Recently I watched a friend practice a technical speech at our public speaking club. This was in anticipation of him delivering the presentation at an industry conference. I didn’t understand the presentation. He’d written it for an audience which would. As he should have. But this made giving feedback challenging.
Thinking about your audience is the most important part of crafting any speech. Pitching it at the right level is essential. You need to consider how technical your audience is and therefore what they will understand. You will quickly lose a non-technical audience who don’t understand what you are talking about if the content is too technical. An audience full of experts on your subject will easily become bored if you explain things they already know.
This is the same for communication in daily working life. I’ve worked in businesses with colleagues and clients with different levels of property background and expertise. I adjust how I communicate about technical property concepts depending on who I am speaking to. I would speak to a solicitor about a particular property law very differently from how I would to a client whose main business was not property.
Those of us giving feedback at our club on my friend’s speech could only do so on the delivery, not content of the presentation. I’m sure some of this was valuable. And the very act of rehearsing and receiving feedback is an important part of becoming a better speaker. But we could only say so much when we fundamentally didn’t understand what was being said.
This experience emphasised the importance of having someone who knows what you are talking about giving feedback on the content. Does it make sense? Is it pitched at the right level? How can the examples be clearer? Would someone with similar technical expertise learn something / have questions / understand the take-aways?
Context is an important part of public speaking. From the type of setting, to the technical expertise of the audience, to the right tone for the presentation. Whenever you are delivering a presentation, I’d recommend getting feedback. If it’s a technical subject, make sure the person giving the feedback understands the context, content and what your audience will understand.
