Although I consider myself to be a rather quiet person, I actually spend a lot of my time talking. For most professors, talking (a lot) is part of the job. We teach, which requires plenty of speaking no matter what the format of the class. Talking to students outside of class is also a major part of the job: advising sessions, office-hour explanations, and research-focused discussions.
Add to that the endless committee meetings, faculty meetings, and other meetings related to professional and institutional service. In such meetings, I speak only occasionally, but I seem to be conservative on that count.
We also have to give professional talks: informal research-group talks, department-level talks, random talks at the home institution, invited talks at other universities or colleges. Most of those are research-focused, but some involve mentorship or other professional-development issues. For example, professors might speak to students about career opportunities or work-family-balance issues, or we might talk to various groups on the campus about topical issues. I was once asked to give a talk about tenure to some nonacademics: What was tenure? What did you have to do to get it? And why did professors get so fierce about preserving it?
And then there are conferences of various sizes, formats, and degrees of specialization. At conferences, some of us talk nearly nonstop for days. We give presentations of varying lengths, we stand in the halls chatting with colleagues and students (in some cases, about why we are not listening to talks at that moment), and we talk during meals and social hours that vary from effortless to excruciating depending on the company, the purpose, and the hour of the event. (I personally do not do well at breakfast meetings.) Some of my colleagues engage in extreme conferencing, risking their health and sanity to get a vast amount of talking done in a short amount of time.
In all of those settings, being skilled at public speaking is obviously a benefit. In an academic context, that means speaking in an articulate and efficient way so that people actually listen as you make your points in the allotted time, which might vary from a minute to hours. Even better, but far more difficult, is if you can speak about your specialized field of interest to a general, nonacademic audience.
I have gotten better at public speaking over the years, with practice and with the confidence that comes from experience. But if you’re like me, and it doesn’t come naturally to you, then it takes effort to do it well. For some, the effort can have spectacular results. I have a few colleagues who had very rocky starts to their teaching careers but who are now much-beloved, award-winning teachers. I am not in that league, but I am reasonably content with the degree to which I have learned to speak effectively in a classroom or at a conference.
I particularly enjoy giving talks about my research. It doesn’t matter if the talk is 10 minutes or an hour; I like the challenge of figuring out how to present my research for the intended audience. I have given enough of them, however, to know that even the best-planned talks can be thrown off by unexpected events. Some of those events are not so unusual, such as technical difficulties with projection equipment, lighting, or microphones. I have experienced those many times, as well as a couple of fire alarms in the midst of talks. I think the best thing to do on such occasions (with the possible exception of fires) is to continue the talk.
Another type of unexpected event involves being interrupted by questions or comments. In some settings, interruptions are welcome and can be useful and interesting. But since you don’t know exactly when and how you will be interrupted, it is good to have some strategies for handling unexpected questions or criticisms without losing your composure or forgetting what you were going to say before you were interrupted.
The thing that can unnerve me most is the nature of the introduction when I am giving an invited talk at another university. For invited talks, it is customary for someone at the host institution to introduce the visiting speaker. I have found that the type of introduction can have a significant effect, at least at the beginning of my talk, on my mood and presentation strategy:
The terse introduction. “Professor X is from the University of Y, and she is going to give a talk about (insert title).” This type of introduction may be boring, but I like it. It allows me to dive into my talk with a minimum of fuss.
The slightly longer introduction. “Professor X got her Ph.D. from University Z and is now at the University of Y. She is going to give a talk about (insert title).” There may be some mention of intermediate career stages (postdocs, other faculty positions etc.), but these introductions are still quite short, and I like that.
The even longer introduction. This one is delivered by someone who has delved deep into the speaker’s CV and/or knows the speaker well: “Professor X was an undergraduate at College A, got her Ph.D. from University Z, was a postdoc at University M, a visiting professor at University B, and assistant professor at University W, before finally moving to the University of Y, where she is now a professor.” This type of introduction might be of interest to some audience members, as it helps establish connections that might lead to conversations later (“I went to College A too!” or “Do you know So-and-So who also went to University B?”).
For the speaker, however, long introductions can be uncomfortable. In my case, I don’t know where or how to look—bored? interested? humble? bemused?—especially if I have to stand next to the speaker making the introduction. There can be an awkward moment after the introducer suddenly stops and it’s my turn to finally start speaking.
The epic introduction. This one includes all the above as well as mentions various other items from the CV, such as awards and professional-service positions—information that is unlikely to be of interest to anyone other than the speaker’s department chair and mother. Epic introductions are tedious and, once they are finally over and I can start my talk, I have to work on getting some momentum going to compensate for that long boring list of biographical trivia.
The second-to-worst type of introduction. This one includes some or all of the above biographical information in addition to statements suggesting that the speaker is an awesomely impressive person who is doing cutting-edge research and who is about to give a fabulous talk. If I am the speaker, I find such introductions mortifying. Explicitly saying that someone is impressive while that person is standing there and about to give a talk is embarrassing and raises expectations that the research presented, as well as the talk itself, will blow everyone away, as opposed to being merely interesting. After such an introduction, if you start your talk with a mild statement (or a lame joke), the expectations of the audience may plummet in a precipitous way.
The worst of the worst introductions. I absolutely hate it when I am introduced as “the best female X,” in which X equals a description of my research specialty. It is not true that I am the best X, so it is embarrassing to be described that way, and it is obnoxious in this context to add an irrelevant qualifier like “female,” especially if it immediately decreases the pool of comparison to an absurdly small number. Would it be acceptable to mention that someone was the “best” X and insert a description of that person’s religion, country of origin, height, weight, hair color, or other irrelevant personal characteristic? How about “Our speaker today is the best X who also has an orange tabby cat that weighs more than 8 kilograms”? The introducer is likely to be well meaning in finding a way to include a superlative in the introduction, but I’d rather not be described this way.
My ideal introduction is a rapid recitation of my career path, either the first or second type I listed. A bit of biographical information can be useful for students and postdocs to see how someone got from Point A to Point B in her career.
The most interesting introduction I ever had was years ago when an introducer informed the audience that I had killed one of my advisers. The introducer explained that my research had disproved part of my adviser’s lifework, and the shock had killed him. It was a memorable introduction, but, given the choice, I prefer not to be accused of murder when being introduced for a talk, even if it does get the audience’s attention. Perhaps I should just be happy that I wasn’t introduced as the best female adviser-killer.
I think that my experiences show that it is possible to be a reserved, rather soft-spoken person and still enjoy a talking-intensive career in academe. Given the wide range of contexts in which professors have to speak, I have found it best to be as flexible as possible about the format and duration of talks, to be calm when random and unexpected things happen, and to try to enjoy the many different opportunities for speaking on topics about which I am passionate.
