Mastering Presentation Skills for Engineers and Tech Professionals | Tips from Communication Expert
welcome to part two of my interview with Christopher Chin.
He is a presentation coach and he specifically helps tech professionals and tech leaders with developing confidence in their public speaking and their presentation skills.
In part one of our episode we cover deeply how to improve your interpersonal communication skills. Speaking with executives and speaking their language or really just empathizing with other people. So if you didn't catch that. You want to go back and watch that one HERE.
In this part of the episode, we're going to focus specifically on presentation skills and slide presentations. And I think a big thing that us as engineers and data minded people is we get lost in the details and we end up losing people through our, , data filled slides and we end up not really compelling our point. With that in mind, why do you feel like we struggle with this? Why do we feel like we don't really put compelling presentations together? We do the research, we know the logic, we know the knowledge, and then we struggle with driving it home and convincing the person through our presentation. So why do you think we struggle with this?
Why Do Engineers and Tech Professionals Struggle with Presentation Skills?
Christopher Chin: It's a very common thing that I see among engineers and developers and analysts is, this tendency to stuff a lot of information on the slides. And this speaks to what we talked about earlier when it comes to the level of detail we enjoy as engineers and forgetting that our audience doesn't also often enjoy that level of detail.
I believe the reason for it is also because of this fundamental misunderstanding about what presentation really is about. I feel a lot of us think that presentations are here to inform. They're here to give information to the audience about something. But I believe a presentation is not about giving information, it's actually about inspiring people to take action. And that's a really important distinction.
And the reason why I think about it that way is because of my earlier background in music that we also discussed. In music, people can watch all the music they want for free on YouTube, but they will go to a concert and pay money to see it live. What is the reason behind that? It's the same information, both ways, the same musical score or song. But people will pay because they're going for the experience. They're there to be inspired.
And the same is true for presentations. People are not attending your presentation just for information. If they were, then you could stuff the slides to the brim with information, have all the data and statistics there. You'd be giving them so much information. You'd be achieving your goal. But the goal of a presentation is not to give information, it's to inspire action. You want people to do something with this information. And if you think about it that way, if you think about, okay, I am presenting not to inform, but to inspire.
You think about creating slides in a totally different way. You think, okay, if I stuff it to the brim with information, data statistics, people are not going to want to do anything about it. But if I make it clear, simple, sparse, people will understand the message instantly.
And I think that is what's not often taught in professional development in school. It's we're taught to just put a bunch of bullet points on slides, but really the purpose of presentation is to inspire action. And that's how we change our mindset to start creating them in a better way.
2 Ways to Develop and Strengthen Your Presentation Skills
Doug Howard: Wow, it's, it's interesting. I never thought of it that way. It's an experience. You're basically creating an experience and entertaining is part of that equation. I guess as engineers, we probably don't like that. It probably feels dirty or icky. But you're right. You know, you have to entertain to capture people's attention. And I guess as you're saying that, I'm just thinking, yeah, we live in a clickbait culture. you know, attention span is decreasing by the minute.
And you have to fight to keep people's attention. You have to fight to, work towards making them want to actively listen to you. And I think that's what you're getting at here. If that's something, that wasn't taught to you, where do you begin? How do you learn how to develop this skill?
Christopher Chin: It would come down to two things. One would be trying to get feedback on your presentations. What often happens is we give the presentation and we're done. But if you ask people afterwards, how did it go? What could I have done better? In the same way that we approach our technical work, let's say, where we are striving to obtain a certain goal, a certain metric, and we evaluate ourselves according to that benchmark. In the same way, we should evaluate our soft skills. I have a goal. I want to give a great presentation. Did I achieve it? Let's ask people to get some data on it. So that's one way.
Another way would be to critically assess yourself. And this goes back to what we had in our earlier discussion about recording yourself speaking. You can also evaluate your presentation by asking for feedback from peers, by comparing it to other examples within your organization or others, uh, exemplary models of good presentation and see how could I do better. I am doing this in my presentations. Maybe I could make this slight adjustment here or there to make it even more effective the next time.
Doug Howard: I would imagine, taking the audience's perspective into consideration too. There's specific people, but then there's kind of just general things. What are just general things to keep in mind? Some general rules of thumbs to keep in mind when giving presentations.
Follow This Governing Rule for Slide Presentations
Christopher Chin: One governing rule would be. One message per slide. Instead of trying to put as much as we can in one space, which saves us time as presenter designers because we just list all these bullet points, we're done. We can just read it off the slide when we present. But instead, having just one core message per slide, then you just go through each slide one at a time. People get it, get it, get it, and it's easy. So that's one principle, instead of overwhelming, chunking it out into discrete pieces that are easy to digest.
Doug Howard: I like that. So you're basically, making a point, moving on to the next slide, making a point and make that point as concisely as possible instead of just loading with data. It's just what's the minimum amount of information I need to convey this point and then move on, right? So could you show us a few examples of this?
Bad Presentation Slides Convey Way Too Much Information and Confuse the Audience
Christopher Chin: Yeah, absolutely. So here, as an example, we have a slide filled to the brim with information, data, and statistics, web transactions by success and failure. And you think to yourself, how would you present this to anyone?
You would probably just read each bullet point one at a time. And if you think about it, that's an incredibly tedious experience for the audience to undergo because they're just listening to you read it slowly when they have probably read it three times in their own head because we read much faster than we speak.
So it's really thinking again about the audience's experience of the information we're giving them. How can we make this more compelling for them to listen to? So we don't want slides like this where it's just bullet point, bullet point, bullet point, and we just read it. We want to turn it into something where people can instantly understand it within five seconds or less.
So let's move to the next slide where I showcase an improvement here. We have a table that encapsulates all the same information. We have each website that we've tried to navigate to Google Yahoo Bing and the successful transactions and the failed transactions, same information, but much more tidily displayed, but this is still not very informative.
Again, the point of a presentation is not just to inform, but to inspire. So how do we make this inspirational? Well, we can turn it into a chart. Again, same information, but visually presented in a more engaging way. Here in this table, I see the data, but I don't understand what's important. Is it the 4,000 number, the 2,000 number, the 1,500 number?
What, what is the thing I should pay attention to here?
Using Visuals in Your Slides to Accelerate Processing Time for the Audience
Doug Howard: It's funny you say that because as I was reading it and following along, I was thinking I don't exactly know what I'm supposed to be taking away from this, but then once you showed the visualization, okay, it's slapping me right in the face.
Christopher Chin: Exactly. And it speaks to how important visuals are for us as human beings. We're visual creatures. And visual things like this just snap instantly to us because we see the longest bar is that one at the bottom. We don't need to think about it. We just see it. And the colors, the red and the green stand out to us because they're bright colors.
There's no thinking involved there. The key to making the audience engaged is relying primarily on visual communication over textual communication. And in this graph, it goes back to what I mentioned before about accessibility. The problem is there's red and green presence on the slide.
But for the significant but small population that can't see red and green readily at the same time, It's best to not use them at the same time. So switching it to this would be a lot more excessive. Blue and orange wouldn't have as many problems for the majority.
Doug Howard: Do you have rules or a list of the colors that we should and shouldn't use?
Christopher Chin: I would recommend steering away from red and green simultaneously as a general rule for red green color blindness. That's the number one issue.
And red and green in general can present a lot of problems because there are portions of the population that don't have those receptors in their eyes that can see those particular colors well and distinguish them. And this is, this can be an issue because we like to label things bad as red and label things good as green. But it's important to just be careful about doing that, at least when you're using them at the same time. So as a general rule, try and steer away from red and green.
There are websites that let you see how would someone with colorblindness, and there are a lot of variations of colorblindness as well, how would someone with colorblindness see this visual? So if I showed this visual of blue and orange, how would someone with This kind of colorblindness, how would someone with this variation see it? And by doing that, we can make sure it's easy to understand for any portion of the audience.
Doug Howard: That's really good to know because I do give a decent amount of presentations and I never even thought about colorblindness, at all. It never even occurred to me and uh, so this is, this is very eye opening. A question that comes up here though is, bar charts aren't probably always the right way to convey your point, you know, it's maybe sometimes a table like you previously showed is the right way. So how do you know which way is the right way to, go? What's the right format to use? What's the stress test to figure that out?
2-Step Approach for Figuring Out the Best Way to Organize, Format, and Create Your Slide
Christopher Chin: My two step approach is number one, what is the message we want to convey? And then two, how do we make that message clear? If the message is, and I'll move to the next slide, that Facebook is the only company with more failed transactions than successful ones in the headline, then this graph is the best way to show that.
Because clearly, Facebook has the blue bar higher and longer than the orange one. So in the two step process, what is the message we want to convey? That's in the title. How do we make that message clear? The chart is the best way to do that because the longer bar stands out.
However, if the message we want to convey is just helping people see the precise detail behind success and failure in terms of the transactions, then a table is the best approach, because in the chart variation, I see the numbers, but they're not displayed in an organized fashion. In a table, it's very easy to look things up.
It really depends on what message you want the audience to understand and how do you make that message clear.
How to Objectively Proof Your Presentation Slides Through Audience's Perspective
Doug Howard: Do you have any tips for how to like objectively look at it? Because I would imagine, if you put together this presentation, you're immersed in the data, you know this stuff, your brain's going to skip to knowing the point you want to make. How do you look at it objectively when you're preparing this and building it?
Christopher Chin: My recommendation for the best let's say objective test to determine how effective your visual is, is a five second test. Can you get it in five seconds or less? If you can't, then it should be redesigned.
And if you are too stuck in the weeds of your own perspective because you designed it, get someone else. Say, Hey, can you look at this? And in five seconds or less, can you just get the point? If they cannot, then it should be redesigned.
So going back to this example, where the story, the message we want to convey is Facebook is the only company with more failed transactions than successful ones. Great. Now, what do you pay attention to first when you look at the slide is probably the orange bar because it's the brightest color. Success! But that's not the focal point of our story.
The focal point of our story is the failed transactions. So we need to make that more clear. And we do that by graying out the stuff that isn't as important. So in this example of the same chart, the same data, I pay attention to the blue bars because they are the brightest color now. So I pay attention to the failed transactions more than the successful ones. So gray here is our best friend.
Doug Howard: That's very interesting because I couldn't stop looking at the Google 100k bar before and now it almost kind of disappears. This is very powerful. This is very interesting just to see how these little slight tweaks like this can change the takeaways. And here we are staring at this, you know, I'm dissecting this with you and it still is changing my perception of the story that you're telling. It's very, it's very interesting.
Christopher Chin: Yeah, exactly. And let's say we change the story again. Let's say that longest bar you mentioned, Google with the 100k is the central point of our story. So Google has the greatest number of total transactions with the majority successful. Is this chart the best one to tell that story? Well, in five seconds or less, what do we see?
We instantly see the Google bar has 100k. But how do we make it more clear that that is the center point? Because right now blue is the center point. So what if I change the chart type to this? Where I stack the bars instead of clustering them. Here the bar that stands out to you first is probably Google's because it's the longest one and it has that little blue tip at the end for the failed transactions.
But we can clearly see the point of this story. Google, the last bar, has the greatest number of total transactions with the majority successful being the gray. So just changing small things in how you visualize. It's the same information can make the message clear or not.
Doug Howard: Yeah. And imagine there's ways to look at this differently too, depending on what point you're trying to make. You could show percentages instead of volume. This is making a lot of sense for me and I'm sure this is making a lot of sense for, for the audience. Do you have other examples of how to show these things in different ways to convey your point. For me, I'm like, I'm seeing this right now and I'm like, okay, this makes sense for this specific scenario, but you know, how do I kind of develop this ability to think this way?
Christopher Chin: Right. And I'll show another example that speaks to your idea of percentages. We're showing absolute values here, but what if we want to show percentage? For example, let's say this is the message we want to convince Facebook has the highest proportion of failed transactions. Is this the best chart to show that? I don't know. It's showing absolute numbers and not percentages. What if we change the chart type to instead be this?
So it's all out of 100%, and then I just divide it in terms of the different categories corresponding to each of the categories. So Netflix, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, Google, and now we can see that Facebook's bar, which is the second one from the top, has the highest proportion of failed transactions. Blue being failure.
It's the one that has the greatest swath of the total bar. So in this way, you can see all these small little details you change. And attention to detail being so important. That's how you make sure your message is clear.
Reproducable Ways to Simplify Your Slide Presentations
Christopher Chin: And going back to your earlier question about how do we implement this in a reproducible way? How do we know that we're doing the right thing? And one way that I would recommend to approach it is again that five second test, which is look at it in five seconds or less each slide, do you get the point? Showing it to your colleagues who are unfamiliar with the material and not mired as deep in it as you, do you get it in five seconds or less?
Now, the question that I often get when it comes to slide design and presentations is, how do we make sure that if we simplify the slides in the way that I'm teaching, if I want to send the deck out to everybody afterwards, how will they get enough information if it doesn't contain it? How do we bridge both those worlds?
And my recommendation to that is a slide deck cannot serve as a report, as a source of documentation, and a visual aid for a presentation at the same time. You need two different things. Otherwise, if you try and cram them together, it won't be effective for both of those goals.
My recommendation would be create a slide deck that's simple in the part that you present. And then in the appendix, put all the information that you would want people to reference afterwards.
Doug Howard: That makes sense. Cause I know when I'm in a meeting and if someone gives me something that's redundant in a sense. I ended up paying more attention to the redundant thing than the actual presentation. And I almost give myself permission. It's subconscious, but I realized, Oh, I don't need to pay as much attention because it's all written out for me here, but I'm missing the nuances of what they're explaining to me in the moment. And it doesn't really sink in either. I kind of just give myself a pass to not let it sink in or whatnot.
We talked about this in our last episode when it comes to interpersonal communication, and you have tons of resources for people on your website to, to learn these skills on their own at their own pace. Do you have any free resources or, or any resources or programs that can help people with presentation skills?
Training Resources for Improving Your Communication and Presentation Skills
Christopher Chin: Yeah, absolutely. I have three ways that I usually help people as a coach and trainer, one being my online course, second being my one on one coaching and third being my team workshops.
And the online course in particular, I found has been a really great way for people to learn this kind of material in an iterative fashion. And the course designed to take place over eight weeks.
And in that time you work within a community of your peers. So you're all learning together, you're all complimenting each other, giving each other feedback on what worked and what didn't. And I found that is what really encourages people. They're seeing what other people are doing great. Oh, I can do that too. Or they're saying, Oh, that person, they're making a lot of progress. How can I keep pushing myself? And the way the course is structured is it has on demand lessons. So we all live busy professional lives, but you can watch the videos at your own pace and every week submit the assignments at a certain time. Then you get feedback on them and you repeat the cycle. So the goal is by the end of the eight weeks that we have together, you have transformed from that feeling of being unconfident in your speaking and presentation skill to feeling like you have all the tools and techniques necessary to go out on any stage.
Doug Howard: I definitely see, how this can really get quick results because obviously practice makes perfect, but you have this environment where everyone's clearly struggling in that area, looking to improve in that area, so there's a safe space, but then you're getting all that repetition in.
And that's the hard part, I feel like, in real life. It's like, I don't feel comfortable taking this risk, you know, in a live setting. I don't feel comfortable doing that stuff. It sounds really great. I've not found any other programs that are doing what you're doing, and I think it's really great what you're doing. Do you have any other resources you want to share with the audience for how they can take action on improving these skills?
Christopher Chin: The other would be my YouTube channel, which has the handle, The Hidden Speaker. And that's where I aim to give practical, actionable, short video tips on all the different elements of communication.
If you want to create slides, how do you do it effectively? I have a series on how to fix bad slides, going through all these examples from different company decks, pitch decks. How do you do it right?
And I have examples for interpersonal and formal presentations. So how do you make sure that if you go into a conversation, you can convey your answer in a concise way?
How do you make sure in a presentation, you have a good start, you have an engaging beginning. Or that you have a conclusion that motivates people to do something about you. All those things are what I try to cover in my YouTube channel.
Doug Howard: For you guys watching right now, go check out Chris channel. There's a lot of gold on there. I can't believe he gives this stuff away for free. I've been using it myself just to help me with my own presentation skills. So you definitely want to check this out. I will include a link to the channel. In this episode description, Chris, what are the best way for people to get in touch with you?
Christopher Chin: It would be my LinkedIn. I have pretty much daily posts on presentation communication for tech professionals and also my website, the hidden speaker. com, or you could email me at info at the hidden speaker. com. And I love meeting new people, seeing how I can best be of help. So yeah, feel free to reach out.
Doug Howard: Well, Chris, I want to thank you for joining us and giving our audience all these valuable tips and I really enjoyed working with you and I really see a lot of opportunities for us to collaborate again in the future because you have a lot of valuable insights on how to improve your communication skills and that's something we can all work on.
Christopher Chin: Thank you so much Doug for the opportunity. It was a pleasure.
Doug Howard: All right, everyone. Thanks for watching.
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