We quickly get used to doing case presentations, and talking with colleagues and patients, but we don’t really learn the skills of speaking with conviction, which Winston Churchill called “the most precious gift of all the talents bestowed upon men”.
Important for career development, advocacy and leadership.
At the age of 22yr Winston Churchill said the essential components of oratory were diction, rhythm, accumulation of argument, analogy and emotion.
Presentation skills
It’s pretty obvious when a presentation is done badly – and so it is obvious what you need to do to give a good presentation.
- Unprepared
- Technical issues, esp poor sound
- Overly busy slides, or slides that don’t seem to correspond with what is being discussed
- Simply reading slides
- Glaring bright slide backgrounds
- Spelling mistakes or inconsistent formatting
- Lack of a pointer
- Not really understanding what a table/chart is actually showing
- Rushing at the end, not leaving time for questions
The best presentations convey the importance of the topic, discuss real life issues, are funny (some of the time – otherwise risk of sounding callous). The speaker looks at (speaks to) you.
Non-verbals
Vanessa Van Edwards identified five nonverbal patterns that distinguished the most popular TED Talks:
- “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” People rated speakers comparably for charisma, credibility and intelligence whether they watched talks with sound or on mute!
- “Jazz hands rock.” The most popular talks have the most hand gestures!
- “Scripts kill your charisma.” More vocal variety achieves better ratings on charisma and credibility. Speakers who clearly ad libbed in their talks always get rated higher than those who stayed on script.
- “Smiling makes you look smarter.” The longer a TED speaker smiled, the higher their perceived intelligence ratings.
- “You have seven seconds.” First impressions matter a lot – people had largely formed their opinion about a speaker based on the first several seconds.
Media interviews
- Consider the interviewer someone with their own agenda – know yours.
- Reframe any questions you see as misleading.
- Avoid patronising or over-explaining.
- Patient confidentiality above all.
- Know your message(s)