Public Speaking

Public speaking is an absolute necessity for leaders in the software industry. If you aren’t speaking to external audiences outside of your company, such as customers, analysts, and reporters, then you’ll certainly be speaking to internal audiences such as executives, architects, and sales and marketing teams. Here are some tips for people performing for an audience as a public speaker in the software industry:

• Understand your audience. Who are they and what do they want to hear? Are you speaking to users, senior architects, salesmen, or business decision makers? Depending on who you’re talking to, the messages you share will be radically different. For example, senior architects want to hear about how things work. They won’t believe anything you say unless you can clearly articulate in technical terms what’s going on under the hood. It’s all about architecture and experimental proof points. Business decision makers usually care much less about how things work and care a lot about field-tested proof points (not just well-behaved laboratory tests). How has the software system performed for others? Make sure you always give the business folks the business case: market size, sales potential, expected costs, and project revenue. Even if you only have crude estimates, they’ll appreciate seeing it. End users will always be captivated by facts about what the technology can do for them, the easiest path to most quickly experience those benefits, and, most significantly, the best practices to maximize their experience.

• Adapt your style to the audience (not just your content). A generous dose of humor is almost always appreciated, but a casual speaking style is better suited to some venues than others. In a formal setting, be more formal; in a college setting, be more young at heart; among techies, be a geek; and among business leaders, speak with forceful confidence and an accommodating ear.

• Clarity and pace are key. Public speaking is generally done at a slightly slower pace than conversational discussion. If you speak at a normal conversational pace, you’re probably speaking a little too fast. Be clear and moderately slow in pace, while keeping the enthusiasm of your message high.

• Keep the audience engaged. Most of us have had the unfortunate experience of sitting through a lecture given by a monotone, unenthused presenter. A few jokes, some rhetorical questions along the way, and a bit of voice inflection do wonders for keeping people focused and awake. Drawing from other unlikely disciplines is a good tactic for adding color to your talk. For example, if you’re discussing a normally unexciting topic such as Java Runtime Engine compatibility, pull in an anecdote about a NASA mission to Mars, or a JRE-related project at the Guggenheim Museum, to make a point or two in a colorful way. Not only will the particular point you’re making be more memorable, but you’ll have snapped the audience to attention and guaranteed their interest for the next 5–10 minutes.

• Moderate your hand motions. Waving your hands around like an overexcited salesman is almost the worst thing you can do as a public speaker. It’s bested in damaging effects only by the opposite behavior of putting your hands in your pockets or clasping them together. Keep your hands in front of you, and move them moderately. How much? Go to YouTube and watch President Obama or President Clinton as they give public speeches, and you’ll get a very good sense of appropriate use of your hands.

• Smile. Smiling always exudes a warm, positive, and upbeat emotion. When a public speaker smiles, it exudes that positive feeling to the audience and reflects positively on everything the speaker says in his or her talk. It shows confidence and removes tension.

• Remember, you, not the charts, are the speaker. Presentation charts support what you’re saying, but they aren’t intended to actually be the presentation. “Speaking to the charts” has become an epidemic in corporate America, particularly among software specialists. The curse of chartware is that the speaker packs all the useful information into the presentation charts and then, when presenting, simply reads the material off the chart. First, since the audience can read, reading the text you’ve projected to a large screen is neither appreciated nor impressive. Second, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the speaker is positioned between the screen and the audience. If you read the material off the screen, you end up turning your back to the audience. I’ve witnessed inexperienced speakers literally give their entire presentation with the backs to the people they are intending to present to. You are not there as a speaker to present the charts. You are there to speak, and the charts are there to add graphical material that supports your talk.

• It’s not about you. Unless you are truly a celebrity, avoid excessively using the word I. Unless you’re a household name in your field, your talk is never really about you, and your audience didn’t attend your talk to learn more about your life, professional or otherwise. The one place it’s okay to use the first person is when you’re telling a story. Storytelling is an ancient art, and everyone loves a good one. Tell them some really good war stories about software, and they will love you for it.

• So what? Every chart you present and every message you convey should have a purpose. Be clear about the purpose of your messages and why your audience should want to hear them. If you don’t think the audience will likely care about a certain point, don’t include it just for completeness. Either remove it completely or move it to a backup section that contains supporting material. As you prepare a talk, constantly review the presentation material and your speaking plans, and ask yourself, “So what? What message do I want to convey with this chart, and why will my audience care?”

• Create an antagonist. One of Steve Jobs’s stylistic tactics is that he uses his competitors as antagonists in his public speaking, with brilliant results. This creates a sense of melodrama that keeps the audience engaged. If you are the hero, who is the bad guy? In 1984 Jobs declared “IBM wants it all,” and his Apple company would be the only corporation standing in their way. The masses ate it up. The hero versus villain presentation is particularly effective if you can position yourself as the underdog, and it makes for a gripping presentation. After all, everyone roots for the underdog. So introduce your antagonist and declare how you’ll vanquish the enemy against all odds.