General IT

10 Tips for Public Speaking at Work and ITSM Conferences

February 27th, 2018 - 526 views

6 min read

Speaking in front of large groups of people, whether at IT service management (ITSM) conferences or elsewhere, isn’t a natural thing. It’s definitely an acquired skill with multiple facets – from being able to speak in a comfortable manner, knowing what and what not to say, to getting the delivery right such that you receive future invites to speak elsewhere. But this capability should start with the ability to speak well at work.

The great thing about a career in IT is that, at almost every level, you’ll find opportunities to speak in front of groups of people – whether colleagues, suppliers, or potentially customers. Then, once the workplace speaking is conquered, the ITSM industry offers numerous opportunities to extend your speaking prowess and reputation. For instance, there’s the Service Desk Institute (SDI) conference in March and the HDI conference in April/May each year.

Example Workplace Speaking Opportunities

Some workplace public speaking scenarios could include:

Convincing others of the need for a new IT management or ITSM tool – succinctly explaining how the benefits outweigh the costs.
Delivering a status update to stakeholders – quickly getting to the point and talking in an authoritative and convincing manner.
To workshop a new process or improve upon an existing process – leading others in brainstorming, option analysis, and consensus achievement.
Communicating during a major incident review – ensuring that different stakeholders get what they need, in the manner they prefer.
Leading the change advisory board (CAB) or a Scrum retrospective – not only communicating effectively but also encouraging collaboration and consensus.
Business continuity management briefings – expressing critical risks in ways that engender action from people.
Delivering in-house training – making potentially difficult situations and concepts easy to understand.
Expressing corporate needs at supplier meetings – conveying business wants and needs, and persuading third parties to agree with changing business needs.

The Impact of Your Public Speaking Skills

Your performance during any of the above example scenarios, and others, can affect the work lives of your staff or colleagues, stakeholders, partners, suppliers, and customers. Get your content and delivery right (which I cover in a moment), and your desired outcome is as good as assured. Get them wrong and your desired outcome, and perhaps part of your reputation, is lost. So, no pressure;)

Workplace Speaking Is a Stepping Stone

Presenting, or leading group conversations, at work is also a route to presenting at industry conferences. Many of the same skills are used. Plus, of course, the more public speaking you do, the more comfortable you’ll become (not that there’s anything wrong with feeling nervous before speaking publicly – it shows that you care about doing well). Workplace vs conference public speaking: it’s the same, but different. Conference speaking is more difficult, but also easier. Why? Well firstly, conference speaking leverages many of the same skills developed through workplace speaking. But the differences are key to understand:

You will be unsure of audience knowledge levels – they might know more than your colleagues would, but they could potentially know less.
If sharing good/best practice, you will need to guestimate the audience’s knowledge levels so as to pitch your content correctly (whereas you will be more certain at work).

The good news though is that, while tainting your reputation at an industry event might feel risky, it will have far less an impact as doing the same at work. Plus, of course, a great performance in either setting can do wonders for your career.