There I was, a kid giving the speech for my committee in Berkeley University. Twelve hundred heads looked at me in the auditorium. I felt my cheeks blush. After traveling 3,000 miles from my high school, we were representing Mexico in Berkeley Model UN. I got selected to give a talk to all the attendees. It was a new record in the amount of people I’d talk to at that time. Palms were sweaty, my knees weak (arms heavy?), but when I began to speak, my nerves melted away and I just talked about how far we had come and how exciting the opportunity was for me and my team, as well as summarizing the work we did for the weekend for the committee.

I attended close to 30 tournaments related to debate. The hardest thing about debate is that you had to debate as intensely as you could a position that you might not agree with. You have to embody the position someone else had and believe it more than they believed it themselves.

Understanding how to manage a conflict, argument and presenting in public taught me how to mediate discussions with my coworkers, and even more importantly, how to see from the other perspective. The effectiveness of your work and life depends on how well you communicate.

Forum posts is where this started

In Part 1 of this series, I shared how breaking computers and exploring through curiosity built my technical foundation. Remember those forum posts where I asked questions about batch files and Linux configurations? The better you wrote (or presented) the better answers you would get. Communication is essential to get good responses and not get label’d a troll in those times.

Also, the people who responded with clarity, were the important ones, so writing became a status symbol (maybe even to this day!). How effective your writing was (or wasn’t) to the reader made it more possible to get recognition from your peers.

There is a stereotype that engineers are introverts, more comfortable with code than with people. But I’ve found that the most successful engineers are the ones who can bridge that gap, who not only can solve technical problems but also communicate their solutions.

Just like the important ones in forums were the ones that wrote more idiomatically. The people at work that write the best, seem to be the most looked up to. So writing is still a super power. (Looking at you, Julio)

This stuck with me big time: being tech-savvy just isn’t enough. Moving from forum troubleshooting to actual jobs, I realized communication and people skills matter everywhere; just in different flavors.

Interviews

Jumping a little bit into the future to my senior engineer interviews, one of my them was about presenting to a team something I was passionate about. Not only was I being interviewed, but I also had to present to a room. I got the job, not in small part, by that presentation.

It was about the migration from SourceDepot (Perforce) to Git that we went through in Microsoft Office OneNote. How we had to address the concerns of the users, how our feedback mechanism worked, training, opt-in phases, documents, etc. A big part of my job today is presenting strategy, tips, and recommendations to both senior leadership and my coworkers.

Invest in the social tree.

Some tips I always give:

1. Make it fun

Most of my presentations have stick figures, animations. And maybe that is my trademark. But having a personal style and a way of presenting yourself with a brand is super important.

2. Think about your audience

Try to embody the mind of who is listening to you

3. Practice

Practice, practice, practice. Do not memorize the presentation. It has to be in front of people, not in a mirror. Over time it makes you fret less about it. Even within your team, do it. Often. Repeatedly.

4. Use a POWER POSE

A Harvard faculty taught me about effective presentations by starting with the Power pose.

“Power posing can help you feel more confident and perform better when you face stage fright before a presentation. Making a power gesture, such as stretching your arms like a superhero, reduces the stress hormone cortisol and increases testosterone and adrenaline, both associated with risk-taking. These chemical changes strengthen your resolve when entering an intimidating social situation, like public speaking. You only need to hold these poses for a couple of minutes to notice positive effects.”

What was your worst/best presentation? Has presenting helped you? Comment below.