I never thought myself as a bad speaker. I mean I was, but i always thought that i have been improving after all these years.
I always make interactive, effective and timely boxed hosting of meetings and events. And for the demonstration and technical presentation, I always nailed it and often got round of applauses when I stepped down the stage.
Or so I thought.
When comparing to most InTrovert Engineers who never find themselves comfortable under the spotlight from all the silent eyes, it's true that i have done way better.
But it wasn't enough. Not until i reflected myself from the professional evaluation.
Last 23rd, the eve of Christmas's eve, I joined a zoomed Toast Master event from PJ, Malaysia. I treated that lightly and immediately found that i was too naive when i delivered the first broken introduction.
Oh what? They are counting your "hmm" and "ah"? And check your spelling too? Nani?!
When delivering the second Impromptu topic, I too didn't perform well. I thought, "How hard it can be?", but you won't know until you tried it.
It's not because I wasn't prepared for the event, but the truth is I wasn't prepared ALL the time. We used "presentation" to deliver technical idea and the presenting skill was never a focus. A single pause of "hmm" or "ah" is not going to ruin it. But it'll become a habit and follow you all the time.
Three days later I retrospect the hmm's feedback again in my mind. And suddenly, I found a strong linkage of how "public speaking" related to the everyday coding of mine. And again It's really fascinating to see how the modern web engine work like a great speaker. SO I might touch a little bit of some technical terms. I hope you won't mind.
First of all, it's impossible not to spent time and THINK when we are talking. And THINKING required time. A great speaker does not means he or she is always smarter and faster in thinking. But in their mind, they are applying a modern way of how a website interact with client: Asynchronous processing.
In Javascript engine of the website, there is a main thread of doing WORK for your webpage so it can interact with you when you scrolling or mouse-hovering. But when you clicked a button to connect something from another corner of the world, there must be some latency applied, say, 2 seconds. And trust me, a good UI/UX will not let the page literally hanging and ask the precious client to stare at a white screen for 2 hell seconds.
Same goes to public speaking. A great speaker will never say "hmm..." for a long 2 seconds. (Unless for demonstrative purpose) But how do they speak without THINKING? Well, I believe they still THINK, but their brain might be re-architectured in a more effective way. I am no great speaker but I can briefly understand how it work from the technical point of view.
When a webpage is loading something big for you, They will simply show you a loading icon or some popup message so you won't get bored in every 1/25 seconds. Every though the actual background work took 2 seconds, you won't notice it.
Same goes to a public speaker. When a speaker trying to lookup for the next line of sentence in an impromptu topic, they will use a "connector" instead of "hmm"or "eh...". For example, they might say: "To be honest", "Frankly speaking", "Truth to be told" to assert your previous idea, or inject a new idea. On the other hand, you can say: "Even though", "Nevertheless", "Regardlessly" to counter your previous idea. A great speaker will put LOTS of these phrases in "random access memory" so it can be fire up immediately without much thinking.
A speaker might also dealing the background THINKING time with eye contact and emotional acting. We don't need THINKING time to show a sad or happy face. And that kept the audience attached without removed their eyes from the speaker.
function speaking(startTime, title){
speakIntro(title);
while(DateTime.Now - startTime < 1 min){
const promise1 = prepareNextLine(category);
const promise2 = speakNextConnector(category);
Promise.All([promise1, promise2]).Then((value) => speakNextLine(value));
}
speakClosing(title);
}
And I actually tried to write some pseudo-code to represent the idea. I guess it's my nerd way of understanding how it work. Although the more I try, the more I am fascinated by how brilliant the brain is. A simple machine might just load the full speech and repeat it, but it'll never be attractive. That's why it's so hard for the robotic expert to build a very humanized robot. Because They forgot to implement how human deal with "hmm...".