Public Speaking as an Engineer - Build Up Your Confidence 🗣️🎙️
Many engineers tend to be introverts and more reserved when it comes to standing out in front of colleagues to speak on behalf of their work. Shocker right? As an engineer myself who speaks in front of fellow engineers, managers and at times to entire teams of engineers to present/defend project I too still have moments where I fear I am going to present with confidence a mistake in my math, test procedure, or my entire concept having an obvious flaw that I overlooked. Having your work analyzed and criticized by others in general is not what we desired, but if you start off your presentation with a few key statements and be prepared to receive all forms of criticism through a calibrated filter, you can build upon and improve rather than simply shy away and fear their words.
1. Ask for Constructive Criticism in the Beginning
If you start off your presentation with a quick, simple statement like “I am open to suggestions to improve this project, so please jot down anything you can give some advice and at the end we will go over everything together.” This instantly relieves the pressure for you to feel about your content not being totally accurate. Someone will always find a flaw and try to be the smartest person in the room for finding it, so best to give them that opportunity in a controllable manor, on YOUR terms. Aka the end of your presentation.
2. Keep the Unknowns Short
If you have sections in your project or presentation that are underdeveloped or even completely unknown, keep the conversation short on these and try not to linger. Otherwise you’ll have people try to pile on in the conversation how to make it better, which takes away from everything else you’re trying to present. You can also give a quick disclaimer right up front, like “this section is still being developed but here is the current status.” Hopefully everyone will recognize the flaws they see are probably already known by you and that you are already addressing them.
3. Stick to the facts. Avoid the wonders.
If you are presenting technical material, then it shouldn’t be too hard to stick to the hard facts and mathematical results. However, if you aren’t careful when you open the door for brainstorming you might find yourself veering of course entirely. If this begins to happen and you still have much more information to present and discuss, make the statement that you will return to this particular section later (or even in its own separate meeting) to work through.
These are just a few easy to apply tactics I have used to be able to get the most out of my engineering topic meetings with colleagues and upper management, and still get the most fruitful results out of them. All to often we will identify a small problem and end of burning 15-20 min of the 1 hour meeting, and ultimately we either rush the end material or go over our time.
Stay tuned for our next newsletter continuing on public speaking and presenting as an engineer!
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