Mechanical Engineers Should Embrace Public Speaking

When Neil Thompson stood in front of a room of senior managers to give an on-the-job, 15-minute project update, he quickly realized what many engineers discover the hard way that it doesn’t matter how brilliant your design is if you can’t explain it clearly.

Thompson, an engineer turned communications coach, recalls those meetings as a wake-up call. “Those first few presentations were absolutely horrendous,” he said. He was so nervous that he would just read his slides and try to get through them as quickly as possible. He soon realized he needed to improve his presentation skills to keep his career moving on the right track.

“I learned that getting better at public speaking in general—just communicating what you do or the value you bring to a company—is going to be very important moving forward,” said Thompson, founder of Teach the Geek, which provides public speaking training for technical professionals like mechanical engineers.