Why effective speaking skills are critical to technology careers
We have stressed the importance to a technology career—a career on a technical or management track—of being able to communicate effectively in writing.
In fact I said, “If you can’t write well, you might as well stay home.”
Oral communication, which has public and one-on-one speaking components, is a little different. Let’s focus on public speaking in technology careers for a moment.
The fear of public spea-ing is almost universal, and even people who are comfortable with it report being nervous right before they get up to speak. Being an uncomfortable or ineffective public speaker early in your career as a scientist or technologist is often not debilitating, and finding junior staff members who are comfortable and effective speakers is an exceptional occurrence.
But DON’T put off developing speaking skills
Ineffective speaking isn’t a crushing defect at the start of your career. But it can be the key to your ability to ascend beyond the rank and file and into the senior levels of your organization. This payoff is down the road (and you might not even see yourself taking this track ever), so you might be tempted to put off development of this skill until later in your career, when you “need it.”
This is a mistake for lots of reasons. Here are three.
1. You are going to give really bad talks
Making mistakes is part of learning anything new, and you are guaranteed to make them, and guaranteed to have bad (probably really, really bad) talks at least once in a while early in your development of these skills. The only way to avoid making a big mistake when the stakes are high is to start getting experience—making your mistakes—early in your career when the stakes are low (or, as we’ll see later, when there are no stakes at all).
2. Practice really does make perfect
The second reason to start developing speaking skills now is that practice really does make perfect, even more so than with writing.
The biggest obstacle to effective oral communication for many people is simply not knowing how to deal with the various situations you’ll confront. The only way to get past this obstacle is to experience the situations and see what solutions work for you, then practice and refine those solutions over many additional experiences.
Since for most of us the opportunity to speak to an audience doesn’t come on a daily basis, the only way to get enough practice to become competent is to start early in your career.
3. Effective public speaking gives you a real edge
The third reason not to put off honing your oral communication skills is that a demonstrated ability to speak well is a tremendous asset to your career, and it can greatly accelerate your advancement.
You may feel that this isn’t important to you; your goal is to remain “in the trenches” for the rest of your career, to stay technical and avoid the management rat race. This is a completely valid career choice.
It is not wise, however, to limit your future choices based on a decision you make at the outset of your career. You will change, your company or organization will change, and your ideas of what is and isn’t fulfilling will change as the years go on. Eight years ago I would have denied any interest in becoming the director of the center I work in, but here I am, happy to be doing the job.
Twenty years from now may well be too late to decide that you’re ready to go ahead into a leadership track in your company if you haven’t already developed and refined your speaking skills. At that point your “choice” to stay technical is no longer a choice; your decision not to develop certain skills now will make certain decisions for you in the years to come.
We’ll focus in the next several posts on how you can start to develop and refine both your public and speaking skills.
