The art
of public speaking
for engineers
IAN V. MCLOUGHLIN
Have you attended a conference? If so,
then like me, you would probably have
despaired at some of the presenters
despite their obvious brilliance and
ground-breaking work. Some would
drive you to sleep. Others would have
held you spellbound, leaning forward,
sitting on the edge of your seat and yet
afterwards you would wonder what, if
anything, you had learned. The good
news is that, thankfully, most of us avoid
these extremes when we talk. The bad
news is that, like anything else worth
doing well, we need to devote at least
some effort to getting a presentation the
way we want it to be. This article expos-
es some of the common pitfalls of giving
a presentation and provides pointers and
methods that, while they might not
instantly propel us into the spellbinding
category, should at least benefit our lis-
teners. Having happy listeners will
increase our confidence, improve our
enjoyment of the experience, and reas-
sure us that we have provided a quality
presentation to our customers—in other
words, the people who bothered to turn
up to hear us. Let us begin by describing
what we hope to avoid.
Recently a new class of sonic
weapons was used operationally for the
first time against pirates off the coast of
Somalia. The long-range acoustic device
weapon, effective to 300 m, confuses
recipients, thereby discouraging and
disorientating them. Prof. Tedium,
among his many other accolades, has
his own short-range speech-based ver-
sion of this sonic weapon. Conference
novices probably assume that research
brilliance matches an equally sparkling
oral delivery. Sadly the opposite is quite
often true, and old hands have learned
to go and listen to the student talks
instead or take a coffee break. Tedium
probably has a slight inferiority com-
plex. Yes, he’s brilliant and accom-
plished, but he feels threatened by
some of the other attendees who may
be almost as intelligent as he. Since he
feels he has something to prove, one of
18
the psychological objectives of his pre-
sentation is to highlight his brilliance,
even if he does not realize that himself.
Proving his brilliance results in long
strings of incredibly complicated equa-
tions, without any hint of explanation.
Maximum use of sub- and superscripts
(some of which aren’t introduced or
change meaning half way through) and a
liberal scattering of acronyms are manda-
tory. Steps between displayed equations
cover five or six transformations and sub-
stitutions that would tax even Steven
Hawking, but be lightly passed over in
the talk with “equation 35 clearly leads to
equation 36.” Or sometimes, “I will skip
equation 27 since its derivation is obvi-
ous.” With a comment like that, most of
the audience, who may not have a clue
what’s happening, will be thoroughly
discouraged from asking questions in
case it makes them look stupid.
Typically the best defence if you
find yourself listening to Prof. Tedium is
to nod knowingly and never, ever allow
a puzzled look to cross your face.
Occasionally pretend to make a note on
the conference booklet. Resign yourself
to probably not learning anything new,
but don’t get too discouraged. Despite
appearances, nobody else understood it
either (although they might not admit
that fact).
0278-6648/06/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
© ARTVILLE, LLC.
The next speaker, Dr. Pedantic, is well
along in his career. A tenured academic,
he’s been passed over for professorship
and has no need to impress anyone,
except perhaps that attractive student in
the front row. Dr. Pedantic lives for his
research and can’t bear to see his subject
discussed frivolously. Unlike Prof. Tedium,
he doesn’t miss any steps between equa-
tions, including trivial ones, unfortunately.
A monotonous and flat recitation, he will
pause to ensure that he has read all the
text off every slide before progressing to
the next one. He has decided that the
audience will hear it all. They will hear it
whether they like it or not!
Probably the worst thing that can
happen is when Dr. Pedantic has a twin
in the audience who insists on asking a
trivial question at the end of the talk,
usually after all the good questions
have been asked. An off-the-cuff brief
answer is not in Dr. Pedantic’s vocabu-
lary, a ten-minute answer would be
normal. This can be serious. I once
attended a talk where the final answer
to the final question lasted over 45 min-
utes. One by one all the audience left
until only Dr. Pedantic 1, Dr. Pedantic
2, and I remained. Why did I stay?
Pedantic 2 was giving me a lift home.
The next speaker, Sally Entertainer,
does off the cuff well, usually with an
IEEE POTENTIALS
interesting twist attached. She is deter-
mined to give her audience a good
show. Okay, maybe the research isn’t
up to much, but her presentation is
great: a clear and well-thought-out,
graphical-rich presentation, with lots of
succinct and valuable background. Sally
might possibly be a wild extrovert but
not many go in for a life of engineering
research, so perhaps not. Probably she’s
just doing her best to give the listeners
what they want.
But is entertainment what the audi-
ence wants? Perhaps a little, but surely
most people are attending a conference
to learn new techniques, keep up to
date, and be inspired in their own
research. Often, the entertainers sacri-
fice content for entertainment.
Our final speaker, Narrow Nick, might
do the same. He probably isn’t very con-
fident and may not have presented many
times before. He doesn’t really know
what the audience wants, not having
considered the question. He might use a
joke to cover up his discomfort and to
get out of a tricky situation, but he isn’t
there to entertain—he just wants to get
finished as quickly as possible.
While Sally is good at thinking of the
big picture and is likely to ensure the
audience see her work in context, Nick
probably thinks too narrowly. In fact, he
won’t make clear the distinction between
previous work and his own contribu-
tions. In extreme cases, the audience will
still be wondering what he had actually
done when the talk ends. On the other
hand, Nick gives a lot of detail on his
research area. Questions relating to the
application of the work are probably an
indication of a lack of establishing con-
text in the talk, as are signs of annoyance
in the questioners at the end! Keeping
the audience in the dark is a classic
defence mechanism when the presenter
is less confident of their work. But in
Nick’s case, it isn’t deliberate, just a lack
of preparation and experience.
You might be wondering which con-
ferences I attended. Perhaps they’re ones
to avoid! Sadly though, these traits are all
too common and can be seen at any
technical conference. Actually, I don’t
even have to leave home, I see many of
these aspects in myself (and no, I don’t
have a four-way split personality).
Harnessing aspects of these multiple per-
sonas may be good, with different char-
acteristics being brought to the forefront
at the appropriate time, in a balanced
fashion. We need to present with Prof.
Tedium’s confidence and be capable of
MAY/JUNE 2006
providing Dr. Pedantic’s explanation in
certain areas although not to the point of
boredom. Like Sally, we need to keep
the audience engaged, stating the con-
text and big picture before diving into
detail like Nick. This gives us our first
guidelines on preparation:
1) What do you want the audience
to leave with technically?
Hopefully something interesting,
novel, and similar to what your
paper describes
2) Do you want to convey a certain
impression to your audience?
Debonair woman or man of the
moment/absent-minded academic/
just you
3) What phases will you adopt in
your talk, and what will you pre-
sent in each?
In terms of phases, a traditional
approach is to begin with an introduc-
tion, putting the work into context.
Many presenters have a rule of telling
the audience upfront what they are
going to be saying during the session. A
mention of previous work by others
helps to set the scene for an explana-
tion of your approach, its analysis, eval-
uation, and any results. End with a
summary—recap what you have pre-
sented in a single sentence if possible.
This can usefully lead any follow up
questions, too!
Other preparation guidelines are
more oft-repeated common sense, but
that doesn’t mean there is no value in
repeating them one more time. It’s
assumed here that the presenter is using
something like OpenOffice Impress or
Microsoft Powerpoint for graphics, since
most people do these days:
4) Use 20-point text, six or less
major points per page.
5) Never, never, never read out
items verbatim.
6) Let listeners know where in the
talk you are (is this results or lit-
erature survey). This could be
done by writing “page X out of
22” on each page, or by repeating
section titles from your contents
list at the top of each page.
7) A diagram is worth a thousand
words but, like a thousand
words, takes time for the people
viewing it to absorb. Don’t just
flash it up for a microsecond.
8) Judicious use of color can be
good to highlight items, but
remember 10% of males will have
difficulty distinguishing some col-
ors, so don’t rely on this.
Unusual stress effects
Think now about the process of
delivery itself: you have the presenta-
tion graphics, you did the research, but
now you are up there in front of an
audience. You want to confidently and
clearly state your points without stum-
bling, at the right level of detail, finish
on time, then answer any questions
before returning to your seat satisfied.
Before we explore how to achieve such
an outcome, it is useful to examine
some of the worst traits or pitfalls
(excluding some of the obvious ones
like excessive hesitation, use of the
word “okay” after every sentence and
failure to even glance in the direction of
the audience). Okay?
Einstein explained his theory of rela-
tivity to the layman as “when you are
courting a nice girl an hour seems like
a second. When you sit on a red-hot
cinder a second seems like an hour.
That’s relativity.” Well you guessed it,
something similar can happen when
you deliver a talk. I call this the time
dilation effect.
Here’s what happens: before the talk
someone tells you that most people end
up speaking too quickly when they pre-
sent, so slow down, speak carefully, and
stop to think occasionally. As you stand
there facing the audience about to finish
a page, you remember this wise advice.
You stop and think, realize you’ve gone
too fast, so you need to add something
else to make up for this, or simply
repeat something you said already.
From an audience perspective we
can see a speaker, clearly a little ner-
vous, run through their page slightly
quickly but otherwise flawlessly. And
then they spoil it just as they reach for
that mouse to change page. They stop
reaching, stand back up straight again,
and ad-lib a sentence or two. They’ve
said it before, or else it’s obvious, or
perhaps irrelevant. Sometimes the next
page will repeat what they said anyway.
You’ve just seen the time dilation effect
in action.
Here’s the news for those people:
conferences don’t pay by the hour. You
don’t need to finish your
allotted time to the sec- CAREER
ond. Anything left over PATHS
you can donate to
Prof. Tedium’s
overrun later or
perhaps give
listeners
more oppor-
tunity to ask you
19
questions. Even if it’s just a chance to
get into the coffee queue earlier, 99% of
attendees won’t worry if you finish in
17 minutes instead of 20. Yes, it’s true
that Dr. Pedantic may be mildly con-
cerned, but then he’s probably equally
annoyed by a misplaced full stop in the
conference banner.
Here is another reason not to ad-lib.
You prepared (right?), probably prac-
tised well, and hopefully did this in
front of a friend or other rehearsal vic-
tim a couple of times. You thought your
words through, balancing their effect on
the listeners with your delivery inten-
tions. What makes you think that your
brain, currently high on adrenaline, and
limping on insufficient sleep from a rest-
less night, right now, on the spot, can
magically deliver something amazing it
didn’t come up with earlier? It might—
just look at stand-up comedians—but, to
be on the safe side, stick with whatever
you prepared until you have as much
experience as a comedian.
Another common effect, at least for
me, is to totally forget what I’ve said and
what I haven’t said. Yes, another com-
mon effect is to totally forget what I’ve
said. Have I already said that? Well, what
I think happens is that when preparing, I
read everything through many times,
shifting order and arrangement so many
times that when I’m actually standing up
I lose track of exactly what I have said
and when I said it. Sometimes I have a
strong feeling of deja vu triggered, I
hope, through having said the same
thing in a practice session, rather than
two minutes previously. There seems to
be two approaches to solving this effect:
either reduce preparation to almost
nothing, or prepare well, identifying
what is to be said related to each page
and then sticking to it.
Considering the second approach,
since there isn’t much to write about
the first approach, one useful method is
to print out the presentation slides at
half size, one per page in black and
white with no background—something
which is particularly easy to do with
OpenOffice Impress. Using a colored
pen, mark numbers representing the
order in which items on each page are
presented, and list mnemonics and
notes at the bottom of the page, in
order, for reading and presentation on
the spot. Never write exactly what you
are about to say on your notes: it won’t
appear natural, you will spend too long
reading, and you are lining yourself up
for a potential reading mistake.
20
Mnemonics are great since you only
have to read a tiny amount of text to
trigger a sentence of speech, thus keep-
ing your eyes up more of the time.
On the subject of eyes, do you
notice how good speakers look at their
audience? Looking out at the audience,
scanning across all sections of the
room helps to keep listeners engaged.
Never turn your back on the audience;
don’t stare at your notes or your com-
puter screen; keep your eyes up. Do
not look only at your friends or the
attractive student in the front row.
Instead, choose a few friendly looking
people around the room, and focus for
a few seconds on each in turn as you
speak. This will help you to gauge
responses to what you are saying and
speed up or slow down as appropriate.
It will also help reduce the mass audi-
ence to a handful of individuals who
are far less intimidating.
When I was younger, I was given a
piece of good advice to combat nerves.
I was told to imagine the audience
naked. In that way, the logic went, I
would be less stressed and more com-
fortable. Maybe this said more about
the adviser than he realized, or perhaps
his audiences didn’t predominantly con-
sist of fat, balding, middle-aged men.
This thought naturally leads us to the
subject of getting flustered. Fluster is like
a kind of feedback loop. Something kicks
you mentally; you fully realize this; you
start to worry about the fact that you’ve
been mentally kicked, which upsets
things further as you again realize that
you have been mentally kicked; before
you know it, your smooth delivery has
been interrupted. Blushing is a kind of
physical equivalent. Something triggers a
blush response (perhaps the thought of
naked audience members?), which makes
you worry that someone will notice, so
you start to blush further, then worry
more about being noticed, thus blushing
more, until you start to resemble an over-
ripe tomato. The solution is to first recog-
nize the symptoms, then deliberately
stop, step outside of the process, gather
your thoughts, and then resume. Imagine
some causes of initial kick:
i) You noticed a stupid mistake on
your page.
ii) Your tongue didn’t behave when
pronouncing that tricky word that
you’d never got wrong before (or
else it sounded like you were try-
ing to rap with it).
iii) You started to explain a simple con-
cept, and your mind went blank.
iv) Someone has asked a question
you really can’t answer.
v) Your deepest, darkest, personal
confusion came out. When I was
very young, my letter “p” some-
times came out backwards, which
would anger my parents and
teachers and highly embarrass
me. Much later, when I started to
lecture, I would write something
on the board and suddenly won-
der if the “p” was correct. It
might look weird but luckily was
always correct. That didn’t stop a
moment of pure panic when I
thought that, in front of 500 stu-
dents, I’d repeated this dreaded
childhood mistake!
Whatever the reason, there is only
one response: pause, take a deep
breath, and continue. Logically the issue
is either visible to the audience, or it
isn’t. If it is, then you can’t hide it any-
way, so just pause and regroup so the
rest of your talk goes well. If it isn’t vis-
ible then do the same—no one will
mind. An occasional short pause is nor-
mal and natural. Use the opportunity to
rearrange your notes or something.
I would like to stress a couple of
points about presentation skills. First,
for most of us, practice is essential.
Under the microscope of a hundred
eyes, any hesitation or unfamiliarity is
glaringly obvious. However, almost
nobody can present a seminar, lecture,
or talk with no mistakes whatsoever.
Luckily, audiences forgive genuine mis-
takes. However, if you’re going to make
a mistake, don’t let it be one that shows
laziness of lack of preparation, since
this is harder to forgive than mistakes
based on poor understanding or bad
spelling. So familiarity with the research
itself, background, results, and most
importantly, with the presentation
order and material (since this is the
channel from your brain to the collec-
tive brain of the audience, and thus the
main criteria by which you will be
judged) is important.
The second point in the same vein is
that perfection is neither sought nor
required. But an honest attempt at a
good job is highly appreciated.
My boss used to be fond of repeating
a saying “you can’t learn to play the vio-
lin by reading books about it. You learn
to play the violin by playing the violin.”
And so it is with technical presentations.
You improve incrementally through
continual repetition. Ideally, an audi-
ence should only be exposed to you at
IEEE POTENTIALS
the conclusion of this learning process, 1) A laser pointer is unforgiving of a but if you use a laser pointer,
not during the initial stages. They shaky hand. Veterans might be they will spot your shaky hand
should thus see the final, confident, able to project a rock solid dot of unless you i) steady your hand
well-rehearsed product of your learning. red light on a screen, but most of before turning it on, ii) flash the
Before leaving you to your practice us will be showing something spot for no more than half a sec-
sessions, I will cover a few more points like a Lissajous figure. The audi- ond or so, or iii) lay off the coffee
that I’ve discovered the hard way: ence can’t spot your shaky knees, before you present.
2) If you use prompts, or a cheat-
sheet like I mentioned, staple
them together so they don’t get
lost or out of order.
Practice strengthens public-speaking skills
3) Try and load your presentation to
No matter how well you know a topic, speaking before a group of people you long-term memory. Practice at least
don’t know at all can be a nerve-wracking experience. Unfortunately, as most twice the evening before, and then
speaking coaches will tell you, there is only one way to get over the public-speak- read through at least once an hour
ing jitters—practice. or so prior to your talk.
Fortunately, help is available. 4) Old, but still good, advice is to
A Google search on public speaking skills will give you numerous Web sites to video yourself presenting to a test
check out. Many advertise the services of individual public-speaking coaches. Of
audience. You might be surprised.
Also get comments from your test
the sites offering these services, Toastmasters International <www.toastmasters.org> is
audience and listen to them.
probably the most well known.
5) Admit any shortcomings or mis-
Toastmasters is a not-for-profit membership organization that, at the grassroots takes when challenged. Acknow-
level, operates like a club of 20 to 30 people who meet weekly for approximately ledge good ideas and constructive
one hour. Members have an opportunity to speak at each meeting by giving criticism from the audience. Practice
impromptu speeches, speeches of one or two minutes on an assigned topic, or pre- humility and honesty in all you pre-
senting prepared speeches based on projects from the Toastmasters International sent and say. If you’re good, people
Communication and Leadership Program manuals. Projects cover such topics as will see that—you don’t need to try
speech organization, voice, language, gestures, and persuasion. and show them. If you aren’t good,
Every prepared speaker is assigned an evaluator who gives feedback on speech then no amount of bluster, aggres-
strengths as well as suggestions for improvement.
sion, or attitude will hide it
Finally when you do present, lighten
Membership dues are approximately $50 a year. The Web site offers information
up. Enjoy the chance to interact with
about how to find a club near you and how to start one, if one doesn’t already exist
your peers and some of the famous
nearby. Many companies, organizations, and universities have local chapters. names you’ve heard about. A conference
A visit to <www.toastmasters.org> will also give you this list of ten tips to improve is a meeting place of ideas and knowl-
your public-speaking abilities. edge that you attend to offer both your
• Know your material. Pick a topic you are interested in. Know more about it than ideas and your attention, but also to take
you include in your speech. away new ideas and a new-found confi-
• Use personal stories and conversational language—that way you won’t easily dence in your work.
forget what to say.
• Practice. Practice. Practice! Rehearse out loud with all the equipment you plan About the author
on using. Revise as necessary.
Ian V. McLoughlin is principal engi-
neer in Group Research, Tait Electronics
• Know the audience. Greet some of the audience members as they arrive. It’s
Ltd, Christchurch, New Zealand. He has
easier to speak to a group of friends than to strangers.
worked on three continents, been
• Know the room. Arrive early, walk around the speaking area, and practice employed by big industry, small industry,
using the microphone and any visual aids. academia, central government, and a char-
• Relax. Ease tension by doing exercises. Transform nervous energy into enthusiasm. ity. He completed his Ph.D. at the
• Visualize yourself giving your speech. Imagine yourself speaking, your voice loud, University of Birmingham, United
clear and confident. Visualize the audience clapping—it will boost your confidence. Kingdom, in 1997, and was assistant pro-
• Realize that people want you to succeed. Audiences want you to be interest- fessor at Nanyang Technological
ing, stimulating, informative, and entertaining. They don’t want you to fail. University, School of Computer
• Don’t apologize for any nervousness or problem—the audience probably Engineering, in Singapore
never noticed it.
for several years prior to CAREER
emigrating to the southern PATHS
• Concentrate on the message—not the medium. Focus your attention away
hemisphere in 2001.
from your own anxieties and concentrate on your message and your audience.
He is director of a
• Gain experience. Experience builds confidence, which is the key to effective small electronics
speaking. company and
—Emily M. Smith likes to attend
conferences in
exotic locations.

MAY/JUNE 2006 21