Engineering Speaking by Design

Delivering Technical Presentations with Real Impact

Edward J. Rothwell, Michael J. Cloud

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351830218
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications
• Index: Technology & Engineering

From the Authors of Engineering Writing by Design: Creating Formal Documents of Lasting Value

Engineering presentations are often a topic of frustration. Engineers complain that they don't enjoy public speaking, and that they don't know how to address audiences with varying levels of technical knowledge. Their colleagues complain about the state of information transfer in the profession. Non-engineers complain that engineers are boring and talk over everybody's heads.

Although many public speaking books exist, most concentrate on surface issues, failing to distinguish the formal oral technical presentation from general public speaking.

Engineering Speaking by Design: Delivering Technical Presentations with Real Impact targets the formal oral technical presentation skills needed to succeed in modern engineering. Providing clear and concise instruction supported by illustrative examples, the book explains how to avoid logical fallacies (both formal and informal), use physical reasoning to catch mistakes in claims, master the essentials of presentation style, conquer the elements of mathematical exposition, and forge a connection with the audience. Each chapter ends with a convenient checklist, bulleted summary, and set of exercises. A solutions manual is available with qualifying course adoption.

Yet the book's most unique feature is its conceptual organization around the engineering design process. This is the process taught in most engineering survey courses: understand the problem, collect relevant information, generate alternative solutions, choose a preferred solution, refine the chosen solution, and so on. Since virtually all engineers learn and practice this process, it is so familiar that it can be applied seamlessly to formal oral technical presentations.

Thus, Engineering Speaking by Design: Delivering Technical Presentations with Real Impact is inherently valuable in that it shows engineers how to leverage what they already know. The book's mantra is: if you can think like an engineer, you can speak like an engineer.

1

Becoming a Presenter

1.1 Is Public Speaking Easy?

That’s a tough question to answer. If like many people you find your knees buckling, hands sweating, and voice quivering each time you step in front of a large audience, you will say No! Others seem naturally comfortable when speaking in public. Every word seems to come out just right. To them it must be easy.

But what about technical presentations? Are they ever easy? While some people may have a knack for technical improvisation, we claim that good technical presentations are never easy. Many things must come together for success, including knowledge, clarity, confidence, integrity, and interest. Such a combination can only be expected from solid, intelligent preparation and much careful practice. If that sounds like a lot of work, consider the alternative.

Steve has always been the outgoing type. With a resonant voice, lively gestures, and friendly smile, he can entertain and even lead large groups of his friends in ordinary conversation. But recently Steve had to give an oral presentation in his junior level thermodynamics course. Feeling confident, he decided to “just be himself” and take a stab at the fifteen minute talk without notes, slides, or any real preparation. Five minutes into the talk, Steve realized he was struggling to make sense of his topic. He turned away from the dry erase board to face his audience for the first time:

I realize I’m kinda all over the place here, but that’s just how my mind works.

Everyone stared. Steve turned back to the board and tried to recover, but not even his biggest apologetic smile could save him. Embarrassed and a bit bewildered with himself, Steve ended his talk after just ten minutes. The instructor awarded a D grade rather than an F, but Steve knew the truth. His presentation was a failure.

Some preparation is better than none, but technical presentation is never routine. Care must be taken to make sure the preparation is both sufficient and appropriate for the speaking task at hand.

Kelly, another thermodynamics student that semester, never dreamed of “winging” her presentation. On the contrary, she put in diligent work, carefully preparing slides and rehearsing her talk beforehand. But the longer Kelly spoke, the more she realized she really didn’t understand her topic in any depth. She became increasingly nervous and unsure of herself, and it showed. Eventually she started reading her slides verbatim. Despite her best intentions, without sufficient preparation her presentation collapsed. Some listeners sensed her growing panic and looked away in embarrassment, while others became bored or even amused. In the end, Kelly’s lack of confidence destroyed the effectiveness of her message.

For most of us, technical presentation is akin to musical performance: it is a complicated, learned skill. Talent helps but is not enough. Still, even a young performer, or technical presenter, can become proficient if he sets his mind to it. For engineers there is no option; the skill of technical speaking must be mastered. Regardless of your organization, your discipline, or the level of your position, you will find yourself delivering important talks to important people. When it’s your turn to get up in front of that audience, you want to deliver something helpful, motivational, even inspirational. You want to earn the audience’s respect and appreciation. In short, you want your technical talks to be good.

1.2 How Can I Learn to Be a Good Presenter?

Here’s a basic roadmap. First, you’ll need to understand the fundamentals of technical presentation. A general public speaking class will cover only some of these (and not every engineer has time to take a public speaking class anyway). So we’ll provide these fundamentals in later chapters. Second, you need to do some homework by watching skilled presenters and noting how they implement the fundamentals. You’ll probably spot some more sophisticated speaking techniques that go beyond the fundamentals; take particular note of these. Third, practice makes perfect. You’ll need to practice speaking until the fundamentals become second nature. Private rehearsal is a good way to get started if you are inclined to be nervous; even gifted speakers rehearse in private before the big event. Truly useful experience will come in front of your colleagues or fellow students. Fourth, you’ll have to stick with it. Growth comes through repeated practice. Sure, things may be rough at the start, but you will learn with each attempt. It won’t be long before you get a taste of success. And finally, you’ll have to keep your skills sharp by staying in practice. Don’t forget this last point — it’s easy to get rusty if you don’t stay active. Seek out speaking opportunities during lulls. You won’t regret it!

Regardless of how you get started, it’s important to realize the serious and relatively complex nature of the technical speaking task. For Steve, the student subject of our recent story, that realization has come the hard way. But Steve can recover quickly from his rough start if he brings to bear the engineering mindset he has been developing in his classes. He needs to view his speaking struggle as an engineering problem, and solve it. By focusing some penetrating thought on the matter, he might even gain a level of insight that ordinary public speaking experts lack.

Not wishing to repeat his nightmarish experience, Steve asked for some blunt feedback from his thermodynamics instructor. The response was no surprise: “Your choice of topic was appropriate, but you were clearly unprepared. As you can now see, technical speaking involves far more than being spontaneous and hoping for the best. Good presentations don’t just happen — they are planned.” But Steve was just beginning to consider all this. He still had many questions. For example, he was aware that presentations could be aimed at a variety of educational levels. Presentations could have drastically different time limitations as well. Some might be intended to persuade, others mainly to inform. What sorts of fundamental considerations underlie all the diverse possibilities? After some pondering of these questions, the general “technical presentation problem” began to strike Steve as a sort of design problem, akin to the complex technical problems he was learning to solve by standard design methods in his engineering courses.

Steve now saw technical speaking as an engaging problem and had a viable way to attack it. We’ll return to his epiphany (about how technical presentation can be approached as an engineering design problem) in the next chapter. Right now, let’s spend a little time to drive home the importance of being a good technical speaker.

1.3 The Benefits of Being a Good Presenter

Steve is one of the fortunate ones. His “bad experience” occurred in the relatively safe confines of the college classroom. In a professional setting, an engineer who speaks poorly might just (1) come across as unprepared, unprofessional, or even silly; (2) disappoint or annoy important people like mentors, supervisors, colleagues, and customers; (3) mislead others, or at least fail to get hard-won technical ideas across to them; (4) suffer from career stagnation or failure to land an attractive job; and possibly (5) acquire a negative overall reputation as a poor communicator. In short, a poor speaker may have a second-rate engineering career. An ability to speak professionally is a required part of being professional.

Students aren’t the only ones who have difficulty speaking in a classroom environment. Consider Steve and Kelly’s thermodynamics instructor, Jan. When Jan first became a professor, he had very little experience speaking in front of an audience. The few technical presentations he delivered as a graduate student were certainly no substitute for teaching a real class. Jan thought that being an expert in his field would make teaching undergraduates trivial. Preparing little for his first few classes, Jan found himself bumbling through the material, talking well over the head of the average student. Many students disengaged and stopped coming to class. It wasn’t until semester’s end that Jan realized he would need to pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Authors
• 1 Becoming a Presenter
• 2 Engineering a Presentation
• 3 Designing Your Presentation
• 4 Building Your Presentation
• 5 Optimizing Your Presentation
• 6 Showtime: Delivering Your Presentation
• 7 Success! (What Now?)
• Further Reading
• Appendix: Presentation Checklist
• Index