The Talent Forge: Shaping the Future of Training and Development with Jay Johnson

Transforming Fear into Power: Training for Technical Professionals and Introverts

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Public speaking can be a daunting task, especially for technical professionals. What if conquering this fear could unlock new career heights for you? Join us as we sit down with Neil Thompson of Teach the Geek, who offers his unique insights on transforming this fear into a powerful tool for career and personal development. Neil recounts his own challenges as a product development engineer and how organizations like Toastmasters helped him hone his skills. His journey emphasizes the importance of effective communication in bridging the gap between technical jargon and accessible language.

Imagine your career trajectory if you could seamlessly present your innovative ideas to non-technical audiences. In this episode, we explore how mastering public speaking not only enhances your professional image but also builds valuable skills such as leadership and interviewing. Neil provides practical advice on reducing the intimidation of public speaking by establishing a repeatable process and practicing regularly. We draw parallels between learning new skills through repetition and the gradual improvement that comes with consistent effort, making the challenge of public speaking far less formidable.

Finally, we tackle the nuances of presenting to introverted audiences within technical fields, offering tips on engaging content delivery and respecting audience comfort levels. Neil and I discuss the critical importance of a strong closing to maintain credibility and ensure smooth transitions. Whether you're an introvert or extrovert, technical professional, or newcomer to public speaking, this episode has valuable takeaways for you. Tune in to discover Neil's platform, Teach the Geek, and learn methods to elevate your presentation skills, ultimately benefiting your career and personal growth.

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where I am joined by Neil Thompson of Teach the Geek, neil, welcome to the show.

Neil Thompson:

Thanks for having me, Jay.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, neil. So I am absolutely fascinated and I'll tell a little bit about my history shortly after. But tell me, what is it that brought you to the talent development space and what exactly do you do with Teach the Geek?

Neil Thompson:

When I first started Teach the Geek, I never even thought about talent development, because I never worked at a company that had talent development. I always worked at, typically startups. The biggest company I worked at was maybe about 400, 500 employees, so that function didn't exist, and I've been on my own for a few years now. Really, what it all comes down to, jay, is just my difficulty giving presentations in front of management. That's where it all started. I was working as a product development engineer at a medical device company. I had to give presentations on a monthly basis in front of senior management on project status, the project I was working on, and those projects or at least the presentations that I gave the first few ones were absolutely horrendous. I don't think it was possible to sweat that profusely from one's body while still while living. But there I was doing it, and what I would do often was would get up there and read my slides. I wouldn't look at the audience to see if they're even paying attention to what I was saying, and what often would happen is I'd get questions afterwards that I thought I had answered during the presentation, but because I wasn't really paying attention to the people, I'm now getting these questions, getting even more flustered, becoming even more sweaty than I was before. It was just a mess. It wasn't until my project got canceled that I think maybe this is something I need to get better at.

Neil Thompson:

So I joined Toastmasters so for those of you all that don't know about Toastmasters, it's an international organization where people can go. They have chapters all over the world and people can practice public speaking, and that's what I did for quite some time. And then I also looked for opportunities within the companies that I was working at to speak in front of people, because now I see there's a benefit in it. So, basically, when I started Teach the Geek, it was to help people like me, people that have technical backgrounds. Perhaps you're an engineer or a scientist in a company. You have to speak in front of people and you're not the best at putting your expertise in such a way that non-technical people can understand. So that's really what it comes down to. So I go into organizations and do that type of work. I have a podcast where I interview technical people, or at least people with technical backgrounds, about their public speaking journeys and what they did to get better at it, and it's just been really interesting. Just you know, seeing this need and figuring out solutions to solve it.

Jay Johnson:

I love that, neil, and you know there's so many things that resonated with me. So my background is actually in communications and that was both of my degrees. But I was hired originally by the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Wayne State University and the only reason I was hired was because there were some faculty members who had great projects but could not figure out how to communicate them effectively to their grantors, to their colleagues, to the conferences that they were going to. So I spent a lot of my time early on helping develop slide decks, helping practice with some of the faculty, because these are absolutely brilliant minds in engineering. You know, graduates of MIT, graduates of here but could not secure any grant funding. So I was able to help them, over the course of like 10, 15 years, be able to work more effectively, present more effectively.

Jay Johnson:

One of the things that I heard you say and this is what I loved about your story is that you overcame that sort of fear, that pushback, and a lot of people don't even get to that space. A lot of people just say, hey, you know what I am where I am at, I'm not going to push forward, I'm not going to go up there and sweat my you know, sweat my brows off. What was it that really drove you to take that leap, to step beyond that fear of public speaking or fear of training or presenting?

Neil Thompson:

When I first took that job at the medical device company as a product development engineer, I didn't know that there was going to be a speaking component to the job. I thought it was going to be very similar to the one that I had before, where I did a lot of work in a lab and anything that I generated it was my boss that would present it to decision makers, to management, and I certainly didn't mind that arrangement. But when I took the second job as a product development engineer, I was called into my boss's office maybe a couple of months after I'd started, and he said that I was going to be a project lead. Well, what's a project lead? Well, at the company they didn't have any project managers. So one of the responsibilities of the project lead was to talk about project status to senior management, and this was an all-day meeting. So we're talking about every project that was going on within the company, one by one. The person who was the project lead for that project would have 10 minutes to talk to the senior management about the project status. So when I took the job I had no clue that there was going to be a public speaking aspect to it. Who knows if I would have taken the job if I had known there was going to be a public speaking aspect to it, but I'm really glad that I did.

Neil Thompson:

And to your point about the work that you did at Wayne State recently I went to an engineering conference and the majority of the presenters were grad students and postdocs.

Neil Thompson:

So these are people that are in academia and those presentations were absolutely horrendous. It reminded me of the presentations I used to give when I first started at that medical device company A whole lot of reading of slides, not looking at the audience. And I look around. I'm in the audience, so I'm looking around to see what other people are doing. You see people on their phones, people talking to the person beside them, people falling asleep and just anything but listening to the person that was speaking. And it's so unfortunate, since I figure they put the time and effort to put a presentation together. They would hope that people would listen. But another thing I would want to say about that, especially in academia, I often get the sense that the people who present these type of presentations they're doing it not necessarily because they want people to listen and taking what they're saying. It's more of a box checking exercise just to be able to say that I spoke at this conference so I could put it on a CV. So I get my next opportunity in academia.

Jay Johnson:

You're not wrong, and it's interesting because one of the so I still teach at Wayne State University and I teach in the engineering department. I teach leadership, communication, and we have a specialty program with Ford Motor Company that I've been teaching in now for a decade and my entire course is on communication and presentation. Now, this is a very small cohort, ford Motor Company funded, but one of the things that I try to instill in them in the course of this semester is to instill in them in the course of this semester is if you are able to speak, present your ideas and be able to answer questions, if you can do that, you don't have to be the next. You know Barack Obama as a speaker or you know you don't have to be you know a number one speaker in the world, but if you have the ability to communicate your ideas effectively and clearly, you are going to stand out amongst your colleagues, and sure enough, a lot of them have come back over the course of this decade and said I was promoted simply because I was able to present my argument or present my paper or present my idea in a more functional fashion than some of the people around me.

Jay Johnson:

So, neil, this is all about TalentForge and sort of disrupting the way that we do business right now. My question for you is what is one of the ways that maybe you start to navigate some of that fear that somebody has? Because I know it, I've seen it, I've seen it in every industry, and it's not just tech, it's not just engineering, it's really prevalent all over the world. How do you get people to maybe take that first step of overcoming some of the fears that come along with? Oh my gosh, I've got to stand up and present this idea. I don't want to do that.

Neil Thompson:

Ultimately, I think it comes down to seeing the benefit of it. I mentioned earlier that I had to give these presentations and if I had known that that was going to seeing the benefit of it. You know, I mentioned earlier that I had to give these presentations and if I had known that that was going to be a part of my job, perhaps I wouldn't have taken the job. But ultimately it worked out really well because I suppose I had to go through the, I guess, the fire of giving those first few presentations and not going all that well, my project being canceled. Hopefully no one else has to go through the project being canceled. Hope you can get the message sooner or sooner than that.

Neil Thompson:

But it's really doing the doing the doing the reps and figuring out well, if I don't do this, what would be the consequence of me not doing it? Certainly, you could stay in that comfortable place where you have your job, you're doing it to the best of your ability and your boss is happy with your work. But if you have aspirations of moving up within an organization I mean, you said it if you're able to communicate your work to people who have decision-making ability, well, now you're going to stand out amongst the others who are just not willing to put themselves out there. So ultimately you might have that fear, but addressing that fear and going for it anyway, I think, is way. I guess the benefits certainly outweigh the pros, outweigh the cons.

Jay Johnson:

You know, and I love that you said that because even somebody's career trajectory their ability to present information, say, such as their work, is a lot of those skills translate into things like being able to present yourself in an interview or being able to present your vision as a leader or a manager. So you know, the skills that you're teaching even to just do that presentation really have a far wider application than just merely putting together that PowerPoint presentation or being able to stand on that stage and deliver that information. When you look at sort of that change mechanic of I'm taking somebody from here who is maybe terrified of giving that presentation and get them to that space where they at least are okay, I'm ready to dip my foot into the water. What are some of those steps that you do to help them maybe make that first experience not so scary, or maybe be able to navigate that fear, even if it is as scary as it seems? What are some of those tactics that maybe you help your people to grow with?

Neil Thompson:

I think it's a process. If you're standing up in front of people and talking, that could be unnerving. But if you have a repeatable process that you use again and again, it becomes less unnerving. And if you practice using that process and then use again and again, it becomes less unnerving. And if you practice using that process and then you give the presentation, I think it really helps in just becoming more comfortable speaking in front of others.

Neil Thompson:

So when it comes to the process I talk about, I ask people to think about that call to action. What do you want people to do after the presentation? And if you get that clear in your mind, then you work backwards. What kind of points do you need to make that will logically lead to that call to action? What kinds of stories do you need to tell that would naturally lead to that call to action? What kind of introduction do you need to have that would lead to those points that would lead to that call to action? So once you figure all that out, then the presentation basically creates itself and you get to eliminate any extraneous information that perhaps you would have added. That wasn't going to be helpful to the people that you are speaking in front of. I really do believe that if you just have this process and you use it, you become way more comfortable giving these presentations, because now you're more prepared and you know what to do when it comes to putting a presentation together.

Jay Johnson:

And realistically you get through that first, one realize that you survived. So now you can get that sort of survival death drive out of the way as a barrier and it's like, okay, the next one I can just maybe I've improved by 1% or by 2%, by 3%. You know, I love what you said, that it's really about that repeatable process, because I think a lot of people when they maybe have that first training or that first delivery of information and it doesn't go the way that they planned, that's, you know, it's like touching the stove. It's hot and we don't want to touch the stove again, so maybe we don't go back at it. But realistically it's like touching the stove it's hot and we don't want to touch the stove again, so maybe we don't go back at it. But realistically it's a journey and it's something that we do get better with over time. And, as you said, doing the reps and I really like that I like to use the analogy sometimes of everybody brushes their teeth with a dominant hand.

Jay Johnson:

So I'm right-handed, I brush my teeth with a dominant hand, you know. So I'm right-handed, I brush my teeth with my right hand. If I were to switch to my left hand, it would feel incredibly uncomfortable. It would feel, you know, I'd probably stab myself in the gums a thousand times for the first two weeks, but after a little while I'm burning new pathways, neuronal pathways, in my brain. That's going to make it easier and with those reps it's going to become more comfortable, more fluid, more natural. I may not always be left-handed at this point in time, but I can at least make that a more comfortable experience and I think that's what I'm hearing you say with that rep content.

Neil Thompson:

Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm left-handed, so if I were to brush my teeth with my right hand, it absolutely would feel weird, to the point where you know what I think I'm left-handed. So if I were to brush my teeth with my right hand, it absolutely would feel weird, to the point where you know what I think I'm going to stick with my left hand.

Jay Johnson:

Now, Neil, one of my colleagues as you were telling your story one of my colleagues and one of my. Actually, he's an incredible trainer. He's highly introverted and he's we've had a lot of conversations. He's studied personality and behavior the same that I do and get to understand. I think I'm somewhere between an ambivert. When I'm speaking or when I'm presenting, I am highly extroverted. I get a lot of energy from speaking on the stage or from speaking to an audience, but after that I turn almost full introvert, like I want to go hide in the woods and take a walk by myself and sort of recharge my battery that way. In your experience, what have you? What has been your experience in working with the sort of target demographic that you're working with? Do you find them to be more extroverted? Do you find them to be more introverted? Is there anything that you've noticed along that pathway?

Neil Thompson:

Definitely more introverts and I think introverts tend to be more attracted to the, I guess, the technical field, because they're working with things as opposed to people. But then they realize that after some time you actually have to work with people. You're going to work in teams, you're going to present in front of people, you're going to have to persuade people to fund a project or keep a project going, and perhaps it's a bit, I guess, off-putting to some but, as I mentioned earlier, once you see the benefits of it then it's way more easier to take in. But yeah, it's certainly more introverts and oftentimes when I hear people talk about introverts and extroverts, they figure well, the extroverts, as you said, they get their energy from being around people and talking to people, and I guess with introverts perhaps that's not the case.

Neil Thompson:

I think that introverts can be excellent speakers in front of others because they will prepare, they're going to they very well, will embrace, having a process and they will practice because they want the information to come out in the best possible way. It's not just I'm talking just to talk. I'm talking because I have something to convey and I'm really keen on conveying that message to the people that that message should matter to or will potentially matter to. So they're certainly willing to put in the work, but certainly after the presentation they're probably interested in taking a nap.

Jay Johnson:

You know, yeah, Well, and it's funny that you say that because the colleague of mine that I'm referring to his presentations are some of the most well-researched. They are going to have practical tips and it's usually something that they're very passionate about and are taking that step and sharing that information because they are passionate about it and because they do have something really compelling to say. Now, in your experience and kind of sticking with this, do you find that the way that you present or deliver to introverted audiences has to be a little different than extroverted audiences, or is that something that you kind of have a blended model? What does that look like for you? So if our audience is thinking, hey, I've got a big talk in tech coming up and I know I might have some introverted audience, talk in tech coming up and I know I might have some introverted audience, what would you say? How would you kind of frame them or coach them to be able to have the best presentation that they possibly could have.

Neil Thompson:

Well, if you have a lot of introverts in the audience and you're giving a presentation, don't ask them to get up and dance.

Jay Johnson:

That's a great one. Yes, yeah, you're not going to have too much excitability, there are you?

Neil Thompson:

No, they're not going to be happy about that at all. What's really interesting is if you are talking to introverts, they're really interested in the message and in tips and tricks and basically the information that they can use from listening to your presentation, can use from listening to your presentation. And, at least for myself, I'm very much an introvert. When I sit through presentations I'll often have a piece of paper. I'll have my pencil or pen and I'm writing down the points that this person thinks is or what I think is important. Another thing that's actually I think about when people are presenting and they'll say write this down. And then I'm thinking to myself no, I'm going to write down what I want to write down. You don't tell me what to write down.

Neil Thompson:

I mean, ultimately we're kind of, I guess, maybe as an introvert, we're kind of, maybe we're rebellious in that sense, but we're going to take in what we're going to take in. We're going to think what about your presentation was important? That's what we're going to figure out, not what you're going to tell me what is important in this presentation. But we're more than willing to sit through presentations if we think it's going to be of use to them. And another thing is especially, I think, as an introvert. Maybe the whole kind of motivational type of presentation is more applicable, perhaps to more extroverted people. But for, for the introverts it's, I think it's. They're really more interested in the content and what you talk about. Could it be of use to them?

Jay Johnson:

yeah, and there's a couple of things I want to unpack there, neil, because I think that's absolutely brilliant. Telling somebody, hey, you need to write this down, is I don't know like. Even with an extroverted audience it comes off sometimes to me a little arrogant. Like this is the most important thing. Now I might say this is really important as an aspect. You know, consider this One of the things that I've found has been really effective with more introverted crowds is actually giving space for personal reflection and, you know, as we kind of navigate through a topic area or anything, I might have all right, this is a three-minute break for you to just sort of process digest and, you know, take away something from this conversation.

Jay Johnson:

It may be related to the conversation we're talking about, but what I've also found is an introvert is very, very, I'll say, thoughtful when it comes to hey, you've presented this idea. That has led me to a different idea and I really want to explore that idea too, and giving them some space with some personal reflection seems to me have been a really powerful way to me to make a connection. But the thing that I'm going to go back to and I want to talk about this is you know you. You you started off and I love that you started off with, don't? You know, get them to get up and dance.

Jay Johnson:

I think one of the biggest challenges that I see so one of the things that I do is an elite training academy and one of the biggest challenges that I see with trainers who come in is that they make the assumption that the audience wants than being adaptable and saying, okay, I'm highly extroverted and I'm highly energetic, but if I run out onto the stage and start screaming my head off, every introvert in the crowd is going to go eek and, you know, sort of tuck away. So you know, when you do find yourself maybe training with a number of extroverts, how do you show up or what might you do to adapt to the larger audience? You know, because sometimes you're going to have mixed bag of introverts, extroverts or you know even just different learning styles. What are some of the ways in which you adapt your presentations to make sure that you're hitting all of the different audience? You know all the different audience demographics and psychographics.

Neil Thompson:

Nice, yeah.

Neil Thompson:

Well, first of all, if at all possible, have a conversation with the organizers to find out about those psychographic information with the audience that's going to be in the in the well, people are going to be in the audience, where do they tend to lean towards? And so, once you find that out, if you're talking to more extroverted people, well, you better dial up the stories, you better dial up the energy, and you do that. I think you have to say, not to say that if you're an extroverted person, you're not interested in content as well, but if you kind of have to build up, I guess, maybe a bigger personality than you normally would, especially if you know the goal whether you're an extroverted or introverted presenter is for people to listen to what you have to say. Because I think you're right, a lot of times we just figure well, the way I am is the way other people want to receive that information. That's how I want to receive it, is how other people want to receive it, and that's not always the case. In fact, that's often not the case.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, I know that my colleague he ends up deploying sort of he's got a very dry but very, very clever sense of humor, and it seems to me he uses that in a way that sort of brings the audience together and kind of keep some of that attention and energy going, whether it's an extroverted energy or an introverted energy.

Jay Johnson:

So I want to switch gears here, though, because I think one of the great things about you and what I've seen from your LinkedIn, as well as your website and after listening to some podcasts, you are working with some people who have really technical presentations, and one of the things that I think is a challenge and this is always what is sort of the pushback that I've gotten when I've been working at Ford or anywhere else is.

Jay Johnson:

But I have all these datas and these charts and all of this information and a lot of times, um, you know, there's slide decks. Before I get ahold of them, uh, have a thousand words on it. It's like reading war and peace off of a slide deck, and there's a lot of really good information or a lot of really technical information on each of those slides, of really technical information on each of those slides, and I try to get them to. You know, say, if you were in the audience, is this what you would want, or is this how you would show up to it, or is this how you would approach it and maybe get them kind of thinking about that? What are some of the ways? When you're working with really technical presentations or presenters, how do you help them sort of navigate that information overload versus telling enough of the data points or the story to make sure that their message is landing? Does that make sense, neil?

Neil Thompson:

It totally makes sense and when it comes down to it, jay, I think it has to do with empathy. Yeah, you weren't always the technical expert. So when you weren't the technical expert, could you have understood the presentation that you're giving now? And if the answer is no, well, maybe you need to change the presentation so that it would suit the person that you were then, because a lot of times, the people who are in the audience, if they're non-technical, that's who they are. They're not you. So why would you give a presentation to a bunch of yous if the people in the audience aren't you? So just hearken back to those days when you weren't the technical expert yet. What kind of presentation could you have taken in and understand so that it would keep your attention and have you engaged in the presentation? And I think a lot of technical people they just they forget. I mean, you weren't born an engineer.

Jay Johnson:

That's true.

Jay Johnson:

Even if we feel like we might've been born into it, we still had a long journey to get to where we are.

Jay Johnson:

Wherever we might be on that journey and I really love that, though the you know, empathizing and saying.

Jay Johnson:

One of the things that blew my mind is when I learned that there are some technical companies out there that literally have their own website just to define what their acronyms are that they use on a daily basis, almost like a Wikipedia internally to say, oh, if you hear somebody say COO, that means chief operations officer or whatever those acronyms are that they're using within that technical field. I thought that was so interesting when I was studying plain language and how challenging it can be for our brains to even just decipher acronyms almost as a second language, like OMG, lol, and we start going, okay, process, process, process, and we put the words to what those acronyms are. Have you experienced and I seem to recall reading in one of your pieces about acronyms how do you navigate, helping people sort of with? When you do have technical jargon or a particular language model or language set, how do you help them bridge that to people that may not necessarily know what all those terms are or what those mean?

Neil Thompson:

Use more commonly used words when, instead of the technical jargon, especially if you're speaking to a non-technical audience. I mentioned earlier that I worked in medical devices. More specifically, I worked in spinal implants and, more specifically than that, I worked in orthobiologics, which is the use of human cadaver bone to create spinal implants. We were a new group in the company, so there was a lot of jargon that we'd use amongst our group and the rest of the company would never have understood if we didn't explain it. So, for instance, yeah, totally over their heads.

Neil Thompson:

So when we're talking about human cadaver bone, bone is made up of a number of cells, two of which are osteoblasts and osteoclasts. If I were to give a presentation, a project status update, in front of senior management continuously referring to osteoblasts and osteoclasts, the question I often would get a question I suspect I would get after the presentation is what's an osteoblast, what's an osteoclast? If you didn't understand what those two words meant, then this whole presentation was worthless to you. Yeah, so really, when it comes down to it, just use more commonly used words to describe them. So an osteoblast is a bone-forming cell and an osteoclast is a bone cell and a osteoclast is a bone eating cell.

Jay Johnson:

Now, I'm so glad you answered that because I was going to. I'm a person of science, but that's not my science, so I was going to ask.

Neil Thompson:

Yeah, so typically I mean how bone works is the osteoblast lay down the bone and then older bone is eaten up by the osteoclast so that new bone can be laid down. If you even think of if you broke a bone, that's what happens Any dead bone is eaten away by these osteoclasts so that the new bone could be laid down by the osteoblasts. And so just explaining those two terms in more commonly used words and words that other people would understand, now they can get through the presentation. Okay, bone eating, bone forming. Okay, I understand what you're talking about. That helps quite a bit.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, for me and for those types of things, at least in my background in neuroscience and psychology, sometimes there can be really really technical things. This is where I find like analogies even if they're not perfect, they can at least kind of lay that out. Like my immediate thought process was like if I'm doing a construction on a road, I'm going to have to have something come in, chew up the road, pull the old road off before you can lay down that new road. And that was almost just where my brain went. But creating those analogies and that may not be a perfect one for it, but creating those analogies can sometimes, you know, bring somebody a little bit more into it, because it's taking complex content and then making it to something that they've experienced or seen or known before. So even if it's not perfect, it does give them the ability to at least sort of like oh okay, well, I can at least understand the concept of that. And now the presentation may make a little bit more sense.

Neil Thompson:

So yeah, and really also another thing that it does is, at least for me, if people are able to do that and use more commonly used words, it's a sign that they know that material really well. They're not just talking a whole bunch of jargon, using a bunch of terms that perhaps other people don't understand and can't call them out on. If I'm using a whole bunch of terms you don't understand, I mean you're not going to be able to say that whatever I'm talking about doesn't make much sense. Really You'll probably just stop listening. But if I'm using more commonly used words, you're more engaged, you're more likely to ask questions afterwards. It's just. It's just a better. It's a better feeling all around.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, you know, as a behavioral scientist, I 1000% agree with it. If it's simple, people will do it. If it's not simple, people won't. If it's simple, people will remember it. If it's not simple, people don't. So I love that, All right. Well, we're we're coming close to our time, neil, and I'd like to ask sort of a question that I ask all of my guests on the podcast to say hey, this is how you can build your presentations more effectively, or this is really what you need to be thinking about as you navigate a technical presentation. What might be one or two of those tips that you can leave our audience with?

Neil Thompson:

Well, I mentioned them earlier, but let's see if I can come up with some different ones. One of them that perhaps is just a pet peeve of mine, but it's still an important tip has to do with timing. I get the sense that a lot of times people will put presentations together. They'll give the presentation, not really thinking about the amount of time that's been allotted for the presentation. I mentioned that I attended a conference not too long ago and the presentations were boring. But not only were they boring, they went over time. So it's just a double whammy. And if you're sitting in an audience and you're already disengaged now, you're really annoyed because this presentation was supposed to take 15 minutes and 17 minutes in this person is still talking. So, when it comes down to it, really practice your presentations so that you are finishing within time. In fact, what I suggest is, when you practice them say, for instance, you have 15 minutes to present finish with it. Practice so that you finish within 13 minutes. So you give yourself a couple of minutes buffer in the event that you go over that 13 minutes when you actually give the presentation, and if that happens, at least you still finish within the 15 minutes. So that's one thing and then another thing, especially for more introverted people.

Neil Thompson:

They may have difficulty with eye contact, at least for me. I know that it's there. As I mentioned, I was a member of Toastmasters and in Toastmasters they suggest that you look at someone in the eyes for three seconds before you move on to the next person. You don't realize how long three seconds is until you actually look in someone's eyes for three seconds. It seems like an eternity and at least for me, it would completely throw me off. I'm looking in their eyes, I then forget what I was going to say next. And now we have a problem because you're here to hear what I have to say and I don't know what I'm about to say next. So a tip that I often will use is don't look in people's eyes, look at their eyebrows. People can't tell the difference.

Jay Johnson:

Those are fantastic tips, neil. I love it. You know, and in particular you know that when we think about, when we think about ourselves in those presentations and in that sort of space of having to stand there being isolated at the front of the room, yeah, it can really be scary. So you know, when we take these tips of you know, setting ourselves up for success by hey, plan for that 13 minutes. I really like that because we can always fill additional time if we need to or answer questions if we need to. It's a lot harder to speed through or to have to cut at the end, but sticking the landing is so important for your credibility, for your audience's comfort and probably for the next speaker who's waiting patiently and probably stressing out to get on the stage or to take that podium as well. So I really really love those tips, neil, how can our audience reach you? Where would they find you?

Neil Thompson:

Well, you can go to teachthegeekcom, and if you want to check out the podcast, you can go to podcastteachthegeekcom.

Jay Johnson:

Highly advise it. It is a great podcast. There's some excellent content on there. I got to listen through before having you on as my guest today here on the Talent Forge, neil. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for your time, your energy and for what you're doing to raise the bar when it comes to talent development, so it's been a pleasure and an honor to have you and audience Check that out. We'll make sure that we put those links in the show notes and thanks again, neil, really appreciate your time today.

Neil Thompson:

Thanks again for having me, Jay.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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