#36 A fireside chat with Brenden Kumarasamy , the why and how technologist should master their public speaking and communication skills

  Hello and welcome to a new episode of the C T O Show with.  Usually I cover technology trends and news, but today I thought I can do something little bit different, and with me here today is Brenda,  who is joining me live now from Canada to talk to us more about communication, public speaking. If you ask me why I'm doing this, because I know it's from. 

US technology people usually are, we are introverts. So I have today with me, Brendan. Brendan, first of all, thank you for joining me. Please can you introduce yourself, what you do, and if you want to talk about also your venture.  

Of course mi, it's such a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. So for me, the journey started in business school.

I never really wanted to become an entrepreneur. My goal was to become an accountant, funny enough. So that's what I studied in, and I was a numbers guy. But then during my journey there, I did two things. One, I did case competitions. Think of it like hackathons in the computer science world, but for business students.

So instead of competing on technology projects, what we were doing, I.  Businesses would give us cases to solve for, and the best students would often get jobs at these companies like in hackathons. So that was my focus and I accidentally got really good at speaking and sharing ideas. And the other piece is I was a venture capitalist.

I ran a student run fund. It was like a $600,000 fund. I was one of the, I was one of the general partners running the fund. And what I learned in that experience was a. Technical talents weren't really good at conveying their ideas, but since they were still early in the startup journey, they couldn't afford a coach either.

So I started to make videos on public speaking and communication to help people gain access to these tools for free, because I think the next Elon Musk is a seven year old girl who can't afford a coach. So I started Master Talk, and then it later led to clients and it became a business after.  

That's cool.

Now, the first question that came to my mind actually, because you  master at the public speaking, I watch some of the YouTube videos that you have done,  like.  , what do you think is the importance of having public speaking skill and the communication skill for someone working in technology in general?  

Very simple.

So here, here's what I say, mime to anybody in the tech space,  a lot of people in the tech space can get away by just being a technical talent. So let's say you're, you go to engineering school, you become a developer, a senior engineer, and most of your. Success in your performance is based on the code base, based on the key deliverables you're assigning back to the client or to the org if it's an internal project that you're working on.

But then at some point in the career you get stuck and the reason you get stuck, usually you're a manager, director, you still get promoted to the role because there's too much shortage of talent, talented general tech. But then when you get port. Promoted to the role, you come to a, a stark realization that what you get evaluated on has very little to do with the code base anyway, cuz you're not coding anymore.

Most of your job now is managing people so it turns into a leadership role. And a lot of engineering schools, I would argue most of them, amendment, do not train their their students to prepare for the future version of themselves. So for those of you who are going to be CTOs who are already CTOs, Communication is essential because now you're not just talking to the internal engineering team where you're working on a specific product feature with now you're talking to the entire organization and as a c2, you're setting the technology vision for the company, not just a specific.

Project they used to deliver as a manager, and that requires exceptional communication skills because now you're going to keynotes, you're going to Dreamforce, you're going to events, you're sitting on panels, you're presenting to clients, you're doing sales. And those skills require comms if you want to go to the top at the ladder. 

That's brilliant. So the question that came to my mind also immediately now,  what do you think is the.  Normal time that you know someone who's looking to reach ,  the C T o, , position, like what's usually the timeframe. That it would take with them to be a good communicator and good public speaking 

people  for sure amendment.

I think anyone could get really good in just a few weeks, honestly. And I'll tell you why. Let's, let's use the frame of this audience. Think about in your journey, whether it was five years ago, 20 years ago, if you're a C T O, when you started coding your first language, whether it was Java, c plus plus Python, Ruby on Rails.

Matter. So the first time you do that language, you have no idea what you're doing, right? You're going, GitHub probably didn't exist 20 years ago, but you're, you're going on the website, you're trying to figure out how to debug the software and then, I mean, debug the code. But then after you get good at the language,  It becomes easier for you to do it.

So then when you try and learn a new language, let's say you go from Ruby to, I don't know, Python, or you go from Ruby to to s SQL or something, you become a data scientist. Who knows? Well, when you go to the new language, sure you still have to learn the language, but it becomes easier for you to navigate those waters.

So in that same way, communication is the same thing, except the problem is no one really teaches communication from an engineer's perspective. So for me,  How I teach it is communication is like juggling 18 balls at the same time. Where one of those balls is smiling, one of those balls is body language.

One of those balls is eye contact. So for me, it's just doing one ball at a time. I'll give you one easy one mimic that people can practice right away, which is called the random word exercise. Pick a rant word, like phone, like. Bulb like home and create random presentations out of thin air. And this helps with two things.

One, it helps you deal with uncertainty cuz life is filled with it when you're meeting somebody new at a party and or a business dealing. And the second piece is if you can make sense out of nonsense, you can make sense out of anything. So just do that a few times a day.  Wow. 

That's really insightful, I would say.

And now,  Continuing on the same topic. , and I've seen it a lot of times, so people. Usually working in technology, and I know this back in the days from myself, they are kind of introverts. So do you think that if someone is an introvert can come one day and become, you know, a public speaker and you know someone who can easily talk to a large audience, especially because you would be coming, as you said, maybe from a deep engineering technology background.

So , what's your take?  

I hundred percent believe it's possible, but it's also about framing the conversation correctly. Mimh, which is, you don't need to be a big speaker in front of thousands of people to be a successful cto, but what you need to be able to do is you need to be able to talk to teams that are outside of just the core engineering team, because when.

When you are at the CTO level, it's not just about what code are we working on this week? That's a basic requirement. It's more about saying, where are we gonna invest the next millions of dollars into the next technology innovation? So your job as a CTO is to look at the capital that you're being allocated and say, based on my understanding of all of the new technical, logical trends and how deep the tech is and the business that I'm in, I need to make a conscious decision. 

A, driving that capital in a way that drives the best business outcomes, not technological outcome, business outcomes, and then justify that spend to the rest of the executive board, which is a completely different skillset than when you're a manager, which is just like, okay, my, my VP is telling me to run this project and to do scrum calls on this project and to run that p and l.

Okay, I'll run it. But that's not the same thing as running the whole org. So for me, I definitely believe it's possible. And, and the reason is because my whole life I was a terrible communicator, mem, I know I sound great now, but when I was a kid, I grew up in a French education system cuz I, I grew up in Montreal and I didn't know French.

I'm fluent in French today. But the challenge is my whole life I was presenting a language I didn't even know. And then the second langu, the second child, I have a crooked left arm. Look at me. I coach a bunch of CTOs, bunch of CEOs, and I have a crooked left arm. So if I could be a great speaker, anyone can.

And I have a bachelor's degree in accounting, so if I could figure this out, I'd think every human being listening to this can. 

Wow, that's really motivational, I would say at the same time. Now, do you think there is a difference from communication presentation perspective? Because for the past two, three years everything shifted to remote work and you know, because of the pandemic, a lot of people, they were completely working remotely and online.

Do you think there is a special skill when dealing with public speaking or whether it's just a normal presentation from technical perspective? Between the online landscape and the traditional, I would say face-to-face landscape. What's your take on this? 

For sure, amendment. So there's three main differences between online and in person.

The first one is eye contact. So when you're in person, you move your body around to look at the different people in the. As you're presenting to them res when you are online, whether there's one person or 10,000 people on that Zoom call, you only have to look in one place, which is the camera lens. So if you look directly into the the camera lens, you give the illusion that you're looking at everyone at the same time.

So that's one.  Number two,  energy. Let's face it, MIMH, it's a lot easier to show up with energy when you're in person because you can hug people, you can give them high fives, and there's more accountability. Even for this entry, I'm wearing sweatpants, right? Because I don't have that level of accountability that you would have if you're in person.

If you're in person, you gotta shower, you gotta wake up at 5:00 AM in the morning, or 6:00 AM in the morning to go to your eight minute key. 8:00 AM keynote, and everyone's in front.  . So the accountability is hard, the energy too, cuz you're alone in a basement talking to people. So what does that mean? That means get better in person.

Get better in person. Bring your energy up in person and take as much of that energy as possible and bring it back online. That's how you get better. And finally, number three, accessibility. It's a lot.   for you to talk to your audience if you're in person. So if me and you are filming in Dubai in person, we could just get lunch.

After you're right in front of me, there's no friction, whereas online, the Zoom call just ends. So you need to make an extra effort to get on calls with people, to get into conversations with them, for you to get the best feedback on your present.  

Wow. This is also really helpful, I would say. And I can say from my own experience, cause I did the shift as well,  again, from an introvert to then a someone who can speak very relaxed in, in public.

And then you know, the shift to the online landscape. And I have to agree with you, what are some of the resources. Maybe websites, books that usually you advise people to look at when they want to enhance their public speaking communication When it comes to CTOs and people 

in technology. So normally I would share a book, but for this audience, because I know it's so well me, let me, let me spin this question a little differently.

The problem with books is our fellow CTO's Mimh are just gonna spend all day reading books and they'll miss the point, which is the best way to speak is to speak, right? They spend all their lives in their, their computers doing the code, and then they're managing the teams. They don't speak up in the meetings.

If you wanna get better, you need to speak. The best way to speak is to speak. So what does that mean?  Are you booking 15 minutes in your calendar?  Single day. And don't tell me you don't have 15 minutes, cuz you just spent 15 minutes listening to this. So you have 15 minutes. The question now is, are you gonna spend every single day doing the random word exercise?

Because guess what, ma, this is the best part about this. Nobody's going to do it. Nobody's going to do it. And the reason it's the best part is because if you are the one C.  Who's listening to this, and you do it a hundred times, just a hundred times, five times a day for three weeks, that takes five minutes a day, mim, you'll be ahead of the other 99% listening to this because most CTOs are not willing to do the random word exercise even one time.

So even if you do it a hundred times, you're gonna be ni better than 95% of your industry. Imagine if you did more than just that, but just that alone is the right action to.  

That's really, I would say it's, , like very exciting to, , to listen to. , another question also that I wanted , to ask you about, like how you define or from your experience, like you've been , in this for a long time, like, What makes you say, okay, this guy, you know, he's, he is top notch.

He's, he's really, he got it. , . Like how do  you rank, I would say someone, if he is in a good position from public speaking perspective. Again, I'm talking here about CTOs and, you know, technical people.  . 

Absolutely, and, and it's, it's challenging, right? Because the KPIs that drive business outcomes, that drive technology outcomes are not as clean as they would be for communication, because communication's very vague.

What does it mean? Does it mean your eye contact is better? Does it mean your body language is better? How do you measure that outcome, that success? Here's the way I do it, which is personal to me. No other coach does it the way I do it. So it's just my definition is how many balls out of the 18 are you able to juggle at the same time?

So for example, the first ball, which is the random word exercise, when I coach my clients' mimic, we don't go to ball number two until ball number one is done. So like, have you done it a hundred times? They go, no, Brenda, what's the next exercise? And I throw a book at their face and I go, Hey, do the random word next a hundred times.

So if they do that, that's one.  . Then the second ball is the question drill. I'm not gonna go through all 18, but you get the idea right? Ball number two is the question drill, which.   every single day for five minutes. Just answer one question that you think the board is going to ask you about your expertise of the projects you work on.

A lot of CTOs or execs in general mimic, they have a ton of anxiety in the boardroom because the cmo, the cfo, the CEOs going, Hey, me, what's this question? They go, oh, I didn't prepare for that. And they get really stressed. So the question drill solves for that because if you guess the question in advance, you're gonna be much more confident in the delivery.

Even if you know the answer, you're gonna deliver it properly, like a C level executive. And then the third ball, which scares the jibe outta CTOs, is sending video messages. Just take out your phone, send video messages to people that you.  It doesn't even have to be people at work. Your niece, your nephew, your brother, your sister, just send them video messages.

So the way that I measure success MI is how many balls is that technology executive willing to juggle? So for example, the rant word exercises one, then it's gonna be eye contact. Then it's gonna be getting rid of your ums and ahs and the list goes on, but you get the point. So that's how I measure the success of how talented they are. 

Anything regarding the tone or you know,  I would say body language, just out of curiosity, I'm asking. For 

sure.   So, so for me, tone is more Ball number nine and body language is more Ball 15. Why is that? The reason is because a lot of people don't make a lot of mistakes with their body language except with their face.

So a lot of people, you see, a lot of CTOs make this mistake whenever they're listening to their direct reports. They don't smile when they're listening. So obviously it's hard to see on audio, but you can see with my face if I do.  If you don't smile even a little bit when you're listening to people from their perspective, it shows that you don't care.

They'll go, oh, me's listening to me, or Brendan's listening to me, but he's not smiling, so I guess he doesn't really care about what I have to say. That's what your employees are thinking, right? So that's easy to fix, but that's why I leave it for the end cuz it's just season.  For vocal tones is ball nine.

So vocal tones is more about saying to not overcomplicate this today because I wanna point out mimh. If somebody's not doing the rain divert exercise the questions, draw the video messages. You can't do ball number nine. Okay? Like you just can't do it. So ball number nine for me.  As understanding that tones is a science, not an art.

What the best speakers on the planet do Mimh is they use all three tones at the same time. We have high tones, regular tones, and low tones. And what the best speakers do is they do a roller coaster. So for example, there's a big difference between last night I ate an apple and it was really good, versus last night I ate an apple.

and it was really good. So you notice how I changed my tones a lot and that's how you mastered, but very difficult to do at the beginning. You gotta do the first three first. 

Yeah. So before we'll come into the end, just, I've seen a series, you recorded it where you tried to speak like some of the big names in history. 

Which one, you know like was the hardest for you to.  . 

That's a very good question. It's probably a woman for sure. The hardest to do so. The hardest one I've ever done off the top of my head, but I have to think about it more.  It's either going to be a stair per.   or one of the exercises I teach my clients that isn't in my videos.

I'll tell you what I mean here. So one exercise I get my advanced clients to do MIM is we have them take stories, personal stories of people that have nothing to do with them. So let's say I was coaching you, I would give you a story of like a seven year old Korean girl. So you'd be like, oh my God, like how am I supposed to present this?

So those are really hard because you have to imagine yourself as if you're them. So those are really hard for me. But I have, if I had to pick a professional speaker, I would probably say Esther Para is probably the hardest.  

Wow, that's fantastic. Last, um, Brenda, like how people can reach out to you if they are interested to know more about how to master, I would say their, um, communication skills, presentation skills. 

Can you tell us about that? 

For sure, ma, it was so good to be on the show. Thanks for having me. So, two ways to keep in touch. One is the YouTube channel. Go to Master Talk and you'll have access to hundreds of free videos on how to speak. And the second way to keep in touch is my free communication workshop.

So I do a, I do a free workshop over Zoom every two weeks. That's absolutely. And it's me coaching people live on a Zoom call for 90 minutes, eight year old kids come to this training. CTOs of massive companies come to this training. Literally everybody's invited. It's a party. So if you want to come and it's free, go to rockstar communicator.com. 

I will put that in the commands, both in the YouTube and in the podcast. Well, Brendan, that was really very, I would say active. , episode today with you. I liked,  the energy. I liked,  the way you communicated this very easily. And,  I wish we could have,  additional, maybe more topics in the future that we can discuss.

And again, thank you for having, , the time. I know you come from a busy schedule on the show and, uh, you.  So stay tuned for that when it comes to YouTube. And thank you again for listening and watching today. Thank you Brendan. Very.