I read a book last week that included some great advice about how to give powerful professional presentations. We can all remember back to school or university and examples where the presentations we had to endure were just shocking. The monotone voice, ugly, text-heavy slides in tiny font that left us day-dreaming about being anywhere but there. We need to do better than this.
Research from the field of educational neuroscience gives us clear, unequivocal advice on how to give a presentation that engages your audience and imparts knowledge in a way that truly sticks and impacts others. And isn’t that what we want, both presenter and audience?
Jared Cooney Horvath is a neuroscientist at the University of Melbourne and his latest book ‘Stop talking, start influencing’ contains 12 insights that are backed by a solid evidence base. I’m going to summarise five of his recommendations here, because they are so important when speaking in front of others – something that comes naturally to very few of us.
Insight #1 Speaking and reading: never both
JC starts his story by demonstrating that humans cannot understand more than one person speaking at a time. We can listen and flip between 2 voices, absolutely. But the part of the brain that processes oral speech – the Broca/Wernicke network – can only deal with one stream at a time. The left inferior frontal gyrus actively blocks one voice, while the other is allowed to pass through. The most common voice we hear is the sound of our own silent reading voice and in fact, the brain processes this in a manner almost identical to the way it processes an out-loud speaking voice.
The implication of this is that it’s impossible to understand something you are reading, while simultaneously trying to understand a voice you are listening to. Read that sentence again because it’s key.
When a lecturer uses text heavy slides, your brain is madly trying to both listen to the speaker’s voice as well as the internal voice reading the text on the screen. If you selected one of the two, you could understand just fine. But we generally try to take everything in. We fool ourselves into believing we can do it – but we really can’t. And that’s why you come out of those lectures more confused than when you went in.
Implication: No (or minimal) text on slides.
As a presenter, it’s tempting to use PowerPoint slides as a crutch, in case you forget what to say. But this is the number one cause of brain-numbing presentations.
Let’s wind this back even further - what is the role of presentations anyway? Are you trying to impart a large volume of knowledge in a long 30- or 40-minute talk-fest? If we need our audience to take in that much detail about a topic, we would be much better providing a relevant paper, guideline or review article for them to read in their own time. The benefit of being physically in front of a room of people is to be able to influence thinking, clarify difficult to understand concepts or to inspire action. When charged with giving a presentation, try to reframe your plan in these terms, because the unique opportunity of face-to-face speaking is wasted on attempts to transfer volumes of factual knowledge.
Coming back to our slides – are just a few words OK? It seems that up to 7 keywords on a slide don’t require the brain to enter vocalisation mode and the meaning is accessed directly.
Insight #2 Use (predominantly) images on slides
Not only can visual images and oral speech be processed simultaneously, but the combination is proven to help with understanding and learning. Memory can increase by up to 20% when images and speech are combined. The use of images has been shown to enhance audience engagement, receptivity, and judgments of likeability. One image per slide is optimal – more is not better.
Graphs and tables don’t count as images, because our brains can’t immediately comprehend them. If you need to include graphs or tables, lead your audience through the information. Building up the image piecemeal is one way to do this – e.g. showing the axes first to explain their meaning, and then overlaying the data in turn. This ensures the audience is following your speech and not wasting precious cognitive resources trying to decrypt a complicated figure (and ignoring you).
Be aware of the type of image you are using and the effect it might have on your audience. Cute, amusing or shocking images will enhance engagement but not lead to learning. Relevant images that support verbal content has been shown to help audiences build deeper connections and ultimately increase learning, but to potentially decrease engagement. Remember this when selecting images: you might start with less relevant images to ensure your audience is on board and keen to learn and later in the presentation relevant images will enhance their learning.
Finally, use (predominantly) images on handouts. If you include large amounts of text, audiences will need to choose between listening and reading. Extra articles, reviews or guidelines should be given after the presentation.
Insight #3 Slide design: Consistency is key
Slides need to have a consistent design, with keywords and images in the same location and size across the presentation. This allows prediction to take place, which reduces cognitive load, so they can concentrate on understanding your material. Spatially consistent formatting increases memory by up to 35%.
If spatial layout fails to match prediction, it causes the audience to abruptly pay attention to what’s on the screen. This can be useful to force attention, but can only be used once the layout has been learned and prediction formed.
Signaling is another technique that is underutilised. Simply use a laser pointer or arrows on a slide to point out relevant material in graphs or tables being discussed.
Contextual cueing should be applied to handouts and other printed material – comprehension is enhanced by consistency of design.
Insight #4: Don’t invite multitasking
‘Anyone who can drive safely while kissing is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves’ –Anon
Human beings cannot multitask – what we do is, in fact, task-switching and it has 3 major negative consequences: time, accuracy and memory. The irony is that the people who believe they are good multitaskers perform worse during task-switching than people who rarely multitask. To make matters worse, frequent multitasking strengthens people’s confidence in their ability to task-switch!
If you have control over your audience’s use of computers or mobile technology during a presentation, encouraging them to cease using it will improve their memory retention. There is even evidence that students sitting next to computer users during a lecture have reduced concentration and recall.
Every time we mention a web address, distribute a practice problem or display a complex graph, we invite task-switching which can impair comprehension, memory and performance. Each learning task we present to our audience needs to have a clear focus, stepwise trajectory and devoted time for engagement and completion.
Make sure that you, your slides and your handouts deliver one message at a time. If there is any loss of clarity, use signaling to guide attention and curb multitasking. Examples of this are reducing transparency on unimportant areas of your slide, cropping, using arrows, boxes or pointers to guide listeners to the exact point you are trying to get across.
Humans hate (or rather love) unsolved puzzles. Our brains are prediction machines and they see incomplete problems as failed predictions that need to be solved. During presentations, if we accidentally leave concepts or ideas half finished, people will feel compelled to complete them while trying to listen to you – multitasking in action!
Insight #5 Open with a story
Finally, compelling and relevant stories can be a powerful way to prime an audience and guide how people interpret and remember new ideas. Stories put your audience at ease and make them willing to learn from you. They boost engagement and desire to learn and improve understanding when followed up with solid teaching. Stories create a bond between storyteller and audience. When you tell your story well, the audience will feel how you feel.
There are a range of types of stories that can work in medicine, but our daily lives are full of them. You might choose the origin of the issue at hand, where it came from in history. Controversies make good stories. Application of facts in real-life scenarios are powerful and can drive creative problem-solving. Personal stories from your own experience will serve to build connection. Cliff-hangers work with every type of story; we all love a good mystery.
Hopefully some of these ideas have resonated with you and you can begin to use the techniques in your own teaching sessions. Once you understand the neuroscience of learning, it will become truly surprising to you how often poor presentations are done. The extra effort in planning is worth it. You’ll never be able to go back – and your audience will thank you.