PM and Public Speaking

The ability to command an audience and deliver information clearly and with enthusiasm is the mark of a truly professional Project Manager.

That said, according to various studies, the number one thing people fear most is public speaking. This, ahead of death itself. I can say that I fell into that statistic early in my career.

My first public speaking assignment was in college and I’ll confess: I completely bombed it. After that experience I dreaded even thinking about doing it ever again!

Fortunately, as my career progressed, I frequently found myself with “opportunities” to exercise my public speaking muscles. Typically, the audiences were in the neighborhood of 5-10 people as I was leading project-related meetings, training sessions and/or delivering updates to small groups. Then, while driving a corporate-wide initiative I was asked to deliver a speech on the topic at our company’s annual sales meeting which was attended by over 700 people. I’d be lying if I said I did this without any fear. Quite the contrary. Just prior to getting on stage I literally felt like I was going to pass out. At this point, I went to the men’s restroom, hid in a stall for several minutes, breathing deeply and praying to God that I wouldn’t fall down on stage.

The good news is that after the first 30 seconds of being on stage and getting rolling with my talk, I completely nailed it! So much so, I received a standing ovation for the benefits we were bringing to our company and customers.

Now that I’ve been through the wringer on this topic (decades later) I thought I’d share a few pointers I’ve found helpful and which can significantly reduce the trauma of public speaking 🙂

First and foremost, we need to harness the butterflies in our stomach. This feeling represents energy that is prompting us to be ready and to do well. As such, we must use this energy constructively in the process of preparing for our talk.

It can help to realize that courage (to get through this) isn’t about being unafraid. Courage is about doing things in spite of being afraid.

Now that we are (somewhat) prepared mentally, it is important to put together an outline of talking points that will prompt us to cover all the elements of our topic, in their proper order. I’ve found this simple outline to work very well:

• Introduction: Tell them what we’ll be talking about.
• Main Content: Tell them, with everything we’ve got!
• Wrap-up / Summary: Tell them what we told them and then sit down.

Once we have our outline it is important that we dress rehearse for, but don’t memorize, our talk. I’ve found that when reciting a talk from memory we can get jammed up on a particular point which ends up unraveling the rest of our speech. We may miss important items we wanted to cover or cover points out of order, either of which results in our well-planned message being incomplete or bungled up. Not the outcome we are looking for.

Instead, prepare an outline in Powerpoint, or in a low-tech fashion, simply use a sheet of paper with our talking points.

A related point I coach my clients on is always being ready, at a moments notice, to give a project overview / update in the following scenarios:

• Audience of 1 – The CEO of your company enters the elevator with you and asks: “How is your project going?” You do NOT want to be stumbling around for words. Know in advance that this can and will occur many times during the week. While it may not always be the CEO, you’ll find the same “opportunity” presents itself with other senior leaders for whom you’ll want to clearly demonstrate your mastery of the project by delivering a short synopsis (30-second elevator speech) on how the project is going and/or letting them know what you may need from them.
• Audience of 200 – Considering the other extreme, at some point we’ll be at our desk when we get a call from a co-worker on the Sales team, such as: “Hey there, we’ve got 15 minutes of available time on our agenda – right now. Would you be available to join our meeting and provide a quick overview and update on your project as the team is pretty excited about what they’re hearing?”

The importance of the above cannot be over-stated. That is, the success of our projects depend upon buy-in from ALL stakeholders. As such, we want to be in a position to impress upon everyone we come into contact with, the benefits of the project and/or how they can help us achieve success!

This short article is not intended to provide everything one needs to know to become highly effective at public speaking. Instead, my hope is to provide encouragement. That is, EVERYONE who has ever given a public speech has (at least initially) been fearful at some level to do so. As a result, I like to say that we must simply get over it. It REALLY isn’t that bad, and is actually quite exhilarating – an adrenaline rush!

If you’d like to further your public speaking skills a highly recommended reading is: How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking, by Dale Carnegie. Another consideration, to really amp things up, is joining Toastmasters. Simply visit their website (https://www.toastmasters.org/) and input your zip code to find a club near you.

In closing, if you are looking to improve PM performance and capabilities in your organization, feel free to reach out so that we may discuss how I can help.

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