Knowledge of the specifications, functionality, inner workings are all fine and dandy but not enough anymore. Increasingly technically specialised people are being asked to deal with people other than their normal counterparts. Once upon a time, the engineers spoke with other engineers on the buyer side and that was about it. A nerdy lovefest on the specs, so to speak. Today there are broader spectrum buying teams. These “civilians” are often the key decision-makers and are not technical in the traditional sense. This means the technical person has to be able to communicate and present to them in a way which they can understand.
Communication skills have always been low on the totem pole for technical people. At High School they hated English and thrived on Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry etc. At University, the key focus and preference was on technical subjects. In fact, after the second world war, these technically oriented people were creating problems in the workforce to such an extent, that Universities had to create a new programme for them. This was the basis for the origination of the Masters in Business Administration. The aim was to teach technical folks the non-technical sides of running a company.
I was reminded of the big gap in fundamental presentation skills recently at a presentation I attended. It was a big crowd and the speaker had a star studded resume. He had a Ph.D. in his technical field and was a Corporate Officer in his very, very large, global firm. He was a big wheel in that world and someone often called upon to give technical presentations, representing the firm.
When he started his presentation proper, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that someone in his position, with his experience, in that role, with that amount of responsibility for the brand, would be making such a basic, fundamental mistake. The first slide went up and it was densely packed with text. I thought it was the typical compliance required disclaimer statement that usually goes up first. No, no, no. This was his first slide of the actual presentation.
To make it really exciting, he had made the text in ten point sized font, so it was almost impossible to read. To add insult to injury the bottom quarter of the page was blank, unused white space. There was no concept of balance on the slide and it was ugly. He then proceeded to basically read the slide to us. The next slide was even worse. Same ten point font, but this time the bottom half of the slide was tantalising white space. After that ordeal by tiny text, we got on to a series of line graphs. This was a relief, except that a lot of the graph text descriptors were impossible to read too.
I was sitting there thinking WOW. In the 21st century, how could this be possible? A High School student would do a better job than this gentlemen of presenting the information on screen. The snapper is that he is in a role where he would be giving a lot of these types of presentations. He is highly technically trained and often graces the boardrooms of major companies, who are clients of his firm, giving this and similar presentations. He has been doing this a long time. He is one of the most well recognized public faces of the company, after the President and Chairman, because his role is to promote the technical expertise of the company to grow the stock price.
After the initial slide deck shock, I started zooming in on how he was delivering the presentation. There were a lot of numbers involved, so it was a rather dense talk. Pointedly, there were no stories to bring the ramifications of the numbers to life. These were just dry, dull data points that were not thought to need any elaboration. The audience however were a mixed industry bunch, so there were varying levels of technical expertise in the room. Pulling out experiences with similar numbers in the past, would have been great pointers to what we might expect in the future. Dry numbers can come to life when wrapped up in an interesting example. Also, we are much better at remembering stories, than concentrations of data points.
As a public speaker, he did look toward his audience, but somehow managed not to look at any of the people in his audience. You have seen this one before too, I am sure. He moved his face from left to right and back again, sort of rapidly scanning the room, but not actually making any eye contact with anyone in particular. This precluded his ability to make a stronger connection and engage with the people in the room. In the time he had allotted, he could have connected with each one of us individually and directly, if he had tried. We know that around 6 seconds of eye contact works very well. It is not too intrusive, yet allows us to really engage with individuals one at a time.
His voice was soft and even throughout. It hung perilously close to a monotone. This habit is deadly for a presenter, because it robs us of some key tools to add luster, shine and strength to our argument. When we give each word an equal emphasis in a sentence, then we miss the CHANCE to highlight particular key words for our audience. In that last sentence, I hit the word CHANCE harder than the other words, so this gives it strength and prominence over the other words.
I could also have made chance much softer than the words around it, almost like a conspiratorial whisper, to make it stand out. Both are voice modulation variations which are at our disposal and we should be making good use of them. A monotone delivery will kill the audience and put everyone to sleep. He could have also added to the variety, by speeding sentences up for effect or the opposite, s-l-o-w-i-n-g them down. Both allow us to grab the attention of the audience.
People today are deep in the age of disruption, from a technology point of view, but they are also deep in the Age of Distraction, thanks to that very same technology. For presenters, the challenge has never been greater in the history of our species and we must rise to the occasion. Boring presenters immediately lose their audiences to competition from mobile phones. These are surreptitiously being held under tables, as people hit the internet and mentally flee the room, the speaker and their message
What is the advantage of being an expert, with tremendous reserve powers of technical expertise, if no one is listening,. Who are you actually talking to? Yourself? This is what happens when you have lost your audience. Mastery of the slide deck presentation professional protocols are an absolute basic requirement. I don’t even know why I have to mention this.
Engaging the audience and telling memory captivating stories is another basic skill. Stories enlarge the impact of the numbers and stay with us, long after the data and the date of the talk has been forgotten. Making eye contact to personalize the delivery is so powerful. When combined with voice emphasis, by either adding or subtracting strength and speed, this becomes the mark of the true professional presenter.
Technical people can no longer hide from reality. They can’t find refuge in their clubby expertise area. They are required to convey their knowledge to others who are not part of their shared technical heaven. Get the skills and most importantly of all, rehearse before you give your presentations. The difference is infinite.
