Walking, Talking, Smiling, and Pointing: Delivery Skills for Technical Professionals

Technically trained professionals – primarily engineers, contractors, and architectural project managers – have typically been perceived as poor speakers.  Companies spend thousands of dollars on standardized delivery coaching in an attempt to make these professionals more compelling and dynamic.  After more than 20 years of coaching such technical professionals, I have found, however, that this standardized coaching method is ineffective. In order to improve the delivery skills of any technical professional, coaches like me need to adapt our approach to coaching to the unique ways in which our technical clients think and communicate.

Training an engineer in theatric “tricks” like common gestures, movement in the room, and the ubiquitous smile, typically makes said engineer look over-coached and wooden (think Al Gore in the 2000 presidential elections).  Rather, we should be coaching technical professionals in ways that connect compelling content to their own natural delivery.  I’ve seen literally hundreds of technical presenters in a range of important presentations and frankly, I’ve only met a handful of them who were truly horrible in their delivery.  Most speakers are actually quite competent – if we work with them in a way that is supportive vs. prescriptive.

I tell speakers that there isn’t any right way to present and there’s no simple list of delivery improvements that will work for every speaker.  Most speakers, in fact, are quite competent in the four elements of delivery that really count:  walking, talking, smiling, and pointing.  We just need to help speakers take their natural competence in these four elements and translate them into the context of a compelling presentation.

Technical professionals need to have a strong working outline that they have written, that has strong logic, and that they’ve both had vetted by colleagues and had an opportunity to practice.  In my experience, most technical professionals can’t begin to focus on delivery until they have connected with content.  Coaching delivery before the speaker has a firm grasp of the content results in frustration and stress for both speaker and coach.

Once content is ready, however, we need to coach technical speakers carefully – choosing our “battles” and making minor improvements that are consistent with a speaker’s natural style.  If a speaker naturally uses small gestures and speaks softly, asking him to adopt broad gestures and an effervescent vocal style simply won’t work.  Technical speakers are generally not trained actors and we need to support them in minor changes that will appear natural in a presentation instead of asking them to make major changes that are more consistent with the coach’s prescriptive vision of a good speaker.

Minor changes might include adding a smile, moving closer to the selection panel, slightly increasing volume, or interacting with a visual to show a process or example.  Technical speakers respond well to minor changes that have a major impact.  Any delivery “tweaks” that we recommend as coaches need to be closely tied to the content. In this way, the technical speaker can “see” the logic of the recommendation.  For example, “Suzi, when you identify the major technical challenge, pause beforehand, then speak louder and look the selectors in the eye. This will give that statement much more impact.”  This is more effective than saying, “Suzi, you need to speak louder and integrate more pauses into your delivery.  This will make you a more persuasive and dynamic speaker.”