The Danger of a Bad Presentation

Jerry Weissman is one of the world’s experts on presentations. He has four books on presentations and has coached nearly ever important business leader in how to give effective presentations. This guys knows what he’s talking about.

He also happens to be a contributer for Forbes Magazine, as well. Yesterday, he published an online article about Rick Perry’s debate performance called “Governor Perry’s Bad Night.” There are two Youtube clips there that show Perry stumbling like crazy while trying to explain something rather simple. The point here is that Perry has now slipped in the polls. 

Sometimes, we think that our presentations don’t matter. We’re not running for president, after all. Even Perry tried to make this case after his debate performance, as he claimed,

What Americans are looking for isn’t the slickest candidate, they’re looking for an authentic, principled leader…You’ve seen what happens when our country chooses a leader who chooses words over deeds.

As Weissman says, though, it makes a difference for presidential candidates, just as it makes a difference for every presenter. We may not get chosen just as Perry may not get chosen because of his performance. Our being chosen may be whether we get a deal or not and not whether we are elected President, but it matters just as much.

The Top 10 Mistakes of Technical Presenters, #4: Assuming too much knowledge

Let’s recap. The top three mistakes were acting bored with the presentation, looking at the screen instead of at the audience, and not knowing what is coming up in your own presentation. Now we’re at #4.

#4: Assuming too much knowledge on the part of the audience

This is a big one, I admit. It goes along with being bored with your presentation and not bothering to give the people what they want. That’s my rule, after all. I have two of them that rule my presentation life. First, do what your boss tells you. Boss here is anyone that has power over you. That can be your boss or client with the power of the paycheck. Or it can be your professor with the power of the grade. Whatever: they’re your boss. And you always do what they tell you.

Caveat here. If it’s unethical, don’t do it. You have a responsibility to the public as well your own sense of self. If it violates your ethical code, refuse. If violates the law, talk to your boss and then turn them in.

But in general, do what your boss tells you to do. If they say they want you to present on thermocouplers, then you present on thermocouplers, even if the rest of the audience isn’t interested in it.

But if that rule doesn’t apply, then the second rule kicks in: Give the people what they want. You may think it’s really snazzy to present on topic A, but if the audience is there to hear about topic B, well, you need to give it to them.

But you need to think about your audience, too. Even if you think you know what they need or want to hear, you need to think about what they already know. Think about the difference between a presentation at a conference on antennas and propagation and a presentation at a general engineering conference. People at the more specific conference probably already know a lot about antennas; they wouldn’t be at the conference if they didn’t. Put the same topic at a general engineering conference would have to start off much more broadly to bring the audience up to speed on the technical information that the specific conference assumes the audience already knows. What this means for the presenter is that the focus of the presentation may change, as well. Maybe the person can’t go into as much detail for one audience as they do for another. Maybe they choose a slightly different take on the subject.

The novice presenter doesn’t consider the knowledge the audience already has and just starts wherever he or she wants, but the professional technical presenter tries to give the audience what it wants or needs and does so in a way that builds on knowledge they already have. The professional presenter always analyzes his audience.

Humanities and Science at Stanford

The Silicon Valley Mercury News has an interesting new article about science and humanities education. It seems that at least one prominent science-driven university–Stanford University, that is–is trying to get its students more interested in the humanities:

The 1,718 incoming students — nearly half of whom arrive intending to major in the sciences or engineering — will hear acclaimed author and physician Abraham Verghese praise the meaning, and opportunities, of a liberal arts education. They’ll debate summer reading assignments and get a flier promoting an “Ethics and War” program, led by nuclear disarmament expert Scott Sagan.

But what are the reasons for this move to get people involved in the humanities? Well, they’re pretty varied, and, according to this article, they’re also based on some weird assumptions. One person puts it this way:

“We’re trying to break the idea that college is just something to get through on your way to a career,” said philosophy professor Debra Satz, associate dean for Humanities and Arts. “It is a gift.”

We have to assume that “It” in the sentence “It is a gift” refers to back to “college.” I understand what this person is getting at, but it seems odd that she chose this language. She’s trying to argue against this thinking:

Economic anxiety is well-grounded, according to an analysis by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Over a lifetime, the earnings of workers who majored in engineering, computer science or business were up to 50 percent higher than the earnings of those who majored in the humanities, the arts, education and psychology.

She’s trying to say that college is not job-training. It’s not where you learn a skill or trade. Yes, it is a great thing to be have the ability to go to college, and students should be happy to be there and to learn about all kinds of things. But this article goes on:

The highest median earnings went to petroleum engineers, at $120,000. By comparison, workers with a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature had median earnings of $48,000.

“Shakespeare wasn’t in it for the money. If you’re all about the money, I wouldn’t go there,” said Anthony Carnevale, one of the report’s authors. But humanities students who go on to graduate school and land jobs in tech-intensive fields do just fine, he adds.

The article does two things here that are really interesting. First, it skirts the issue. It admits that people in the humanities do not make nearly as much money as their science or engineering counterparts. But then it says that those who go to graduate school in humanities (we presume that it’s humanities) “and land jobs in tech-intensive fields do just fine.” But how does a humanities PhD land a job in a tech-intensive field, and what does it mean to “do just fine?” It doesn’t say. A BS in petroleum engineering with 4-5 years of school will earn $120K, but a PhD in English with 10 years of school who happens to teach himself some technical skills and lands a job in the same place as the petroleum engineer will earn $60-$70K? Is that what it’s saying? Something here doesn’t add up.

Here’s the more interesting thing, though, and the one that is the most pertinent for us: the skills taught by the humanities are important in technical fields. Yes, humanities majors do get hired by technical companies. They get hired for their critical thinking skills and their communication abilities.

Yes, it always comes down to communication. We could even change the title of this article to something like, “Science and Engineering to Focus More on Communication.” That’s what it’s all about anyway. Here, they trying to get in by getting more humanities majors, but why not take the other way around and teach the scientists and engineers to communicate more effectively?

That’s why people like me are here.

The Top 10 Mistakes of Novice Presenters, #3: Not Knowing What is Coming Next

The first mistake was acting bored with the presentation, the second was looking at the screen, and now we’re at the third: not knowing the presentation well enough to know what is about to pop up on the screen.

#3: Not knowing what is about to come up on the screen

Nothing screams lack of professionalism like not knowing what is in one’s own presentation. I’m not saying that a presenter has to memorize all of the presentation, but he or she should at least have to recognize the slides. Combine this with the positive mandate in the previous rule: Keep your eyes on the audience.

Whenever I go to a new side, I glance back, remember what it is, and then I turn back to the audience to talk about it. My focus is on the audience, not on the screen. The screen is just my notes. All I need to do is to glance at them to remember what my notes say, and then I can keep talking.

The Houston Honeywell Scholarship

Check out the new Honeywell scholarship for high school seniors. Basically, Honeywell is offering a scholarship to seniors who plan to enter an accredited engineering degree program. It’s a selection process based on grades, dreams, and teacher recommendations, sure, but it’s also based on the writing of an essay. Each applicant must submit a 500-word personal essay that responds to the following prompt:

Students need technical education, but they also need communication skills.

More than 30% of U.S. energy use and carbon emissions comes from industrial facilities (power plants, refineries, chemical plants, etc.). In 500 words or less, describe your recommendation to significantly improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions at these facilities.

We could talk about the subject matter and Honeywell’s tacit admission that carbon emissions need to be reduced, but that’s really a subject for another blog. It’s more interesting to me that Honeywell is asking for recommendations “to significantly improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions” in a 500-word essay.

Writing a 500-word essay that convinces the scholarship judges that the student’s recommendations are the right ones is a tall order. After all, 500-words is only about a page. It’s not much space at all. Note here that the judges are not asking for a technical report. They’re asking for more of an executive abstract. One page is really only enough to give a hint of technical knowledge, so my feeling is that Honeywell is looking for something different. They’re looking for creative thinking and, well, for good communication skills. Honeywell realizes that good engineers need to be good communicators, so they’re basing their scholarship on the written word.

Interesting, indeed.

So get on board, you Houston high school students, and claim your Honeywell scholarship. The rest of us should take note and improve our communication skills.

Communication and Indian Engineering Education

A recent article from The Times of India discusses how the role of engineering has changed over the last few years. According to one engineering executive,

“Five years ago, one required only basic competencies like technical skills, analytical capabilities and domain knowledge. It was a simpler and less competitive time where basic technical knowledge along with hard work would suffice for one to excel as an engineer.”

That emphasis on technical skills has changed in the last five years, however:

the Indian engineering industry has witnessed tremendous growth. The basic competencies like a first-class academic record and technical skills now need to be supported by other competencies like domain knowledge, excellent communication skills, general awareness, an emotional quotient rather than just a high IQ and interpersonal and problem-solving skills.

The rest of the article focuses on how Indian engineers now need a more business-oriented education along with their technical educations. These changes happened because of globalization and the increased role of Indians in global engineering. What I find interesting is that we hear a lot of talk about soft skills in American engineering education, but we don’t hear a lot about what other countries are doing. Even Indian engineering education is taking note of changes in the profession, and realizes the importance of “excellent communication skills, general awareness, an emotional quotient.”

I wish the article had unpacked what those last two mean, but my general feeling about it is that most of the soft skills in engineering could be solved by better communication skills. After all, communicating well means thinking rightly. Good rhetoric should always be combined with good ideas.

The Top 10 Mistakes of Technical Presenters, #2: Looking at the Screen

Last time, I talked about how the first major mistake of technical presenters is acting bored during a presentation. The second mistake builds from that one. Novice presenters will often look at the screen when they’re supposed to be speaking to the audience.

2. Looking at the Screen

Nothing communicates boredom more than reading from your slides. I say here that the mistake is looking at the screen, but it can also be looking at the computer monitor. So there are two versions of this mistake.

It's not a movie, so don't make the screen the focus.

This problem can stem from a few different mistakes such as putting too much information on slides and not thinking of your slides as notes, but the positive statement of the mistake is to keep your eyes on the audience. It is perfectly fine to turn back to the screen, but notice that a good presenter turns to the screen only long enough to know what is on it (it’s his or her notes, after all). Then the presenter turns back around to the audience. They don’t keep turned toward the screen.

One of the first things actors learn when they start acting on stage is to always keep their feet turned toward the audience. Even if an actor is supposed to be talking to someone behind him or her, the actor does not actually turn toward the person they are talking to. Instead, actors talk to the side. Their feet never go past parallel to the stage front. I follow the same rule with my presentations. I try to never allow my feet to get past parallel to the screen. Feet should always remain at least somewhat pointed toward the audience. That way, I’m always pointed toward the audience. When the speaker looks toward the screen, he or she looks over her shoulder. If we stay turned toward the screen, we end up looking over our shoulder toward the audience.

We communicate something here to our audience. We are implicitly telling our audience how we think of them. We tell them that they’re not important, that we’re here just talking to ourselves.

Don’t be the guy there talking to himself, not even trying to talk to the audience. Trust me: you don’t want to be the guy everyone hates.

The Top 10 Mistakes of Technical Presenters, #1: Acting Bored

We’re going to go over the top 10 mistakes of novice presenters. I talk about these as mistakes, but we can just as easily turn them into positive versions as well. For everything I say not to do, there is the opposite version about what you should do. For instance, if a mistake is to put your hands in your pockets, the counterpart is to keep your hands to your side and to use your hands to make appropriate gestures.

Frankly, it’s more fun to talk about mistakes. Pay attention when you see other people speak. Remember that there’s no better teacher than watching others do what you are trying to do. Watch the problems and the distractions, but pay attention to what you like, too. Don’t just make fun of people: turn their shame and disgrace into something you can use.

 1.      Acting bored during the presentation

This one is the most important. In fact, it is the one mistake that encompasses all others. A person who is bored with their own subject will not bother to do it right. They won’t bother to practice. They won’t analyze what their audience needs. Being bored with a subject is terrible. If you’re bored with the subject, don’t present (unless your boss tells you to). After all, if you’re bored with it, why would you expect anyone in the audience to care about it?

If you’re not actually bored with it, don’t act bored. If you find your topic somewhat exciting, then you need to pass that excitement on to the audience. You need to act excited. You are the one who has done the work on the subject, so you must find it interesting or at least useful for you or others. Personally, I think nanotechnology is exciting. I think bioengineering is exciting. I don’t exactly find circuit diagrams interesting, but when it’s part of a bigger picture, I can get interested in it. Here’s the deal: if it’s worth you investing your time into the work and then designing the presentation, it’s worth getting excited about.

No one wants to listen to anyone who seems bored with the material or the presentation. If the presenter seems bored with the material, why would they want to present it to an audience? For a line on a CV? If they don’t want to be there giving a presentation, then why are they there? The fact is that the audience won’t grasp too much of what is said if the presenter acts bored during the presentation, so they and the audience might as well just stay home. They won’t understand what the presenter is trying to communicate, so there’s no need for anyone to be there.

Wait, did I just say that the excitement of the presentation determines how much information the audience will grasp or understand?

That’s right. It’s not an exact correlation, but the two go together. I think of it something like this:

Information Grasped = 1/2 Excitement Level

 In other words, an excitement level of 100% or 100 means that the audience will grasp about 50% of the information in the presentation. It might be lower than that, actually. But if the presenter only acts halfway excited, 50%, the information drops by half.

The reason why boredom and excitement are so important during presentations is because they can and often do lead to all of the other mistakes. You will see what I mean as we go through the other mistakes.

Here, just realize that an excitement level of half means that the audience is only grasping somewhere around 25% of the information. That’s an estimate, of course, but it’s important to note. Even a really excited presenter will only communicate about half of the information he or she wants to. Again, it’s sometimes more than that, but it’s also sometimes less.

Calling all Scientists and Engineers!

Get involved!

That’s the mantra behind a few groups supporting public involvement of scientists and engineers. This recent New York Times article suggests that scientists and engineers need to get involved in politics. Or it at least traces the efforts made by a few groups that are trying to do just that.

As the article says,

When asked to name a scientist, Americans are stumped. In one recent survey, the top choice, at 47 percent, was Einstein, who has been dead since 1955, and the next, at 23 percent, was “I don’t know.” In another survey, only 4 percent of respondents could name a living scientist.

But why is that the case? There are a few different ideas, according to the article, but let’s get to the heart of the matter. If scientists and engineers do agree to get involved in public life, they have to be able to communicate with the public. Frankly, they have a bad rap in that department.

I know plenty of scientists who are great at communicating to non-scientific people. But then I know others who use so much jargon that it’s like they’re speaking a different language. Other professions are not immune, mind you. I have a lawyer friend who drops names and legal terms all the time, expecting everyone around him to be impressed by his abilities to, well, know stuff. It’s not impressive.

I agree that scientists and engineers should be on the forefront of public policy. They should be the vanguard, if you will. We need people like that who look at information and can translate it into something useful.

And communicate it, of course.

The Key to Overcoming Presentation Fears: A Wrap-up

So the primary way to get rid of the speaking anxiety is to know the material, know the audience, and know that the audience is there because they want to learn from you. But we will still get nervous. How can we get over that nervousness?

I have heard a lot of tips for overcoming nervousness, and none of them seem that good to me, at least none better than my mandate to KNOW when it comes to presentations. One person told me that it was a good idea to imagine your audience naked. That way, you know that they’re in a worse position than you. How can you make a fool out of yourself when, hah! those people are all naked!

To me, that is bad advice that can cause all kinds of problems. Its corollary, imagine your audience in their underwear, has the same pitfalls. It’s just weird, and it can get weird images stuck in your heard. Don’t try it. It doesn’t work. It makes me even more nervous.

Then there’s the person who is afraid of looking into the eyes of the audience, so he or she looks at the back of the wall instead. The audience never knows you’re not looking at them, these people insist. No, that’s not really true. It may be true for large lecture halls where the person is pretty small and you can’t really see his or her eyes, but most of present in much smaller rooms. In these smaller rooms, you know what the person is looking at. Here, for instance, am I looking at you? You can’t tell, can you??? Yes, you can. Am I looking at you or am I looking right above you? It doesn’t really work.

Instead, realize that the audience is on your side and look into their eyes.

Another person told me that it’s better to look into one person’s eyes for a minute and then move to another person’s eyes for a minute, and so on. That way, it’s like you’re only talking to one person. That seems like a good idea until you’re in the audience and someone looks at you for one minute. It doesn’t seem like a long time, but it is. In fact, it’s called staring. And if someone stares at me for a minute, I’m getting uncomfortable. So maybe 30 seconds is better? What about 10 seconds? Still too long, I’m afraid. Instead, look around the audience.

So my final advice about presentation nerves is to know your audience, know your material, know your presentation, and know that the audience wants you to give a good presentation. Then you can use the nervous energy to help you seem excited about your presentation. Nothing makes for a more interesting presentation than someone who is excited about the topic. Let your nervous energy help you there.