www.christopherwitt.com
BY SARAH LIGGETT, PHD
Christopher Witt, a management consultant and author of the blog Communication Matters, recently posted an entry, Improving the Speech Delivery Skills of Engineers, that caught the attention of the CxC team. Witt writes, “Engineers aren’t generally regarded as dynamic presenters, and yet I spend little time trying to improve their delivery skills.” He gives three reasons:
(1) “there’s not enough time,”
(2) “other things are more important than delivery,” and
(3) “there’s a better way to improve their presentation skills.”
The first point is a given: there is never enough time in any field to teach everything we want students to know and be able to do. But what is really more important than delivery? And is there really a better way?
Since time limits are not unique to any field, it is important to learn how to quickly evaluate the purpose for a presentation and what information can/should be covered and your audience. That said, seasoned presenters may need less time to organize a talk, but no matter what stage you are at in your career, everyone needs critique in delivery to be able to deliver a truly engaging speech that gets others excited (about your research or ideas) and ultimately moves the audience to action (generating funding support or job offers).
Perhaps without knowing it, Witt argues outright for attention to three of the five canons discussed by classical rhetoricians such as Aristotle and Cicero: invention (purpose), arrangement (organization), and style (clarity, conciseness, and completeness). And while Witt never mentions memory as such, he does help clients practice their presentations until they have “internalized their message.” But what about the final canon—delivery? It seems to me that Witt does in fact teach delivery when he encourages presenters to act natural, but speak a bit louder with more pronounced gestures.
So while Witt’s initial argument on its face seems counter-intuitive to CxC pedagogy, his approach actually supports CxC pedagogy in most regards. Like many C-I faculty do with their students, Wit teaches his clients to focus on higher order concerns (purpose, audience, content, organization, etc.) before later order concerns (sentence structure, word choice, usage, punctuation, style). And although he doesn’t “have time” to partake in video recording, in Communication-Intensive (C-I) courses and in CxC Studios, where we do have—or at least—take the time to develop delivery skills, we know the uncomfortable, yet significant growth that students achieve when they are able to self-evaluate their presentations. Little—but significant—things like eye contact, speech pace, and gestures can be taught quickly, improve over time, and take little time to point out.
At the end of the day, an amazing delivery* cannot make up for lack of knowledge or ideas. But a poor delivery can severely impair the effective communication of knowledge and ideas. The two go hand-and-hand and must remain priorities for us across all disciplines as we teach students to be strong oral communicators.
*Note: Strong delivery is not defined by comedic approaches or slides overrun with images. Rather, it focuses on a presenter who draws you in, helps you clearly understand why this information is important, and motivates and inspires you.
Dr. Liggett’s delineation of “the five canons discussed by classical rhetoricians” ends up pointing out that Witts’ methodology still values delivery and internalization (I prefer this term to memory; notice how strict memorization of material almost always poorly affects delivery, with maybe poetry as an exception) in its training methods. In collaboration with Professors Frank Bosworth and Marsha Cuddeback, the LSU Art + Design CxC studio recently wrote a paper addressing teaching narrative in design presentations, specifically in architecture (The International Journal of Literacies, 2013). In respect to internalization, we confessed that typically throughout undergraduate studies, students are expected to internalize the process of developing what we refer to as an excellent narrative to their design presentations. Surely we do not expect all our students to be Don Draper quality presenters (the lead creative presenter popularized in the television drama Mad Men), but as teachers, we want to give students more structured support to aid the development of their presentation skills. What follows was an intervention to answer (#3): a better way to improve communication skills. We employed visual sparkline analysis assignments (generated with influence from the ideas of Edward Tufte and Nancy Duarte) under the hypothesis that students with prowess for the visual mode of communication may be more receptive to a visual analysis of their oral presentations. The students developed great sparklines (of precedents and their second round of presentations) and we noticed more developed, “re-VIEWed” presentations. I’d be interested to see or hear attempts at a visual sparkline self-evaluation from young design professionals.
I taught Sr. lab in ChE (CxC class) for ~14 years, worked 2 years for DuPont as a young engineer, and have consulted and done contract work for industry for many years (giving many presentations), so I think I’m qualified to say something here. What I see in many courses that stress oral presentation is that they try to work on too many things at once. My first boss gave me 4 “rules” for any technical presentation and I’ve come to appreciate his wisdom over the years. They probably don’t apply to other than technical presentations. They were:
(1) Always stay on time – people are going to probably interrupt you with questions anyway, so don’t talk beyond your allotted time.
(2) State your purpose first – why are we paying you to do this work? Not an outline of the talk!
(3) Be sure everything on a visual can be read easily from the back of a large room in low light.
(4) Always summarize your main conclusions last – and limit this to maybe 2-3 conclusions.
Of course, this being DuPont there were some things than he didn’t need to say (don’t dress too casually, make eye contact, talk in a firm, soemwhat loud, voice). But the point is that anyone can make at least a passable presentation if they focus on a few simple guidelines. My Ph.D. advisor added one more that I’ve always remembered:
“If you don’t take what you’re talking about seriously, nobody else will.”
I always joke to the students about the survey that found Americans were more afraid of public speaking than death. I think part of that problem is that we try to turn them into Demosthenes immediately. Even he had to practice with the pebbles for a long time.
Thanks for passing along the sound advice for teachers and speakers. Practice is, of course, critical to the timing issue.
I really liked this part:
At the end of the day, an amazing delivery* cannot make up for lack of knowledge or ideas.
It is true in so many ways!
Thanks for your advice!
Kind regards