Starting points for speakers No excuses!

"Your technical skills will get you a job, but public speaking and communication skills will get you a promotion."

Boyd Rodman, IT and e-business professor, hands out this advice to IT students at Pueblo Community College in Pueblo, Colo. Public speaking is rapidly becoming a differentiator for IT professionals, he says. "The industry trend is toward teamwork - putting employees into groups. Whoever leads these groups and does a presentation on the group's findings tends to get noticed," he explains.

Rodman makes sure his students get extensive public speaking practice as part of their course work. For instance, they must present their network projects to classmates and participate in debates on industry issues, preparing both sides of the argument.

Such skills are critical for job effectiveness. "If you're going to manage a network in which you're probably going to have employees pirating software, you have to understand the reasons why people pirate so you can argue against it," Rodman says.

Mark Hagan, director of enterprise infrastructure at American Medical Response in Denver, attests to the importance of public speaking and communication skills for career development. Being a good communicator helped him get his current management position, he says. "Public speaking gives you confidence. It helps you articulate well and think on the fly" - particularly critical skills for IT managers who must get budget approval for network projects, he says. "People are asking you questions on the spot. You need to be able to answer them."

Hagan recommends speaking on panels at industry shows. In fact, he and one of his team members recently took part in a roundtable discussion at a Network World Technology Tour on data centers. "One problem with technology-focused people is they tend to shy away from these opportunities and to be introverted . . . and being introverted makes it more difficult for [IT professionals] to deal with business users in the organization," he says.

Mike Sapien, an industry consultant, notes this positive effect of good public speaking skills: "I can remember many 'borderline' internal proposals that were approved much easier when the IT executive seemed poised and professional in his or her project reviews," he says. "[Presentation style] does not outweigh substance or solid data, but it does help get [the message] through better and faster."