Speaking

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    Linked – Are public speaking skills a cheat code for IT career success?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    No matter how much technical skill you have, eventually, you will have to communicate your knowledge to someone who isn’t as skilled in the technology. If you can’t do that, your career will hit a ceiling. Even if you have no plans to get up in front of an audience, learning how to tell a story, influence others, educate others, etc., will serve you well when you have to explain a complex technical concept to someone. 

    You will have to explain what you know someday. Learn how to do it well. 

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    Linked – Public speaking, TEDx, and well articulated points of view

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Now, before you start with “they work in IT so that they don’t have to do public speaking,” I am going to argue that even if you’ve never wanted to present to a large conference audience or be asked to present webinars, etc., you would do well to learn how to do it anyway. You will need to tell a compelling story about what you do at some point in your career. Whether it be to defend your budget, ask for headcount, or explain your role on the team, being able to present your ideas well will go a long way. But, it’s not something we train for with many of our technical employees.

  • Can Your SMEs Train?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    Too many people seem to think that you can automatically teach other people about something if you’re an expert at it. Being an SME is great, but communicating that expertise so others can learn from you is a different skill. In fact, it’s a set of skills. Skills we should encourage our SMEs to learn to help our whole team grow.

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    The Obligatory Lessons Learned After Four Months Unemployed

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 6 minutes

    So after 12 years, I’m back, but it’s very different. Because 12 years is a long time and things change fast around here. This opportunity only came about because I’ve been changing and now have something different to offer, that matches up with how the firm has been changing. I could have resisted learning all these new things over the years, but that would have also limited what I could do going forward. I’m really happy I didn’t do that. It might be the best career move I’ve ever made.

  • Linked – How to invite introverted students to share their thinking in class

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Over the last few years though, as the number of online training sessions and meetings has grown exponentially, I still see it though. There are a significant number of users who will use Teams or Zoom chat instead of speaking up in many forms of gatherings. We should recognize that the chat tool is a perfectly legitimate way for people to interact with a speaker and each other during online meetings. Many people, but especially introverts among us, will be more comfortable chatting like that during a meeting. As a trainer/speaker, it becomes paramount that you learn to pay attention to what is happening in chat or have someone in the meeting be responsible for keeping up with the chat. Otherwise, you’re ignoring part of your audience.

    The other interesting thing that shouldn’t be overlooked is that beyond providing a message board to start the class discussion, it’s also provided ahead of time. Those introverts who need a little time to process new information before providing any input are going to be much more likely to have something to add when there is time to consider the topic.