Neil Thompson on How Engineers Can Communicate More Effectively At Work

Neil Thompson, founder of Teach the Geek, reflects on how his own struggles with communication as an engineer gave him insight to help other technical professionals communicate better. 

Find a transcript at Buzzsprout. Contact Ryan Weber at rw0019@uah.edu for more information about the show! 

Transcript

Ryan Weber: Welcome to 10-Minute Tech Comm. This is Ryan Weber at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. I’m very excited to welcome Neil Thompson, founder of Teach the Geek. I really enjoyed talking with Neil because he’s an engineer who used his own struggles and failures with communication to launch a business that helps other engineers and technical professionals communicate more effectively. He has great insights for technical professionals and others who really want to give better presentations and communicate in the workplace. I’ll let Neil introduce himself and we’ll take the interview from there. 

Neil Thompson: My name is Neal Thompson. I'm the founder of Teach the Geek, in which I work with technical people on their presentation or communication skills. And the whole idea of Teach the Geek came from me working as an engineer in a medical device company having to give presentations on a monthly basis and not being all that effective at it, and it culminated in my project getting cancelled after a number of months of working on it. That happened over 15 years ago and I still look back on that time and think if I was just better at communicating with these decision makers, many of whom were non-technical, perhaps that company could have a product out that is having millions of dollars in sales, but I guess we'll never know. But essentially I want people to avoid the stumbles that I did and realize that communicating, especially with a technical person that wants to convey their usefulness to an organization, is something to prioritize. 

So that's essentially what Teach the Geek is all about. I go into organizations. I do trainings for the technical staff. I also have a podcast called the Teach the Geek podcast, in which I interview technical leaders on the challenges they see in technical people communicating with non-technical audiences. And I also have a YouTube channel, in which I offer tips on how technical people can improve in their communication. 

Ryan: Awesome. Well, it's a great project. It's very much needed. You talk about your own experience with not giving the presentations that you want to be able to give, the real world effects of that. You say you want people to avoid some of the stumbles that you experience. What kinds of challenges do you see? You talk to a lot of technical people. You teach a lot of technical people. What are these challenges in communication that engineers tend to experience? 

Neil: I think the number one is just assuming that what you're saying is understood by the people that you're speaking to. Something that I think a lot of technical people need to realize is if you're speaking to a non-technical audience, they're not going to have the same level of technical expertise that you do. 

Another thing you need to realize is that you didn't always have that same technical expertise. Back when you went to school, I mean, certainly I did. I got an engineering degree and I took on roles that are technical within organizations and that's what gives you that technical expertise that you now have. But if you're speaking to a non-technical audience, they didn't do all that. Likely they didn't go to the engineering school. They don't have the technical roles. So why would you assume that they'll just understand your technical speak as you understand it? It's something that I think a lot of us need to recognize and realize that we need to put presentations in a way that these people can understand and recognize that also that we couldn't have understood these presentations back before we were technical. So hearken back to that person that you were before you were that technical person because likely that's the person you're speaking to if you're speaking to a non-technical audience.

Ryan: So remembering yourself when you would have needed a non-technical presentation to understand what you were talking about now?

Neil: Absolutely. 

Ryan: When experts are speaking to non-technical audiences, what are some strategies they could use to make things clear and understandable? Because I know it's hard, right? You have these complicated concepts. You understand them really fluently and you want to make sure that your audience understands. What are some of the things that you teach people to do? 

Neil: Well, now that we have generative AI, it's become way more easier to figure out what words are the technical jargon and what words can we replace the technical jargon with. We can use more commonly used words. We can use analogies. We can use metaphors and we can develop prompts in generative AI to figure out what words we can replace the technical jargon with. 

So that's definitely something that I work with people on is just figuring out what these words are that you think are known to everybody, but aren't. I said earlier they weren't always known to you, but now that you're giving presentations in front of management or in front of non-technical people, what can we do to use different words that are more understandable to other people? 

I think another thing that a lot of us technical people, or at least what I work on with people, is just the pacing of a presentation and recognizing that there's only so much that a non-technical audience can take in at any given time. And realizing if you throw the kitchen sink at them, that they're not going to absorb all that you want them to absorb. So we need to be very mindful of what we tell them.

So how I work with people on that is figuring out what the call to action is of a presentation. What do you want people to think or do after it? And once you have the answers to that, work backwards to develop what points you need to make that will naturally lead to that call to action. And what that does is it eliminates any extraneous information you would have put into the presentation. And it makes it easier for people that are non-technical to take in what you want to say and for them to act on it. 

Ryan: So you're saying go in with the default of like, I know that people are only going to remember so much or only have so much capacity to process information. So I'm going to start with my call to action and then only the information that contributes to that call to action is what goes into the presentation.

Neil: Absolutely. 

Ryan: So one of the things you teach is kind of maintaining technical accuracy while also helping an audience understand what you're talking about. Because I think that's one of the concerns of a lot of engineers and a lot of technical people as well. If I'm going to make this more accessible, I'm going to give up on some technical accuracy. I'm going to lose some sophistication. I'm going to say some things that maybe aren't quite accurate. How do you help people deal with that tension? 

Neil: Well, I think you need to understand the purpose of the presentation to begin with. It's not necessarily to hit them with all the technical accuracy and to make it so that they become technical experts like you are, because that's not going to happen in a presentation to non-technical people, no matter how long it is. So you have to put yourself in their shoes. What do they need to get from your presentation that's going to help them make better decisions and help them do their jobs better? 

And once you do that, you're not as enamored with all the technical details that you find interesting. You will then start thinking about what do they need to know so that they can do what they need to do? Once you understand that and internalize that, you're not going to be as stuck on the technical details. 

Ryan: Because that's not really the point. If you want to become a technical expert, you've got to go to school and work in this field for years and years and years. A 10-minute presentation is not going to do that work. 

Neil: Absolutely right. And if you think it will, then you're going to be sorely disappointed like I was. 

Ryan: So you talk a lot about understanding your audience. This is something I ask guests a lot because we all say that, “Understand your audience,” but it's harder to do in practice than just kind of saying “Understand your audience.” What are some strategies you give your communicators about how can I understand what my audience needs, what they already know, put myself in their shoes? 

Neil: I had to give presentations in front of management, as I said. And it was very difficult to get time with these people before my presentations because they're busy. So what I ended up doing is I'd go to their administrative assistants and I'd ask them, “What kind of information do I need to have in this presentation that would be of use to your boss?” 

And that's a way that I would get some very useful information. And I would just make sure that that information was in the presentation. It wasn't about what I thought was interesting. It was what they thought was useful for them to do their jobs better. 

Ryan: I like that tip. So kind of getting some insider information to make sure you're giving what actually matters to your audience. 

Neil: Yeah. And then, I mean, I mentioned generative AI before and I just recently had a guest on my podcast and he says before his presentations at conferences, he'll do a prompt in generative AI to tell generative AI who the audience that he's going to be presenting in front of, the typical backgrounds of such people. And then asking it, what kind of information would be of interest to these people? As I said, now we have this tool. There's really no excuse for us to go in blind thinking that we're going to present something that isn't interesting or useful to people.

Ryan: That's interesting because, you know, I was actually thinking about this just the other day. I was wondering how good, I haven't used it a lot for this purpose, but kind of wondering how good gen AI is at sort of understanding your audience. This speaker, and you've played with it some too, find that it does pretty well? 

Neil: Oh, 100%. And before, as I said, we kind of had to depend on our own judgment, maybe going to the conference ourselves and getting a feel for it. Maybe asking organizers the types of people in the audience and all that's still helpful. But if you're not able to do that, and you just want to rely on something that you fully can control, then generative AI can be our friend. 

Ryan: Okay. So you've talked about a little bit, when we were setting up this meeting, you talked a little bit about communication habits, you know, sort of good communication habits and bad communication habits that can either create confusion or understanding. What kind of habits do you want communicators to develop? 

Neil: Well, the number one is to not avoid doing it. I think a lot of us will read all the books, we'll watch all the YouTube videos, we'll listen to all the podcasts and think that we're skilled at it now, but that's not how it works. You have to get the reps in. Practice makes progress. You don't get better at speaking or anything, really, unless you expose yourself to it as much as possible.

And then something to avoid, I'd say, is filler words. And this started based on a conversation I had with my mother a number of years ago now. I mentioned that I have a podcast, and she called me after listening to one of my episodes. She told me that I did a good job. I don't know how she could have said that, because she also said she stopped listening after five minutes. That's a 30-minute podcast.

So I asked her, “What was the issue?” And she said that my guest said “um” so many times within that five minutes that she got frustrated and stopped listening. It made me think perhaps I should do some better editing. But it also got me thinking people are bothered by these filler words. “Um.” “You know.” “So.” Words that we use a lot in just regular speaking, but we don't necessarily know that we're using it as much as we are when we're giving presentations. 

And if you're speaking to people who are decision makers and they're bothered by these words, it would be in our best interest to try to minimize them as much as possible. And a great way to do that is to record yourself giving presentations and listening to the recording, certainly, but then getting a transcript of the recording and then searching for all of those filler words. You can use generative AI to do that too. And you'll likely be surprised by how many ums you have. 

Ryan: It's interesting you mentioned that because it's so hard to watch yourself. I like the transcript idea. It's valuable to watch yourself, but it's hard, you know, doing this podcast. I've all my little, you know, verbal takes. One of them is “you know,” actually like all the filler words that I put into things and you just don't realize until you listen back kind of all the stuff that you're putting in that you have no idea.

Neil: Yeah. I was a member of Toastmasters for a number of years and I was at one of the meetings. There was someone that came in. He was new. He'd never been to a Toastmasters meeting. And for those of you all that don't know, Toastmasters is an international organization, chapters all over the world. You get to practice speaking in front of others and get feedback. One of the roles in a Toastmasters meeting was called the Ah-Counter. And this is the person who counts the filler words. And I was the Ah-Counter for that particular meeting. And this person volunteered to speak in front of the group, this new person. And I told him afterwards the number of filler words he'd used. And he was quite surprised by the number. He didn't seem to be all that happy about it, but at least now you know. And once you have that baseline, now you know what you need to do to improve.

Ryan: Well, and this, you know, the idea of practicing, the idea of counting your filler words, some of what you're saying seems to be kind of face your fears. There's this sort of, you know, well-established fear of public speaking. And then you're not going to get anywhere by not learning what your filler words are, by not standing up in front of people and struggling a little bit. That you've got to get out there and do it.

Neil: That's exactly it. And ultimately, especially if you're a technical person, you might come into the workforce thinking, “I was brought here to do this technical role. I don't have to be concerned with communicating with others. That's somebody else's job.” At least that's how I looked at it. But it wasn't until my project got canceled that I think this whole communicating to people thing, especially to decision makers, perhaps this is something that I need to take more seriously.

Ultimately, the people who get opportunities within organizations, those are the people who tend to be the better communicators. So you don't want to be that engineer or a technical person disgruntled because you didn't get the opportunity. Just embrace the usefulness of becoming an effective communicator.

Ryan: And you've mentioned Gen AI several times, but you are still really emphasizing that human communication skills matter, right? This all can't be outsourced to AI.

Neil: Oh, 100%. AI is meant to be an aid. When you're giving a presentation, you're not going to be using prompts. You're going to be speaking to people face-to-face or screen-to-screen. So definitely use it to practice, to improve, to build up that confidence. But ultimately, you're going to have to look at people and well, hopefully you're looking at them and not your screen or looking at your notes, you're actually looking at them eye-to-eye and communicating with them. 

Ryan: Do you have any other advice for us, Neil, about if our listeners are technical people or want to teach technical people how to communicate well, what are some ways to get started? 

Neil: Well, the number one way to get started is to get started. As I said earlier, you could read all the books and listen to all the podcast episodes and watch all the YouTube videos, but you don't get better until you actually get out there and do it and recognize that those first two presentations are going to be rough like mine were. You need to be open to receiving feedback from others. You need to be open to watching yourself and seeing what you liked about your presentation, what you think you can improve on, and just keeping track of that type of thing.

I mean, I had a client that I've worked with and he sent me a video of him giving a presentation 40 minutes and I counted the number of fillers he used. 100 fillers in 40 minutes. It's a lot, but at least now he knows that's the number to beat. About a month later, he sent me another video of him giving a 40-minute presentation. 90 filler words now, so he cut down by 10, and hopefully I should check in with him, see what number of filler words he's at at this point. 

Ryan: Do you have any, because again, that's easy to say, like use fewer filler words. What do you do? Do you just kind of make sure you monitor yourself? What are some ways to cut that down? 

Neil: Yeah, I mean you start off at least knowing that baseline. 100, that's the number I need to beat. And you need to just track it over time. Is that number going down? Because now you're more mindful of it.

It's one thing for somebody to tell you, you use too many filler words. That doesn't really mean much, because you don't know the number you're starting from and what to bring it down to. But if you're told that it's 100 in 40 minutes, you know that's the number to beat. You have that in your mind. Try to not say “um” I'm 100 times in a 40-minute presentation and I just think if you know that and you're thinking about that, you're less likely to do it. 

Ryan: Great. Well, where can people find you if they want to learn more, Neil? 

Neil: They can go to teachthegeek.com. If you want to check out the podcast, you can go to podcast.teachthegeek.com and if you want to check out the YouTube channel, you can go to youtube.teachthegeek.com. 

Ryan: Awesome. Thanks, Neil. I had a lot of fun talking with you. 

Neil: Great. Thanks for having me.