120 How Do I Practice My Presentation Skills?

How to improve presentation skills? If I don't get enough opportunities to present at work, how can I make sure I keep improving my presentation skills?  These are the questions we are going to answer in today's episode of Dev Questions.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey. Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology. If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered. Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

How do I practice my presentation skills? How do I get better at giving presentations? This is kind of a follow-up question from last week, and it's one that was also asked on the suggestion site. And if you have a question that you'd like to see answered in a future episode of DevQuestions, go to suggestions.imtimcorey.com and leave your question or suggestion there. Now, how do you practice your presentation skills? How do you become better at giving presentations? I've talked the past couple of weeks about how presentations are very important to growing your skills as a developer. In fact, really, when you present a topic is when you learn it the best. So as you learn, there comes a point where you really need to present the topic in order to learn it more deeply. So knowing how to give a presentation, knowing how to give a good presentation is important. That can be very scary for people, but you need to work through it. You need to become better at. So let's talk about how to improve your skills as a presenter. How do you practice presenting? So there's a few different ways to practice your presentations. Number one is the rubber duck method. So you have a rubber duck or a teddy bear or some other inanimate object, but something you can look at. You put it on your desk, you put it on a stool, you put it on your shelf, and you present to it. Act as though it is the audience. Act as though you're giving a real presentation. If you stumble, don't go, oh, what should I do now? No, no, no. Act as if you're on stage. Act in front of as if you're in front of a hundred people. You wouldn't do that in front of a hundred people. So don't do it in front of the duck. Okay? So give your presentation thoroughly. The whole thing in front of the duck. That will give you a safe way of practicing because the duck isn't going to judge you. The duck is going to love you no matter what. So present in front of the duck. Go through the whole thing. Maybe if you really want to expand your audience, get three ducks. Okay. Get five ducks. Have a whole audience of rubber ducks. Give the presentation, whatever works for you, to give that presentation by yourself. So have that ability to present in front of a fake audience, just the rubber duck. By doing so, you'll be able to kind of get in that mode and get through the stumbling blocks of early presentations. Where you start thinking, what do I say now? Well, what about this? And you start working through that as if you're in front of somebody that's real. Okay? Give the presentation in front of a rubber duck. Number two, this is gonna be this is gonna feel weird. Record yourself and watch it. Most people have access to a webcam. It's in your phone. So if you have to, just put your phone on record mode and give the presentation. Look at it and cringe. I get it. I cringe still watching my videos. There's things that I do where I'm like, man, why did I do that? That looks goofy. It happens, okay? If you pause any of my videos, just randomly pause it. Doesn't matter where you pause it. If you randomly pause it, I'll have a goofy look on my face. It's almost guaranteed. So when I look at my videos to find the right video to share with somebody, if they're asking a question they've already answered, I'll look them up and I'll start talking on screen and go, is it the right one? It's a kind of scan through and I'll pause the video places. It's awful. It's awful. It's okay. Okay. Everyone's gonna look terrible on camera or feel like they look terrible on camera. You don't. You don't look nearly as bad as you judge yourself. But if you record yourself, you can start to evaluate yourself. Now you can be your harshest critic. Don't. Okay. Don't just think I'm awful. Don't just think I'm horrible. I should never do this. I should never share this with people. Don't do that. But start to identify what are small things I can improve on. What are areas where I could tighten it up or I could change this or I could affect how I give a presentation in some way. Don't go overboard. There was a time in my presentations where I would say uh or um all the time. I would also stumble over words. I'd also combine words together or slur them. And so it was hard to understand what I was saying. Now, do I still struggle with all of those? Absolutely. But I have worked over time, but I did not work on all of them at once. I decided, you know what? I'm gonna tackle um. I'm gonna try not to say um. And at first, what that means is you pause. And honestly, by putting a pause in, it is a lot better than saying um. Because you you normally pause when you talk. You let things sit, you don't just run your words together. So when I started to say um, I would just go and then give my present whatever it's gonna say. If you see, I don't even get all the words out all the time. That's okay. But work on one thing at a time. Work on getting a little better over time, and don't beat yourself up when you see an um or when you see a weird pause or a weird gesture. It's okay. We all have flaws, we're all getting better, but practice it by watching your video back. That can be hard, but do it, take notes, and work to slowly improve. Number three, present to your boss. And you might say, Tim, that's weird. I'm not gonna get in up in front of my boss and get a lecturer now and present my boss. No, you're not. But there are types of presentations that you can give to your boss. For example, do you want a raise? Do you think you deserve a raise? Give a presentation about it. Again, you're not bringing PowerPoint in, you're not having handouts, you're not doing an elaborate show and tell kind of presentation. But a presentation is just the person is here, I want to communicate something, and at the end, I want them to walk away with this conclusion. That's a presentation. So when you outline it, we talked about this last week, how to set up a presentation. But when you create that outline and get the thought process in place to lead them from where they are to your conclusion, you can use that formula to present something that feels different or smaller, like asking for a race. That can be intimidating too. But if you start off with, hey, I'd like to talk through my performance and say, hey, I have been ahead on these things. I have done these things. I have improved in these areas, I have added this value to the team. And I think that because I have done these things, I have moved up in my abilities in the team. Therefore, I think I've changed positions from a software development level one to a level two. I think I deserve to move up, or I deserve to get a raise, or I think that I have earned a raise. And so giving that presentation, even if your boss says, I get it, you've done great work, but we don't have the money. Even if that happens, you have still practiced giving your presentation. But, and here's where this can even benefit you more. Sometimes your boss is gonna say, okay. Sometimes your boss will say, you know what, you're right. I think you do deserve a promotion or a raise. And you can pitch it in a way that you start thinking through what's my boss gonna think? What are the objections? And then address them ahead of time in your presentation. That is how you improve your presentation skills. Because when you're thinking through what the audience is thinking and addressing it in the presentation, that creates a better presentation. So doing it with your boss will increase the likelihood of you getting a raise, and it will also improve the practice, you'll be able to practice more that skill of presenting. Now, it doesn't have to be a raise. It could be that you want a new piece of technology. Maybe you want a new PC, maybe you want a new monitor. Maybe you have one monitor, you want two. So present that. Share why it benefits a developer to have two monitors or three. So present that. Share how it's going to improve your situation. Maybe it's a new chair, maybe it is a programming book or course. Hey, there's great courses on IMTimCorey.com, a little plug there. But whatever it is, elevate your skills by practicing and practice small. Practice on your boss or your team leader or someone small like that. Now, the next one, we've talked the last two weeks, we've talked briefly about lunch and learns, about how I really encourage you to do so. And if you haven't grasped the concept of what a lunch and learn is, I'm not going to go over again. Check out the last two in this series, whether you're listening to a podcast or whether you are watching on YouTube. Either way, check out the past two episodes in the DevQuestion series. We'll talk about lunch and learns and why they're important. But create a lunch and learn if you don't have it already. Because when you have a lunch and learn system, you're going to practice what, every two months, every month. You know what? If people get intimidated and they're not sure if they want to start or not, you start off. Do a couple in a row. Show them how it's done. And you know what? It's not gonna be perfect, but you can get better over time. You can practice if nothing else. And then you can encourage a team to come alongside and improve and grow as well. Now, that's the first four things. The next one, it depends on your skill level. But mentor someone. So unless you are the intern or the person that's brand new in the department, probably there is someone who has less experience and less skill than you. Maybe you're last year's intern. Well, if you're still working there and there's a new intern that comes along, you're one year ahead of them. Mentor them, help them along. This will allow you to practice your presentation skills. You might say, well, Tim, I'm not giving presentations. Don't think of presentations as behind a podium. Think of presentations as trying to communicate your point to another person. And try to do so in a logical and ordered manner. So set up your presentation, set up your flow, identify your audience and where they're at, and all the rest of the tips I gave you last week, do all of that, and then practice it on them. Teach them a new thing. It can be a five-minute presentation. Just saying, hey, can I show you how to create a new ticket? Can I show you how to create a pull request in our Git system? Can I show you and just help them along, but do so in a way that you're also practicing your presentation skills. Next up, user groups. Some people don't know user groups exist and they're awesome. Check out your local user group. And you might say, well, Tim, I don't have a local user group. How do I even find one? There are websites out there to find local user groups. Just do a search on Google. But there's also online user groups. So even if you're in a place in the world where you can't come together physically, maybe find somewhere you can come together virtually. There's a number of groups that do virtual meetings. So by joining a local user group, first of all, you'll be observing how people present, and you can learn a lot from that. But also volunteer to speak. Volunteer to present on a topic. That will increase your ability to give presentations. It will increase your ability to practice presentations. And that may sound intimidating, but again, user groups usually aren't huge. Usually they're 10, 20 people in a row, max. Maybe they're bigger, but usually they're small. So present in a small one. And then do it again and again. Get used to the idea of giving a presentation. Even the idea of preparing for a presentation and practicing in front of that rubber duck, practicing in front of a coworker, practicing in front of your spouse, your kids. Learn to practice. And by doing so, you will have just this one presentation really improved your presentation skills quite a bit through all of that preparation and work. You'll also get an even deeper understanding of that topic. So those are my six recommendations for improving or practicing your presentation skills. But I do have a couple more pieces of advice. The keys to success. Number one, ask for honest feedback. This is hard because sometimes when you're first starting off, you feel fragile. You feel like you feel like you're not good enough. And so if you ask for honest advice, you kind of don't want that because you don't want to hear you didn't do perfectly. But if you remember from last week, don't plan for perfect, don't try to be perfect. Try to be good, better than you were. Okay. But ask for honest feedback because the people that say, Great job, you did a great job, great job. You can't really use that. You can't grow from that. Now, it's encouraging, and there's a place for that. And I appreciate when people tell me, hey, you did a great job. And honestly, when it comes to YouTube, that's the majority of my feedback, and I'm okay with that. But there are people that will give me honest feedback. My team will give me honest feedback. And I can trust them. So when you're asking for honest feedback, ask for it from a trusted person. Your friend, your coworker who you know their heart, the person that you know they're in your corner, they are fighting for you, not against you. Ask them for honest feedback and say, hey, I appreciate you saying great job, but I really want to know what I could improve on. Now you have to remember then when they give you the answer, and this is part two, you have to be open to change. You have to be open to hearing, hey, you know what? You kind of lost track of where you're going. And it'd be kind of good to kind of prepare more in the middle because you kind of wandered off and weren't really sure where you were at. Well, an outline would help with that. But yeah, you got to listen to that. You got to hear, hey, you know what? It wasn't perfect. And if you're okay with not being perfect, it softens the blow. It's still gonna be difficult. But if you ask for honest feedback, you have to also be open to that feedback, open to change. So doing those two things, it's outside of your normal comfort zone. But it's important that you do. Because really, the way you grow is by saying that wasn't good enough, or that could be better, and maybe a better way of saying that, that could be better, so I will try to improve. So the only way to do that is to say it wasn't perfect, I can do better. And that means you have to admit you're human. Okay. So admit you're human, be open to that feedback and really try and take it and grow. Sometimes people give you unsolicited feedback. I get that once in a while on YouTube. It happens where people say, you know, from the from the very gentle, hey, you know what? This would be better. And sometimes the first initial reaction is, ooh, I didn't want to hear that. But you have to step back and realize I'm not perfect. It's okay. And you know what? That was valuable. I can be open to change. I can hear that and say, you know what? Yes, I can do something about that. Sometimes people are gonna say something that is unkind and is not great feedback. Sometimes the best thing to do is ignore it and say, you know what? I'm not gonna listen. But if you can try to find, is there a nugget of truth here? You know, and is there something I can do about it? So a person tells me, hey, you're bald, and that's goofy. No one's ever said that, I don't think. But if they said that, you know what? I'm gonna ignore it because I can't do anything about that. I'm bald. Now I could stop shaving my head, but if I do, only half the hair grows back. So I'm not gonna do that. So you know what? I can't change. But if someone says, hey, you know what? You talk too slow. It happens a lot. People think I talk too slow. You know what? You're right. I do. I talk slow. But I can't really fix that. That's who I am, that's how fast my brain works. My brain can't go faster. When it does, I slur my speech. When I it does, I also forget where my place is and what I'm thinking about. But I'm always trying to think what next. And by doing that and trying to talk, it just speeding up doesn't work. So you know what? That's why you two invented the speed button. And so I'll I'll say, hey, you know what? I appreciate it, but I can't speak faster. So use the speed controls. If you have a you know podcast player, it has speed controls too. Use those. It is what it is. I'm imperfect, I'm human. So try to take the nuggets you can, ignore the rest, and be still open to that feedback. All right. So that's my tips for practicing and how to practice your presentation skills. I would love to see upcoming YouTube videos from you and see some of that practice being put into play where you're actually creating videos and saying, hey, you know what? I'll even publish my presentations because it could help somebody else and it will help somebody else. That could be a great thing too. Okay? May it's the start of your YouTube career. That'd be great. All right. Thanks for listening. And as always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions. Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer. If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share Dev Questions. You can also send your questions to questions at IamtimCore.com. Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to IamtimCore.com and enroll in a course.