Ben and Ryan talk with Geoffrey (Jef) Huck, a software developer turned public speaking coach, about the importance of soft skills in the tech industry—in particular, speaking and communication skills. Their conversation touches on how Huck’s experiences with anxiety shaped his efforts to become a better communicator, practical techniques for dispelling anxiety and connecting with the audience, and the MVP approach to public speaking.
Find Geoffrey (Jef) Huck on LinkedIn or check out his website.
Stack Overflow user Matt earned a Lifeboat badge by explaining What is the difference between Tomcat containers and Docker containers?.
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Ben Popper Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Stack Overflow Podcast, a place to talk all things software and technology. This recording is happening Thursday, January 9th, kicking off a new year, first episode for Ryan and I. Ryan, how’re you doing?
RD I am doing pretty well. Back to it after the holidays.
BP Back to the grind, back to the grind. So something you and I have discussed many times is that learning how to code and being a great engineer involves lots of technical skills and keeping up with developments and languages and frameworks and technologies, but it also involves a lot of soft skills.
RD Yeah. And I think at my last position to this position, working with engineers, helping them write blog posts and presentations, it's definitely a skill that is not natural for developers.
BP We had Yaakov Ellis on the podcast recently. He worked at Stack Overflow for many, many years and is now at Intuit, and he was saying that one of the things he's learned over 20 years as a software developer is how important these soft skills of communication and collaboration can be. Getting the code written and making sure it's debugged is one thing, but getting a project that you want over the finish line, or getting the organization to adopt the tools you need, or getting leadership to agree it's time to invest in paying down tech debt, those can be very complicated if you are not communicating well. So without further ado, we want to bring on our guest today, Geoff Huck, who has experience as a software developer, but now a new career as a public speaking coach helping developers and technologists learn how to communicate well, how to speak with confidence, how to build their public speaking persona, all that good stuff. So Geoff, welcome to the Stack Overflow Podcast.
Geoff Huck Hey guys, I'm very happy to be here.
BP So we usually like to ground things a little bit first. Tell us a bit about how you got started programming. You can go back as far as you like, you don't have to date yourself, but we’d love to hear about the first machine you touched and the first language you used. And then I know you spent some years working as a software developer before transitioning into this role more focused on public speaking, so give us that background and then we can talk a little bit about what you do now.
GH I started in my early teens. I must have been 10 years old at that time, and I wanted to find out how all those things exist. I was using the computer, but I thought, “Well, there must be some people who built those stuff.” And so when I got internet, I started to search on how we can create those things, which led me to my first love as a teenager. It was the C language, and it still has a very special place in my heart. I got interested in this, in hacking, something that I was fascinated by –vulnerabilities– so I learned PHP also. Then when I was in high school, I got really interested into algorithmic, and I did contests and was actually trained in Paris for the Olympiads in Informatics where we learned to solve problems and solve them as fast and as efficiently as we could, which led me to going to the university but dropping out because I already had a lot of knowledge when it comes to programming so it was extremely boring for me to start from the bottom. It was just too much, so I found a job in a small advertisement company. I stayed there for one year before going in another one, and then I went as a freelancer for 10 years. As a freelancer, I had to sell my services and sell myself, because if you're not able to do that as a freelancer, you die quite fast. But I have to say that during those days, communication was still one of my weak points. I used to face a lot of anxiety before every important conversation. It was so hard and I felt so blocked by it that I had a day where I decided that I wanted to overcome those problems at all costs. I had wanted to do great things, but I felt limited by this, and so I joined a Toastmasters Club, I networked a lot, and the more I worked on my social skills, the more I realized that I love it. Once you get past all those fears, all those blocks, it's actually very enjoyable. I started to help people doing it. I became the president of the Toastmasters Club, a public speaking club, and then I decided to do it as my profession because I realized that I had more fun doing this and also that I'm probably not the only tech guy who struggles with soft skills, and so if I can help other people who have those problems to get rid of them, that would be a great mission.
RD And in my experience, you're definitely not the only one who has struggled with those soft skills. In fact, I've struggled in selling myself too and public speaking, and I wonder what was the first great insight you got when you were going on this journey? What was the thing, the block that you got over first and you were like, “Oh.”
GH Oh, the first block was purely emotional. There were a few times where I really sucked. Being in a situation where people ask a question in front of others, and a question that I knew how to answer but somehow I just lost my mental abilities with the pressure, those were the worst times. But other than that, it was mostly anxiety and the stress before. Even before making an important phone call, so much stress that I would delay, delay, delay. And the shift was when I started to go in those situations to expose myself in those stressful situations on purpose. Not because I had to, not because people were forcing me to do those things, but because I wanted to overcome it. So instead of avoiding, I actively looked for situations that were stressful and I jumped into it, and it has changed a lot.
BP This is the exposure therapy approach. So you take something that bothers you, the more you do it, the more the edge comes off. Was there a moment where you realized, “Oh, actually I'm doing this and it's not bothering me,” or, “Oh, I'm actually doing this and maybe starting to enjoy it.” Do you remember that sort of transition?
GH Oh, yeah. I had a big moment, yes. I was on stage. At that time, I was in a poetry club, so I would write poems and I would tell them on stage. And the first few times I was just completely under emotion and I couldn't do anything, but one day, I was on stage and I was telling the stuff that I wrote, and suddenly I noticed the people around me. It's like suddenly I got a certain awareness of the situation. I noticed their eyes, I noticed the colors, the lights, and I was very conscious and I realized thinking, “Wow, I feel more comfortable right now on stage than when I'm working in the streets.” So this was the biggest moment. It was only the beginning of the journey, of course, because doing it doesn't give you the skills to be effective, but this was when I realized that I think I can do that.
RD Right, it's almost a fear of being in charge. You're the guy up there running the show and once you realize you're in charge and it's your show, it becomes a little easier.
GH I like to see it as an improvisation. Whenever you speak up in a meeting, you're rarely prepared because most of the important things that happen in meetings are things that are on the spot. You feel there is something to say and if you don't take it right now, opportunity disappears. And since you're not prepared, you usually feel a certain rush of adrenaline in your body, the butterfly sensations. And if you speak up, it's an improvisation, so you have to trust yourself that you know how to talk. And usually it works. If you do it because you want to do it, I found out that the brain rarely freezes and that it ends up being a lot better than what you expect it to be.
BP I noticed on your resume, before software developer you had a few years as a professional poker player. Do you think there's a part of you that seeks out adrenaline or risk in some way?
GH Ah, that's possible, that's possible. I didn't really like the ups and downs in poker, and this is one of the reasons that I stopped. But I never thought about this, but it's a good point.
RD So it sounds like a lot of this is just sort of doing the thing you're afraid of. Are there particular sort of actionable, repeatable skills that you learned that made this less scary?
GH Most of the anxiety comes from you focusing on yourself. You feel something in your body and then you start to think about if you know enough, if you're the right person to do it, if you're the best person to do it, if you're not an imposter, it can go pretty far. What I found is that when I focus on the people outside, and actually many clients have the same shift, once they focus on the people outside, you put the spotlight on other people instead of you. And you're thinking what they would like to know, why are they here, what's their challenges? And once you think about the people, usually it removes a lot of pressure. That's the biggest and the most effective mindset shift that I know for anxiety– focus on the other persons.
BP So maybe give us a few examples of developers or technologists that you've helped. I'd love to hear, maybe if you can, both the application of some of what they learned from you on the soft skill side inside of an organization, and then also what you think they get out of maybe a public persona. I definitely feel like I'm in the world of marketing. Ryan's a technical writer. I know a lot of people who do developer relations which can be a very well compensated role. We've worked for a long time with Cassidy Williams and others, and that is a role in which you are both a technologist and a public speaker. You're expected to know how to learn how to use new technologies and do live coding demonstrations but also be an excellent communicator and even content creator. And so I think that's a role that some technologists have found they enjoy. They were an engineer, but they kind of prefer this mix. We were just talking to a sales engineer, who is someone who does a bit of sales but also is a bit technical. There's quite a role and quite a lot of space inside of tech companies these days for someone who's a bit of a communicator/content creator as well as a technologist. So maybe a few examples from your career of people you've helped and where you saw them make breakthroughs, either internal communication, external communication.
GH I can talk to you about Michael. He’s a consultant and is also selling a lot, and he used to feel a lot of pressure before important presentations. And for him, the mindset shift that I just told before worked a lot. I also noticed that many times people come to me because they want to learn how to speak better and then we find out that they struggle a lot in networking. So they go to events and they wait for people to talk to them. They rarely initiate, they don't talk to people who they find impressive. They kind of filter them out, talking more to peers than to people who are higher up in the hierarchy. So this is also something that helps because once you are confident that you can somehow improvise in any kind of situation, you can approach everyone. You know that you know how to speak and that you always find something in the moment. You can speak up in a meeting, whatever happens, because you trust that you can tell what's important in the right moment. Then I also have independent consultants who want to give conferences or just organize meetups, which is usually a first step before getting to conferences.
RD It's interesting, the networking thing. I feel like even if you trust your improvisational skills, finding that opening is hard and I find that it's nice to be able to have an opening question, almost like a chess player. You have your opening move and then you figure it out from there.
GH Okay, okay, I will give you my secret opening. It's so common. Most of the time when I tell people that the secret is to initiate and to talk to people, not waiting for other people to come, they’re like, “Yeah, but how can I come with something smart?” because you don't always have context and you don't even feel like anything interesting to say. That's overthinking. I’ve used the same opening for 10 years now– when I started, and it's still the same. And the opening is one word– “Hey.” That's it, just, “Hey.” Of course not, “Hey.” You put some, “Hey!” some energy, some smiling, open your body, and it works all the time. And then if you want to be really fancy, you can talk about the city or the event. Do you live here? Do you come here often? Do you like the city? Or do you like the event? Is it your first time? And you don't need anything else.
RD That opening bit is almost like a handshake protocol. Just, “I would like to initiate communication.”
GH Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. Of course, if you find something fancy in the moment, use it. It's fun. But if you don't have it, you always have your ‘Hey.’
BP Do you think about the whole thing this way like a chess game? If I say this and they say that, well, then I've got these three options. If I say, “Hey,” and they say this, then we can… Do you map it out that way? I'm a bit more of a freeform conversationalist. Sometimes I end up places and I don't know how I got there.
GH Well, it's like the algorithm of a conversation. I would suggest that if you face an emotional response, if you're stressed or if you’re a bit intense, trying to apply an algorithm in those circumstances can backfire because then you need to speak about something and at the same time think about the process. In this situation, I would suggest to do full improvisation because the only way to be really confident in all situations is to improvise, because then you know that whatever happens, you can do it. Then if you want to be more effective, maybe devising an algorithm, if you have a certain outcome in mind, can be good. If you're cold calling, definitely you have a certain algorithm to end up to the call, to the next call, to the next step.
RD Yeah, it definitely helps having a type 5 rant on some topics in your back pocket, but I definitely appreciate the improv conversation. But I wonder, are there other ways in which the process of programming is sort of related to the process of having a conversation?
GH I found that the process of programming is related a lot to self-improvement in general, and I keep being amazed by how the oldest concept that we have– the concept of MVP, having something that works and then improving onto something that works step by step, making sure at all times that it works. If it doesn't, you just remove it, and if it works, you keep it. That's how I approach speaking and even life. The methodology that I use to teach public speaking is completely based on this process. First you have your MVP. You need to find a way to speak that you enjoy and that works. If you don't enjoy it or if it doesn't work and you continue to improve on that, you might never feel great at speaking. You will never enjoy it. Enjoying is not something that comes with an improvement; it has to be there from the start. And if it's not there, that's the thing that you should focus on– how to like speaking. So you need to try many approaches, many approaches to speak of topics until you find something that resonates, and then you improve step by step. The best way when it comes to public speaking is to try to add something a little bit scary. So try to do something that you never did before. And it works for networking. First you initiate a conversation with one person, and then once you're comfortable doing that, you can try initiating a conversation to groups, or to the types of people that you usually don't talk to, or in environments that you never went in. And when it's speaking on stage, finding the little fears can be starting to look at people in the eyes, starting to raise your voice when you want to make a point, using your body more, asking questions, everything that you can think of. Everything that works, you keep it. That's the improvement part. And if it doesn't work, just do your next experiment.
BP I like this idea of an MVP. Within a lot of software organizations, they talk about story points. They don't actually mean a narrative, but they mean a way of sequencing things out. Okay, how long is this going to take? What are some milestones along the way that we can recognize? And I find that one of the most useful ways of communicating for marketing or for editorial when I was a journalist is to have a narrative. And a narrative has story points, it has a certain ambition, a short story, a long story. And one thing Ryan and I have found– I don't know if you would say this is useful in conversation– is that developers love to read about projects people have worked on, especially if they share their failures or their switchbacks or where they stumbled on something and then found a creative solution. If people are telling you a story as a developer and engineer and they're just sort of talking about the successes, often I think people will feel like, “Okay, well now I'm reading something that's just marketing. I can tell that this is meant to make me feel a certain way or push me in a certain direction.” Whereas if you tell it another way, they say, “Oh, well, this feels authentic. I've also had this problem, or I recognize what happened here and you learned something and so therefore I'm also learning something.”
RD I think the best stories, best communications are those stories of failure because then you learn something, then that story of failure is not just about you making you look good.
BP Right. At the simplest level, everybody wants to do the hero's journey which requires to have moments of triumph and of failure, and that's what creates tension. And if you're talking about a software project and everything just goes right, where's the tension?
GH Exactly, I completely agree with what you said. Struggle is one of the main things that keeps the attention of the people. Using stories is one of the greatest ways to engage the audience and to get buy-in. You can convince with the right stories, because the right story can literally engineer what the person is feeling and thinking at the moment when you tell the story. That's why it's so effective.
RD I think one of the best, simplest storytelling advice I heard was that a lot of people who are bad storytellers tell stories like, “This happened and then this happened and then this happened.” Good storytellers say, “This happened, but this happened,” however, the connectors are different, but it always relates it to the previous one.
GH It's the idea of being unpredictable. I go in this direction, but there is an obstacle. And then I try to do this, but it doesn't work. And then will I get to the prize? Will I overcome the challenge?
BP I think that might also be useful when you think about soft skills. It's like, “We did this and we did this and I need that.” Instead you say, “We did this, which is why this happened, therefore, we need X resources which will generate Y results.” And that is a way of communicating as opposed to just sort of stacking one fact on top of another. There's a movie that came out, I can't remember when it came out. It's called Riders of Justice. I think it's a European movie, actually. It's got Mads Mikkelsen as the star, and it opens on this data scientist trying to convince the board that they should adopt his algorithm and they're explaining all the work they've put in and the amazing things that it can do, and they're just getting nowhere. It's like, “We put in all the data of everybody who lives in the Netherlands and we ran it through this thing and it told us that poor people drive Toyotas and rich people drive Mercedes-Benzes,” and the board is sort of like, “What? How much money did we spend on this project?” So the causality is important in communication as well.
GH It's important that you realize as a software engineer that the people who you talk to might not care about the same things that you do. Oh, I devised a nice algorithm, but that's not an argument. You need to know what they care about, and usually it's not the how but it's the impact– how much it costs, how much time does it take or make you gain, how long does it take? All those things are what allow people who are not in tech to make decisions, so it's very important that you tell everything that is related to those dimensions when you talk to people who are not in tech, or even who are in tech but will need to make decisions.
RD Everybody has their own motivation, so if you can speak to those motivations, the better you're going to fare.
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BP All right, everybody. Welcome back to a new year– 2025. It's been a while, so we've got a bunch of great Lifeboat Badges piled up. As always at the end of the show, we like to shout out someone who came on Stack Overflow and contributed a little curiosity or a little knowledge. Awarded yesterday to Matt: “What is the difference between Tomcat containers and Docker containers?” Matt, thank you so much for contributing a great answer, which is accepted. You’ve helped over 12,000 people with this little bit of information, so we really appreciate it. As always, I am Ben Popper. I'm one of the hosts of the Stack Overflow Podcast. You can find me @BenPopper on X. If you have questions or suggestions for the program, email Ryan and myself– podcast@stackoverflow.com. If you want to come on, that's how Geoff did it. He reached out, he said, “Hey, I was a software developer and now I help developers learn how to communicate.” We said, “That sounds interesting,” and we brought him on the show. And the nicest thing you can do if you enjoyed today's conversation is leave us a rating and a review.
RD I'm Ryan Donovan. I edit the blog here at Stack Overflow. You can find it at stackoverflow.blog. If you have struggles with communication, if you’ve found tips, tricks that help you, leave a comment and let us know. And as always, if you want to reach out to me, I'm on LinkedIn.
GH I'm Geoff– Geoffrey Huck, and you can find me on LinkedIn to get tips on how to be a better communicator.
BP Wonderful. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening, and we will talk to you soon.
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