My fear of public speaking
My journey to becoming a better presenter
The murmur of voices grow louder as 250+ people filter through the lanes of chairs. I harness my nervous energy and tell myself to focus. I feel prepared, I feel relaxed, I feel ready……. But it wasn’t always like this.
Running from my fear
I was your typical techie and engaging with large groups of people wasn’t a skill I possessed in my toolkit. In 2011 I was “voluntold” to take on a lead system engineer role at IBM. When I found out presenting to 80-100 engineers was a requirement I promptly ran the other way.
Pushing my boundaries
Fast forward a few years I was working at Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an EC2 Windows Support Engineer. A tech role but I was ready to step out of my comfort zone to Learn and Be Curious. A year into the role my manager asked if I wanted to go to Bangalore India and train the new support site. He knew I didn’t have experience but he seemed sure I could do it which instilled confidence in me. He is still one of the best leaders I’ve had to date - Thanks Rolf
AWS Knowledge Center Video
How did it go? Honestly I learnt what not to do! The biggest mistake I made was trying to get through the content and not thinking of the audience experience. There were positives like the power of a great demo. Word spread about my AWS VMImport demo and the Linux manager asked if I could present the same demo and content to his team.
With my confidence growing I put my hand up to lead the New Hire Windows EC2 Training in Sydney. Two hours a month I delivered training to new engineers. It started with 5-10 people a session but ballooned to 20-30 with the rapid growth of AWS in Australia. I displayed classic nervous symptoms at the start of each session. My heart would race, words just poured out and at times I could barely catch my breathe. But 5-10 minutes into the session I would settle and get into my groove. Despite my fears and awkward symptoms I continued to turn up every month. The more I put myself in those uncomfortable situations the more comfortable I became and the nervous symptoms started to dissipate.
Tip 1: Seek out presentation opportunities (however small) and don’t be afraid to fail.
Back in 2011 I was so afraid of failure I didn’t even try. Denzel Washington summed it up perfectly “to embrace failure and fall forward”
As the AWS Sydney Support site grew tenured engineers had to be certified as “Global Master Trainers”. I remember being taught the importance of engaging and re-engaging an audience using different techniques. Basic things we might not be conscious of like a pause in speech, asking a question, changing your tone etc.
To become certified we had to present our chosen technical topic back to the program manager and a AWS Senior Technical Trainer.
My final presentation went extremely well and they were impressed. The program manager recommended I explore becoming a Technical Trainer.
Up until that point my presentations had been in a safe place to AWS staff only. The thought of standing up in front of small to large public groups seemed daunting but I was ready to make the jump.
Stepping off the edge
Becoming a Solution Architect (SA) was my next planned career move. But I needed to hone my presentation skills further and the AWS Technical Trainer role was the perfect place to do that. After passing the AWS loop (interview process) I became a newbie AWS Technical Trainer.
The text in the picture says it all!
The training team was an awesome place to develop. I spent time shadowing other trainers taking notes on almost everything. Senior trainers were always generous with their time (actually everybody was) and often scheduled workshops to help me improve. It wasn’t just the delivery they gave guidance on but structuring your presentation, weaving a theme through it, telling stories, whiteboarding so many things!
I started co-delivering one day courses and soon delivering one day courses solo. Experienced trainers would shadow me and provide feedback. I valued brutally honest feedback as it only helped me grow. During this period I learnt so much and it wasn’t long before I was delivering 1-3 day courses solo. Was it smooth sailing all the way? Nope, I learned some hard lessons along the way but now I was falling forward 😁
Tip 2: Seek out mentors. Check your ego at the door and be willing to learn and grow
AWS is huge and they can draw large audiences. I loved delivering what we called mass training (the intro to this blog was taken from my experience delivering a mass training event in Sydney). This could be to a single large enterprise customer or a large group of smaller customers. Audiences could range from 50-300 people. Presentation skills were required, how do you engage such a large group of people? How do I whiteboard now? How do I get over the sleepiness after lunch?
Presenting to a new set of customers on an almost daily basis gave me the luxury of trying new ideas and tinkering with my presentation style. AWS is very metric driven and my career was literally in the hands of the audience. Customers could fill in an on-line survey which would produce an assessment score and each trainer had to maintain a specific average. In my opinion this was great because it forced me to think from the audience’s point of view and not mine.
Tip 3: It’s not about you, when constructing a presentation always think about the audience’s point of view
Using my toolkit
As a pre-sales engineer for VMware I constantly dip into my toolkit and pull out my presentation skill. It could be for bootcamps (although COVID has put a stop to these for now) a technical presentation to customers, internal training or even online webinars.
Sharing my stories at a VMware Cloud Foundation Bootcamp
I am thankful for the people that helped me on my journey and the work I put into it. The skill of presenting or public speaking is something that never stops. There is always room for improvement. There have been times where my presentations have missed the mark but I fall forward, grow and move on.