Lecturing has been one of my passions ever since I first entered the workforce 35 years ago. Wherever I was employed I’d volunteer to deliver lectures every chance I had: to fellow employees, to new hires, to visitors, to students, at conferences – and now that I’m self-employed I also do it for a living (though I still can’t resist volunteering to lecture for free if it’s in a good cause). I’ve delivered hundreds of talks on VLSI technology, Technical Leadership, Internet adoption, Information Overload, Social Media, the History of Computing, Innovation, Quality Assurance, Science… and it turns out that they were all memorable lectures: people stop me in the street to say they’d heard me 15 years ago and it’s the only lecture they remember from the course or event in question.

What’s going on?

What is it that makes these talks special enough to leave a long-term impression? How can you design your lectures to assure such an effect?

There are many resources that teach you how to craft a good presentation, how to connect to an audience, and how to behave on a stage. I have no doubt that they give sound advice, and I encourage you to study them. But frankly, though these teachings are important, they may not suffice. For my part, I doubt that I do a particularly good job following their advice (I do believe I move around too much on the stage, for example). To the extent that I give captivating lectures, there must be additional factors at play. In this post I try to figure these out (with no guarantee of success… it’s hard to tell when I’m the only guy not in the audience!)

Choose your content

I’ve never delivered a lecture on a subject I hadn’t found fascinating. Working in hi-tech, and being a geek at heart, it wasn’t hard to find subjects relevant to my work that I find interesting; after all, I wouldn’t be in hi-tech if I hadn’t liked all things technical. Sure, you could teach anything within your field of knowledge, but to be really good you’d better choose something you strongly care about. Your listeners can tell!

I’ve also never delivered a lecture I hadn’t developed from scratch myself. This is not how it’s always done: there are training departments whose job it is to create standard training curricula and slide decks, and then there are engineers and managers like me who are called upon to deliver them. Yet this never worked for me, and I’ve no doubt that were I to try to regurgitate material written by others, however instructive, I would never get the results I do with my own materials. So I had this ironclad condition: I’m always happy to oblige when they need a speaker, but I only deliver my own stuff. Nobody objected…

Use personal storytelling

This is the hardest component to articulate… but all my lectures are mine: they’re grounded deeply in my personal views, thoughts and past experiences. This personalization comes in when I first design a lecture, but it takes a few repeats before it settles in comfortably and integrates fully, so the whole thing becomes a storytelling experience. This makes it fun for speaker and listeners alike!

Sometimes the storytelling is explicit, as in my “Battle diary of an Intra-organizational entrepreneur” lecture, which involves lessons from my own career as a change agent in a large corporation; sometimes it’s a reliance on insights from my hobbies or my non-work life (a generation of Intel employees in Jerusalem must still remember the way I’d used the American and Japanese cars I had in Silicon Valley to demonstrate the meaning of Total Quality). Sometimes it’s a personal take on the stories of others, whether industry leaders or tech innovators from the past. Whatever – as long as the storytelling comes from within you.

There may be other ways that are no less effective, but mine is to compose the lecture from varied short stories, creating an eclectic tapestry of ideas and insights that all flow into a single coherent whole.

Keep PowerPoint in its place

I’ve written before about PowerPoint, its dangers and its proper use; so I won’t repeat the details here. Something I learned fairly early (after unlearning the other way) is not to read my slides out aloud; I use slides to guide the general flow of the talk but use most slides just to carry carefully chosen imagery that illustrates what I have to say. I do the talking, and the imagery augments the effect.

Evolve your material

Revising old lectures is not very exciting, and yet it is imperative that you review and upgrade your lectures about once a year. The needed changes may be minor, but they accumulate if neglected. It isn’t just that the materials change (especially with technology lectures); as you deliver the lecture again and again, you get a feeling for which parts work well and which have an awkwardness about them that needs ironing out. I have some lectures that have been in use for a decade, but are in their sixth or seventh revision – they may seem the same but they flow much more smoothly. It’s a worthwhile time investment if you want your talks to be more than average.

What’s it to you, then?

When it comes to public speaking, no two teachers are alike. Everyone has their method, and what works for me may not work for you – and vice versa. Still, we can learn some tips from each other – I have, from speakers that had impressed me over the years. This is why I shared these thoughts: they may give you ideas that may enhance your own methodology. Which of them will, and how to integrate them, is for you to decide.

Whatever you take from this, remember – teaching and lecturing is a very personal thing, and comes from inside you. Give it the attention it deserves!

Feel free to share your own insights in the comments – I may learn a thing or two! – and you’re also welcome to check my current lecture lineup.

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