the dry erase board to face his audience for the first time:
I realize I’m kinda all over the place here, but that’s just how my mind works.
Everyone stared. Steve turned back to the board and tried to recover, but not even his biggest apologetic smile could save him. Embarrassed and a bit bewildered with himself, Steve ended his talk after just ten minutes. The instructor awarded a D grade rather than an F, but Steve knew the truth. His presentation was a failure.
Some preparation is better than none, but technical presentation is never routine. Care must be taken to make sure the preparation is both sufficient and appropriate for the speaking task at hand.
Kelly, another thermodynamics student that semester, never dreamed of “winging” her presentation. On the contrary, she put in diligent work, carefully preparing slides and rehearsing her talk beforehand. But the longer Kelly spoke, the more she realized she really didn’t understand her topic in any depth. She became increasingly nervous and unsure of herself, and it showed. Eventually she started reading her slides verbatim. Despite her best intentions, without sufficient preparation her presentation collapsed. Some listeners sensed her growing panic and looked away in embarrassment, while others became bored or even amused. In the end, Kelly’s lack of confidence destroyed the effectiveness of her message.
For most of us, technical presentation is akin to musical performance: it is a complicated, learned skill. Talent helps but is not enough. Still, even a young performer, or technical presenter, can become proficient if he sets his mind to it. For engineers there is no option; the skill of technical speaking must be mastered. Regardless of your organization, your discipline, or the level of your position, you will find yourself delivering important talks to important people. When it’s your turn to get up in front of that audience, you want to deliver something helpful, motivational, even inspirational. You want to earn the audience’s respect and appreciation. In short, you want your technical talks to be good.
1.2 How Can I Learn to Be a Good Presenter?
Here’s a basic roadmap. First, you’ll need to understand the fundamentals of technical presentation. A general public speaking class will cover only some of these (and not every engineer has time to take a public speaking class anyway). So we’ll provide these fundamentals in later chapters. Second, you need to do some homework by watching skilled presenters and noting how they implement the fundamentals. You’ll probably spot some more sophisticated speaking techniques that go beyond the fundamentals; take particular note of these. Third, practice makes perfect. You’ll need to practice speaking until the fundamentals become second nature. Private rehearsal is a good way to get started if you are inclined to be nervous; even gifted speakers rehearse in private before the big event. Truly useful experience will come in front of your colleagues or fellow students. Fourth, you’ll have to stick with it. Growth comes through repeated practice. Sure, things may be rough at the start, but you will learn with each attempt. It won’t be long before you get a taste of success. And finally, you’ll have to keep your skills sharp by staying in practice. Don’t forget this last point — it’s easy to get rusty if you don’t stay active. Seek out speaking opportunities during lulls. You won’t regret it!
Regardless of how you get started, it’s important to realize the serious and relatively complex nature of the technical speaking task. For Steve, the student subject of our recent story, that realization has come the hard way. But Steve can recover quickly from his rough start if he brings to bear the engineering mindset he has been developing in his classes. He needs to view his speaking struggle as an engineering problem, and solve it. By focusing some penetrating thought on the matter, he might even gain a level of insight that ordinary public speaking experts lack.
Not wishing to repeat his nightmarish experience, Steve asked for some blunt feedback from his thermodynamics instructor. The response was no surprise: “Your choice of topic was appropriate, but you were clearly unprepared. As you can now see, technical speaking involves far more than being spontaneous and hoping for the best. Good presentations don’t just happen — they are planned.” But Steve was just beginning to consider all this. He still had many questions. For example, he was aware that presentations could be aimed at a variety of educational levels. Presentations could have drastically different time limitations as well. Some might be intended to persuade, others mainly to inform. What sorts of fundamental considerations underlie all the diverse possibilities? After some pondering of these questions, the general “technical presentation problem” began to strike Steve as a sort of design problem, akin to the complex technical problems he was learning to solve by standard design methods in his engineering courses.
Steve now saw technical speaking as an engaging problem and had a viable way to attack it. We’ll return to his epiphany (about how technical presentation can be approached as an engineering design problem) in the next chapter. Right now, let’s spend a little time to drive home the importance of being a good technical speaker.
1.3 The Benefits of Being a Good Presenter
Steve is one of the fortunate ones. His “bad experience” occurred in the relatively safe confines of the college classroom. In a professional setting, an engineer who speaks poorly might just (1) come across as unprepared, unprofessional, or even silly; (2) disappoint or annoy important people like mentors, supervisors, colleagues, and customers; (3) mislead others, or at least fail to get hard-won technical ideas across to them; (4) suffer from career stagnation or failure to land an attractive job; and possibly (5) acquire a negative overall reputation as a poor communicator. In short, a poor speaker may have a second-rate engineering career. An ability to speak professionally is a required part of being professional.
Students aren’t the only ones who have difficulty speaking in a classroom environment. Consider Steve and Kelly’s thermodynamics instructor, Jan. When Jan first became a professor, he had very little experience speaking in front of an audience. The few technical presentations he delivered as a graduate student were certainly no substitute for teaching a real class. Jan thought that being an expert in his field would make teaching undergraduates trivial. Preparing little for his first few classes, Jan found himself bumbling through the material, talking well over the head of the average student. Many students disengaged and stopped coming to class. It wasn’t until semester’s end that Jan realized he would need to prepare each of his lectures as though it were a technical presentation. He would have to consider the capabilities of his audience, carefully review the material, and silently rehearse the night before. Jan’s poor teaching evaluations that semester did not surprise him. However, he was shocked to see comments suggesting he had a poor grasp of his subject! Jan was beginning to learn that preparation and self-confidence (without arrogance) are the keys to winning student respect. He also found that a growing familiarity with the material permitted him to be more spontaneous in the classroom, throwing in anecdotes and teasing out the more subtle and difficult points. Even after two decades of teaching, Jan still spends time carefully preparing each lecture. The payoff is his students’ deeper understanding of thermodynamics and their sincere appreciation for his efforts.
Of course, academia is not the only place where the quality of technical presentation is crucial. In industry, the new ideas that ultimately receive support are not necessarily the best ones from a technical standpoint; rather, they are those that are presented the best.
Greg and Jennifer have competing ideas for the design of a new educational toy. Greg’s concept is much more interesting from a technical standpoint, and he assumes this fact alone will result in his proposal being selected. Meanwhile, Jennifer has done some market research, made a nice mock-up of her design, and carefully rehearsed her speaking points. Much to Greg’s chagrin, Jennifer’s idea is chosen for funding. Through strategic preparation and skillful delivery, Jennifer made her idea sound more attractive to the audience of decision makers.
Every engineer stands to gain from developing strong technical presentation skills. He or she can expect to (1) please, impress, and influence important persons; (2) come across as trustworthy and confident; (3) provide a valuable service to others, communicating significant technical ideas in a usable way; (4) remain in demand; and eventually (5) build a positive reputation as a superb and effective communicator. Is it worth your time and effort to develop these skills? We think the answer is obvious.
Try this two-pronged approach. Read the next chapter as soon as possible. At the same time, make an effort to view the presentations of as many talented speakers as possible. Time spent watching and listening to accomplished speakers will repay you many times over. Try to attend the presentations of respected speakers in your organization. There are many other ways to view presentations, both in person and virtually. We give several specific suggestions in the exercises.
You should make an effort to rate presentations as you watch them. Take time to create a rubric that evaluates those aspects of the presentations that are important to you. The rubric (aka scoring guide) has become a widely adopted category of instruments in education at all levels. Rubrics are used both for assessment/grading and for learning enhancement. The content can be very general, or specific to some aspect of a speaking skill you wish to improve. Here is a very simple example of a rubric for rating a presentation:
2 points |
1 point |
0 points |
|
eye contact |
consistent |
sporadic |
nonexistent |
vocal quality (volume, clarity, etc.) |
excellent |
adequate |
inadequate |
nonvocal delivery (professional appearance, gestures, confidence, etc.) |
exemplary |
appropriate |
inappropriate |
visual aids (quantity, quality, etc.) |
highly informative |
moderately informative |
uninformative |
content (scope, relevance, level of detail, etc.) |
highly appropriate |
appropriate |
inappropriate |
You should use the same rubrics to assess your own preparation and presentation skills. Do this as you rehearse, and have your colleagues evaluate you as well. You will find the feedback immensely helpful. If you encounter difficulty with some particular aspect of your presentation, make a detailed rubric to help you determine what you need to work on. For instance, if you are having trouble with stage presence, you may want to use the following rubric:
eye contact |
||
2 points Holds attention to the audience. Engages individuals. Does not look at notes. |
1 point Looks at audience but also looks at notes. Talks to screen. |
0 points Does not look at audience. Stares at screen. Reads notes. |
vocal intonation |
||
2 points Speaks clearly and at proper volume. Varies pitch and pace. |
1 point Occasionally stumbles over words. Talks to the screen or away from audience. |
0 points Mumbles or is too quiet to hear. Speaks in monotone. |
body language |
||
2 points Poised and confident. Moves rhythmically and uses hand gestures for emphasis. |
1 point Seems uncomfortable. Moves in spurts, and gestures at inappropriate times. |
0 points Rigid or constantly moving. Gesticulates wildly or always keeps hands at sides. |
enthusiasm |
||
2 points Sincerely cares about the topic. Energizes and engages the audience. |
1 point Appears stressed or worried about the talk. Cares, but can’t keep audience’s attention. |
0 points Disinterested. Audience quickly disengages from the talk. |
Do not limit your use of rubrics to the act of speaking. You can develop rubrics for the content of a slide, for preparation and rehearsal, and for handling audience questions. We will ask you to write specific rubrics as exercises throughout this book. You can use the checklists provided at the end of each chapter as a guide. We also provide suggestions for developing rubrics below. But be sure to tailor the rubrics to your own needs, and to help you overcome your personal difficulties.
Some Suggestions for Developing Rubrics
Although the references on rubrics listed in our suggestions for further reading (page 140) are all helpful, we highly recommend the book Introduction to Rubrics: An Assessment Tool to Save Grading Time, Convey Effective Feedback and Promote Student Learning by Dannelle D. Stevens and Antonia J. Levi. These authors define the term rubric as follows:
At its most basic, a rubric is a scoring tool that lays out the specific expectations for an assignment. Rubrics divide an assignment into its component parts and provide a detailed description of what constitutes acceptable or unacceptable levels of performance for each of those parts.
The constitution of a rubric is thus rather broad and flexible. One classification divides rubrics into analytical and holistic types. Analytical rubrics are commonly laid out in grid form with evaluative criteria listed vertically down the leftmost column and levels (sometimes called benchmarks) listed across the top row:
level 1 |
level 2 |
level 3 |
level 4 |
|
criterion A |
||||
criterion B |
cell |
|||
criterion C |
cell |
|||
criterion D |
||||
criterion E |
The criteria could be the various gradeable aspects of an oral presentation, for instance. There may be more or less than the five (A, B, C, D, E) we have indicated, but for an analytical rubric there should be more than one (as the whole idea of analyzing something is to break it down into components). Three to five criteria are commonly recommended. The levels are typically arranged from best to worst going left to right; they can be worded variously according to your purposes, but among the schemes we have seen are three-level versions such as
high, medium, low
strong, medium, weak
advanced, proficient, basic
excellent, average, weak
proficient, satisfactory, unsatisfactory
proficient, developing, beginning
well done, partially well done, not well done
exemplary, competent, needs work
and four-level versions such as
excellent, good, fair, poor
exemplary, proficient, developing, emerging
superior, adequate, minimal, inadequate
A purely numerical characterization of the levels is also permissible:
4, 3, 2, 1, 0
The grid cells typically contain short descriptions that serve to define the levels. You should strive for clear, concise, and positively-worded descriptions.
See the suggested references (or the web) for information on holistic rubrics as well as various other assessment instruments (checklists, rating scales, and so on).
You are encouraged to search the web for sample rubrics. At the time this book was written, a search for “public speaking evaluation rubric” turned up numerous hits, including a few online rubric generators such as
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
1. Careless or incompetent speakers take needless career risks and limit their professional potential.
2. Good technical speech is accurate and appropriate for a particular target audience.
3. Technical presentation has to be far more planned than ordinary conversation or even many forms of public speaking. It certainly involves much more than just being yourself!
4. In industry, the new ideas that ultimately receive support are not necessarily the best ones from a technical standpoint; rather, they are those that are presented the best.
5. Trying to bluff your way through a presentation is risky to say the least. You may fool the audience, or you may end up exposed and very embarrassed. Either way, bluffing is unprofessional in a technical setting.
6. The generic engineering design process applies to the design of formal technical presentations.
7. Role modeling after effective presenters is one approach to becoming a good presenter.
8. The rubric is a great tool for evaluating the speaking skill of others and for recognizing and dealing with your own difficulties.
1.1. List some broad purposes for technical speaking. For example, some talks are intended to provide instruction whereas others are mostly intended to motivate.
1.2. Inventory your own attitudes toward public speaking.
1.3. Listen to a sampling of the talks on www.TED.com.
1.4. Attend a public lecture. Take notes on the elements you find particularly effective — and those that you find negative or distracting.
1.5. Listen to or watch the recorded speeches of a favorite politician. What aspects of his or her speaking style do you find particularly effective?
1.6. If you are a working professional, consider joining a nearby Toastmasters International® group. This may give you some opportunities to hone your speaking skills in a friendly environment where your actual job and reputation are not on the line. There is even a virtual club that will allow you to participate via video.
1.7. Most professional organizations give a variety of webinars related to the activities and interests of the organization. Attend a few of these that address topics you find intriguing. Take notes on the speaking styles of the professionals who volunteer their time to deliver these interactive presentations.
1.8. There are many excellent professionally created lecture series that you can purchase or rent to view at home, such as The Great Courses® (www.thegreatcourses.com). Watch some of these lectures and see if you can discern why these speakers are regarded as some of the most talented in their professions.
1.9. If you are a student, pick a favorite professor and try to determine what it is about his or her lecture style that you enjoy. Emulate this in your own talks. If you are already an engineer, pick another engineer or a manager you admire. Ask about their favorite speaking techniques and see whether they have any “tricks of the trade” they are willing to share.
1.10. Engineering programs in North America are accredited by ABET (formerly the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology). What does ABET have to say about the importance of oral communication ability for engineering graduates?
1.11. How has globalization affected the need for good, clear public speaking?
1.12. Explore the ethical codes published by professional societies such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Do any of the provisions of these codes carry implications about the quality of an engineer’s oral communications? Specify.
1.13. Create a rubric to help you evaluate a speaker’s ability to hold your interest throughout a talk. Apply your rubric during a formal presentation by someone you respect. Also apply it in a less formal setting, such as a business meeting. Do you need to use different metrics depending on the venue or the type of presentation?