Hello. My name is Richard Mindham and I’m here to offer some tips to anyone who is preparing a presentation. The tips are universal and apply whether you are talking to medical audiences or to patients and carers, or even if you are advocating with members of parliament. The basic elements are the same for all audiences, and I have used these tips myself to advocate for my condition, which is chronic heart failure. So let us start and look at creating a compelling presentation. In order that you have a clear idea of how to prepare a presentation, I will keep this simple and brief.
The key things that I will look at are:
- What is the purpose of the presentation?
- Why are you giving it?
- What do you want the audience to do or to think?
- How do you structure it?
- How do you make it flow?
- And how do you deliver your message?
So let us go to the first of these, the purpose. It may seem peculiar, but this is probably the hardest part of the presentation because at this point you need to know why you are talking to the audience. So you need to know the purpose of your presentation. Why are you talking to these people? Where do you want to take them? They may have traveled a long way to see you, or they may be using their lunch break in order to watch your presentation. So what do you have to say to them that makes it worth their investment of time?
What do you want them to feel or to understand or to do at the end of your presentation? Because if you are giving your time and your effort to this, you want there to be an outcome. For example, perhaps they are new patients and you want them to feel the depth of your experience as someone who is living successfully with pulmonary hypertension. Maybe they are doctors and you want them to understand how the discharge policy of the hospital makes life very complicated for pulmonary hypertension carers once the person, the patient gets home. Or maybe you want to get politicians to put more money into rehabilitation services so that patients have a chance of returning to work and contributing to society again. Whatever it is, you should be able to summarize it in a single sentence, what we would call the elevator pitch. And then finally, know your audience.
What is important to them? What do they care about? You need to be able to shape your presentation to their level of knowledge and to their interests in order to ensure relevance and their engagement. So that’s the purpose. That’s the why am I talking to these people?
In terms of the structure, the flow and the delivery of the message, you need to keep it simple. Your goal is to deliver your message. So focus on the main message and avoid unnecessary details or jargon. This topic may be very important to you, but it is more important to fit the information to the needs and the capacity of the audience. So focus on the message, focus on the purpose, and keep it simple. Set the context. For example, Melanie told us that she wanted to talk about organizing weekends for families where one child had pulmonary artery hypertension. And then she went off and then she went on to offer advice on the many aspects of creating the right environment for such families and their friends. So she set the context and she delivered the message very powerfully.
Finally, attach to your audience. By this, I mean, illustrate your talk with stories and anecdotes. Personal stories or relevant examples make your presentation memorable and relatable. Saying, “I was exhausted,” doesn’t capture how it really feels to be on oxygen because even fit people can say, “I feel exhausted.” But in her pep talk, Louise BoUman said that she was exhausted and even cleaning her teeth was difficult. This told me so much more and gave an indication of how difficult her situation was. So attach to your audience with anecdotes and with stories.
Then use one idea per slide. This keeps your message focused. Use bullet points for clarity. Try to use bullet points as a pivot or a fulcrum for your message. You want the audience to be listening to your talk, giving their attention to you, not reading long sentences on a screen. In her PEP talk, Alena told us how she gives herself permission to take time off. She used simple bullet points which said things like, “Allow yourself some grace. Rest is not a weakness.” And with these simple messages, she gave us a very clear view of how you can give your permission, self-permission to relax and take time away from the condition.
Make your slides visually appealing. Use pictures, charts, photographs to reinforce your message. There is a saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, so try to get the picture to convey your message.
Now, I would normally recommend that you need a maximum of one slide per minute, perhaps even one slide every two minutes. And this is a helpful rule because it forces you to think about the message you want your slide to convey. The message or the bullet points need to do the work for you. And in order to illustrate this point, I’m going to break this one slide a minute, one slide every two minutes rule, just to show you how the image helps to reinforce the message.
And here, in the first picture, we see the wave. I was describing the shock of the diagnosis.
And here, with the ride, I was describing the need for patient services to be linked to form a closed loop.
And with the waiter, I was describing what patients want from medical technology. And then with the young monks, the novices, I was saying what patients want at a fundamental level from the medical profession. So you can see that we can use imagery to say things for us and to reinforce our message.
And my final tip is that reinforcement of the message. You do this with a basic principle, which in English slang says, “Tell them, tell them. Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them what you are telling them and tell them what you told them. So this is repetition. In other words, start your presentation with a very brief introduction, which tells your message, tells your audience your message and what it will be. Then deliver your presentation, which will expand that message, and then summarize at the end, repeating your message.
So for this presentation, I said that I would offer the principles needed in order to create a compelling presentation, and they are. The purpose of your presentation, why are you giving it? What do you want the audience to think or do? Structure it by keeping it simple, set the context and deliver the message. Attach to the audience with illustrating with images and bullet points, and then reinforce your message by summarizing what you have told them.
Now, that concludes my talk regarding the creation of a compelling presentation, and I’d like to thank you for your time. I have made no mention of actually delivering the presentation of giving the presentation, and this is a different subject. However, what I would say is practice. Use a relative or a friend to help you to listen to what you’re saying because they want you to succeed. Be enthusiastic. Show passion for your topic. If you aren’t passionate, why should the audience be enthusiastic? Use eye contact and keep your head up. Address your audience. And lastly, stand proud. You have something important to say, and you need to convince yourself that these people need to understand it. Good luck.