Great Lectures; Great Presentations Save
Transcription
Great lectures, great presentations. How do you get there? What are the best practices? You know, I've given tons of lectures in my career. I've learned a bit about doing it right. I'm still learning. I still want to give that perfect lecture. And Lord knows I've certainly changed a lot over the years. I've always been a big proponent of the see one, do one, teach one sort of approach to learning — leadership, figuring out how to stand out. Lectures are a good vehicle for putting out there that one thing that you want to be known for, that you want to be great at.
I'm Jack Cush, RheumNow. In this lecture, we're going to talk about best practices in giving great lectures.
Why do a lecture at all? Usually, it's because it's thrust upon you. Unless you're someone like me who always has his hand up saying, "I'll do it. I'll do it." My ideal gig is to go to some city and when I get there and when I get on stage, they say, "You're going to lecture on cryoglobulinemia." I'm ready to go because I think I know how to lecture. I probably have given a lecture before, but you need to do this a lot to have that kind of confidence.
One reason to do this is because it's your best opportunity to have you and your ideas valued by others. Another way of looking at this is any presentation that you're asked to give isn't worth giving unless the objective is to seek change — otherwise it's a waste of time and energy. And there's a lot of energy that goes into a lecture, hours, many hours in fact. Before you start any lecture, you've got to ask two questions: who'll be changed by this lecture, and what's the change I want to make with my audience.
A few things. Number one, change matters more than anything. Change matters more than data. Change matters more than sometimes the summary statement of the authors. It's change. Remember, no one remembers the data. Everybody remembers the story. That's a line from Seth Godin.
So I saw a great lecture on YouTube recently. It's from Professor Patrick Henry Winston, who was a professor of — I think — computer science, information science at MIT. He passed away in 2019, and he gave this lecture, a 1-hour lecture, on 50 things — 50 years of learning how to give a great lecture. It's just chock full of good information. It's a 1-hour lecture. You might want to look at it on YouTube. Patrick Henry Winston.
Here are his tenets. Start with a promise to your audience. When you get to the topic, cycle on it. Present it. Re-present it. Present it again in a different way. Show them the data. Tell them the story. Give them the principle. It's 360 learning. They're going to get it if you cycle on the big point.
He's a proponent of not having a title slide. Start with your data, your point, whatever. And maybe your title is the last thing you show, either at the top of the page or at the bottom of the page as a summary banner.
What he liked to talk about: verbal punctuation — delivering information by enumerating. Here's six reasons why you should go to the state fair. One, two, three. Use bullets. Use big arrows. I want to put my version of verbal punctuation in there, and that is the pause. Everybody's in such a rush to get their information out, you forget to use the pause.
My greatest instructor in medical school was an anatomist who knew the art of the pause better than anyone. He was slow and deliberate in the lines that he delivered. And when he built up to the big point, he built it up verbally and with physical language. And then he would turn and pause. And when he did, you better write down what he said because it was going to be on the test.
You should use questions or polling. It's a great way to engage the audience. Engage the audience in any way you can.
What's the best time for a lecture? 11:00 a.m. Obviously, not early early when everyone's showing up late and sleeping, not after lunch, not late in the day.
The place is really important. Know the stage. Go to it ahead of time. Figure out the room, the controls, where the audience is going to be, how you use the microphone, the pointer — get the lighting, sound, and camera correct if that's what you're doing.
He made a big deal about chalk talks versus PowerPoint talks. Chalk talks are way better. The graphic delivery is more effective. It's more dynamic, and it's given at the right speed — the speed at which you write on the board is the speed at which they learn, and there's a big reveal to it. I'm going to tell you why PowerPoints are no good in a second.
What's the best font if you're using PowerPoints? 50 or 40 point font. That's big. That basically means seven lines per slide. We're going to talk about the 7 by 7 rule. He suggests using one graphic or one image per slide. It connects the audience to your point, your data, whatever. Your goal is to inspire and change the minds of those that you're teaching.
Why is PowerPoint a problem? Information overload. He was asked — this is Professor Winston — by a young faculty, could
you review my slides? And he said, yes, you've got too many slides and too many words without ever looking at the slides. And that's true. Everybody's got too many slides and too much text. The 7 by 7 rule is no more than seven lines on a slide, no more than seven words on each line. And then throw in that one image, you might only be able to do it 6x6 or 4x4.
Second problem with PowerPoints, bullet points. We overuse them. We indiscriminately use them. We list things thinking that's a better way of teaching when it clearly is not.
Third, using PowerPoint as a teleprompter, meaning reading your own slides. Well, they should have stayed home and read your slides rather than listen to you read your slides.
Next big mistake most people make is problems in the design of the slide. The visuals, the fonts you use, the colors you use, the contrast you use, the template you use. Most people are pretty bad. Me, I've got a very colorful imagination and I drive people crazy with my slides unless I'm trying to be really good at it, and then I choose a very flat background. It's like when you're doing a video, you don't want to do a video in front of a room full of tchotchkes and your hobbies and your favorite books. You know, this video is being done in my podcast studio with a flat blue background and that's for a reason.
Lastly, including irrelevant content. And then, more importantly, PowerPoints sort of make you neglect the audience. You're looking at the PowerPoint the whole time instead of looking at the audience.
These are big issues because the average attention span of the audience member is definitely less than 20 minutes. It's probably less than 10 minutes for most. And when you poll people on what they remembered from lectures, they're only going to remember three or four points at best.
So when teachers have been asked why do you lecture? They say things like, "I get to clarify the complex because I can do it." Or they say, "I want to teach people how to think." Another way of saying that is I want to change thinking with my education. But the other one is inspire. When you inspire, you're going to be a good teacher. They're going to remember you and the words and points that you made.
What inspires? When you can teach someone how to do something new, when you can show them a new way of approaching a problem, when you show them your passion on an issue, a topic. And the other way to inspire is through educational momentum. What do I mean by that? You deliver content and knowledge that has a built-in reward to it, which means that now they're interested in listening to you because the next thing you may say has got maybe more rewards, right? And that builds momentum and that builds motivation to learning and sticking with your content.
There are a lot of different kinds of lectures you may give. There's a job interview talk. There's a topic update to your peers. Could you be the expert? What about if you're a key opinion leader, a KOL lecturing at a big meeting? Well, you are the expert, are you not? Grand Rounds is when things get serious. This is when you get to shine about what you want to be known for. And you better be good because this is your Grand Rounds.
For me, the best lecture I think is when no one shows up and it's a table talk of me and three, four, no more than eight people and it's less than 30 minutes and I'm not showing any slides. It's a conversation. It's peer-to-peer.
Let's talk about the job interview talk and the objectives. When you're doing one of those, you have to quickly in the first 10 minutes impart several things on the audience. One, your knowledge. Two, your vision. Three, your perspective. And four, your accomplishments. You got to get that across really quick. If you leave all that stuff till the end of a 50-minute presentation, they all tuned out. You lost them all.
Let's talk about some dos and don'ts. Dos. Practice, practice, practice. That's how you get to Carnegie Hall. Face the audience. Avoid the podium. Keep the lights on. Tell everybody to turn off their cell phones and close their laptops because now they're all going to focus on you and they're not going to distract everyone else in the room. Put your body as close as possible to the screen. The wrong setup is when you're on the left side of the stage and the screen is on the right side of the stage and you're separated by 60 ft. Be as close as possible. Use your hands. Use your hands to target your objective and teaching points. Use props. Props are really great diversions. They have great teaching value.
When I'm teaching on how to do a joint exam, I bring a bag full of grapes and a bag full of walnuts. The walnuts are ones you squeeze — squeezing on a DIP and PIP of an OA joint. The grapes, uh, synovitis. You could do the same with a tomato, I should say. What about when you're trying to teach how hard to squeeze? Well, you want to build an image either visually or with
a prop. One image is that it needs to be — when you're examining a joint to elicit synovitis, to elicit pain — it's 1 to 4 kg per square inch. That's enough to blanch a fingernail. That's enough to say ouch when they have a tender point. My grandfather went to a pulmonologist once who was trying to explain to him why his lungs were going down the toilet. Why they were so bad. And he took out his handkerchief and he folded it in half and then in a quarter and then into an eighth, and he showed him, "Grandpa, this is what your lung is. It's no longer the size of that handkerchief. It's now the size of this little small napkin." It's a great visual — using those to explain your points. Go. That's what everyone's going to remember. No one's going to remember that big histogram or that table that had nine rows and three columns.
Okay? Present your information logically, simply, and in order — or prioritize. Change the cadence. Build to a point and then take a mental break. Tell a joke. Do a diversion. Then build to another point. Cadence and rhythm, highs and lows are really important, especially if you're talking more than 20 minutes. I would say put your abstract notes in the speaker notes section of your PowerPoint. That way, people can read more information. And end your presentation with handouts or written summaries. Don't make them available before, because they'll be looking at your stuff instead of looking at you. Your lectures — everyone should look at you. This is all about you. And that is what will make you great.
Things that you don't want to do. Showing up unprepared. Showing up with too many slides. Putting your hands in your pockets. Looking up or looking nowhere. People who are podium leaners and podium drivers — you know what I'm talking about. Don't use the electronic pointer enough to give people a seizure disorder. Don't try to be funny when you're not known to be funny. Don't read the slides. Don't talk politics, religion, gender, or race if it's not germane to the point of your talk. Don't have the compunction to tell everybody everything you know. I know so much about Still's disease. I can lecture you for three hours. Nobody wants to hear me talk for three hours about a disease they're only going to see one case of per year. Deliver only as much as you need to.
I'm going to tell you about the 90% KISS rule. Don't spar with an audience member or an adversary in the audience. Be respectful of them — saying, "I like your perspective. It's different than mine. Tell me more about it." And then talk pros and cons, but be respectful. End your lecture with no time for questions — shame on you. And not giving handouts — they'll shame you for certain in your reviews.
Five ways to make a presentation better. Make it shorter. You don't get extra points for filling the one-hour talk with 58 minutes of content. Be really clear about what this lecture is about and who or what it will change. Don't use slides as a teleprompter. Don't use too many bullets, no jokes, no schtick, no promotion. Be in the here and now. Again, your content should all be about you. It should be better with you present — with your energy, your passion, your humanity. Never hide from that which you are teaching.
So, a few things on ways to get started. Actually, before we do that, let's talk about what are the best lectures. The best lectures I think are TED talks. And are the TED talks great because they have great presenters? Or they're short presentations done by highly knowledgeable, highly passionate people who practice, practice, practice. You know, the line is — if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. That comes from Mark Twain. Meaning the shorter the talk, the harder it is to do. TED talks are successful because they have this 18-minute rule, and usually it's less than 15 minutes for these talks or many lectures. The speaker has passion on the subject. It's all about one idea that's worth spreading. So let's just say you're giving an hour lecture. Well, that's really 45 to 50 minutes. You really got three ideas that are worth spreading. Any more than that is overly aggressive.
TED talks are great because it's storytelling and not data transmission. Storytelling so that you can inspire — help people to rethink or to transform their thinking. There's a theater effect to TED, meaning they're not holding on to a podium. They're walking about. They're making the pregnant pause, the strategic turns to the audience. They have the lights on them. There's no slides necessary, or if they use slides, they'll use three or four slides as an accent to the point you're making verbally. There's a lot of emotional vulnerability in TED talks that makes them great. Why can't you give that when you're talking about, you know, six reasons to go to the state fair? Be creative. Go beyond the usual.
So, when you're getting started, you have to know your audience. You have to know how much time you have.
because that will dictate how many objectives you'll have and that will dictate how many slides to have. There is this rule about no more than what is it one slide per minute. It really should be like one slide per five minutes if you're doing this right. Know your topic but then find a great title. Now don't mislead but find a great title. Start with the end in mind. Know how you're going to — what your prime objective is. What's your big point? Know how you're going to end. And then reverse engineer your talk. What does the audience need? What does the audience expect?
It might be a good idea to start with a teaser, something where you tell them what you're going to show them in the end, and then you can connect the dots along the way. Again, the purpose of your talk is to be better than a good read or a ChatGPT search on this topic. So you should begin by scratching it out on paper, on a napkin, on a receipt, and carry those around with you and keep adding to this in analog mode. You can use paper, whiteboards, whatever you like to use.
Then when you think you have an outline of sorts, an objective, how you're going to end, what you're going to cover in the middle, then go to PowerPoint or Keynote if you're an Apple person, and start to lay it out. One slide per key point. Use visuals to enhance your point. Include stories, cases, vignettes, personal stories, or a challenge.
But when you're done, when you're finished with your 43 slides, then you have to edit yourself. Cut your slides in half. That's right. Get rid of 50% of them. And the ones that you keep, cut the text in half. Get rid of 50% of the text. Now you've got a good slide deck. Now you can practice and awe the audience.
So some advice on teaching: less is more. Let thy speech be short, meaning fewer words leads to better comprehension. Go with the 7 by 7 rule at the most. That's seven lines per slide, seven words per line. This is the same as the t-shirt rule, meaning I should be able to look at a t-shirt from afar and understand the message. The same should be said for your slides. I shouldn't need to magnify it and blow it up.
The presentation has got to be more than the facts. Keep it simple, Sammy — the KISS principle. Go with the unexpected. Tap into emotions. Instead of saying, "I have more slides and data than I have time for, so I'm going to have to go quickly through this," you should say, "My slides and teaching points are going to be very few. Put on your seat belts. Put up your tray tables. Let's fly."
I have two quotes from William Arthur Ward on teaching. He was an inspirational speaker with a number of good quotes, I must say. Number one: we can learn much from wise words, little from wisecracks, and less from wise guys. But that seems to apply to me. Next: the mediocre teacher tells, the good teacher explains, the superior teacher demonstrates, and the great teacher inspires. I like that a lot.
So when it comes to your slides, why should you use polling questions? Why should you use cases? One, it's a mental break and it draws people in. Two, you can establish relevance, and in a case you can reveal new knowledge or even a surprise that might change the direction of your talk.
What about polling questions? It'll help you to define what the audience knows, which may help you in clarifying issues and knowing what questions you may be getting. It'll help you to launch maybe the next teaching point in your slide deck, and it'll let the audience know where they stand about what they know and what they don't know.
Okay? It's all about the audience. It's not about you. That's a hard thing to learn as a teacher. You know, you usually think it's all about you, your knowledge, your superior teaching skills. You've got to make it all about the audience. Then you are the best teacher, because they want to be engaged. What they don't want and what they don't need is all your knowledge, your gigantic data dump on this topic that they came to hear about.
Maybe you should approach lecturing from the way people approach writing books or making movies. Tease in the beginning. Get them interested. Structure your content so there's a first act — the setup; a second act — the conflict; the third act — the resolution or lesson. A beginning, middle, and end. A thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. A backstory, context, conflict, problem and challenges, and resolution — the big takeaways.
I like: stop them, sell them, and then hit them — or shoot them. What? Hit them, shoot them. What am I talking about? In the beginning of my lecture, I like to load a gun and put it in a drawer. That makes no sense unless I'm going to pull it out at the end and fire the thing. Hit them. Hit them with the big lesson, the big message.
The first 25% of your movie — I mean lecture — you're going to establish the need, the problem, the challenge. The next 50% of your content, you're going to build the story, offer the pros and the cons. Where is the
tension, conflict, and consequences of what we're talking about? And then the last 25% you give the pivotal information, the big reveal, the big truth. Give perspective to the learners. What's this about?
The 90% kiss comes from that movie Hitch. And the idea is when you're going to kiss someone, you don't go fully in for the kiss. You go 90% of the way so that the other person will go the other 10%. They'll engage. They'll want more. They'll fight with you. They'll love you. They'll ask you questions. What's going on here? Don't cover everything because they don't want to know everything. And when you leave stuff out, you're now driving them crazy. Now they're going to get up at the microphone and say, "Hey, why didn't you talk about the ferris wheel at the state fair? It's the biggest thing, for goodness sakes." And then you're all set up. They're going to complete the rest of the talk that you didn't show them.
What is a really bad lecture? The worst lecture is one that rambles. It's coming from a person who is shooting from the hip. Clearly not seasoned. It's BS right from the start, right to the end. The person who uses too many anecdotes, especially if they have no purpose or point. The gal or guy who reads slides, has too many slides, has too many words or lines on slides.
You know, when I'm teaching, I like to use this term nostalgia for a certain disease. Nostalgia is when the patient brings in so many notes and documents that the doctor hurts. That's nostalgia. It applies to slides. You got too much stuff on there. That's nostalgia for the audience. And then the worst lectures have no setup, no payoff, no resolution.
How do you end your lectures? Professor Winston said, "Don't end with a thank you. You're wasting time, wasting space." He says, "End with a joke because if it's a good joke, everyone's going to think they spent the last hour having fun." Not a bad idea. End with a story, especially if it's on point, inspirational, and hammers home what you've taught. Go to the big picture, encapsulate, reframe, or come full circle, or get that gun out of the drawer and shoot it at someone. Leave them with a call to action, your vision, their commitment, your commitment. What's the inspiration? Don't be afraid to end with something all about you. This should be all about you. Why not all about you?
And if you don't know what to say, salute the audience. Say, "God bless you and God bless rheumatology." Don't end with a conclusion slide. You already did that four slides ago. There's no need to do acknowledgements. If there is a need to do acknowledgements, make it your third slide, not your 49th slide. And don't end with a slide that says "Questions?" or "The End" in quotations, or a URL address that no one's going to write down and no one's going to go to.
I'll finish with two great quotes. Be so good that they can't ignore you — that comes from the comedian Steve Martin. And Dr. Winston said, "At the end of your lecture, you're either going to be famous or ignored." What you do in the construct of your lecture will determine whether you'll be famous or ignored. Tune in next week.
I'm Jack Cush, RheumNow. In this lecture, we're going to talk about best practices in giving great lectures.
Why do a lecture at all? Usually, it's because it's thrust upon you. Unless you're someone like me who always has his hand up saying, "I'll do it. I'll do it." My ideal gig is to go to some city and when I get there and when I get on stage, they say, "You're going to lecture on cryoglobulinemia." I'm ready to go because I think I know how to lecture. I probably have given a lecture before, but you need to do this a lot to have that kind of confidence.
One reason to do this is because it's your best opportunity to have you and your ideas valued by others. Another way of looking at this is any presentation that you're asked to give isn't worth giving unless the objective is to seek change — otherwise it's a waste of time and energy. And there's a lot of energy that goes into a lecture, hours, many hours in fact. Before you start any lecture, you've got to ask two questions: who'll be changed by this lecture, and what's the change I want to make with my audience.
A few things. Number one, change matters more than anything. Change matters more than data. Change matters more than sometimes the summary statement of the authors. It's change. Remember, no one remembers the data. Everybody remembers the story. That's a line from Seth Godin.
So I saw a great lecture on YouTube recently. It's from Professor Patrick Henry Winston, who was a professor of — I think — computer science, information science at MIT. He passed away in 2019, and he gave this lecture, a 1-hour lecture, on 50 things — 50 years of learning how to give a great lecture. It's just chock full of good information. It's a 1-hour lecture. You might want to look at it on YouTube. Patrick Henry Winston.
Here are his tenets. Start with a promise to your audience. When you get to the topic, cycle on it. Present it. Re-present it. Present it again in a different way. Show them the data. Tell them the story. Give them the principle. It's 360 learning. They're going to get it if you cycle on the big point.
He's a proponent of not having a title slide. Start with your data, your point, whatever. And maybe your title is the last thing you show, either at the top of the page or at the bottom of the page as a summary banner.
What he liked to talk about: verbal punctuation — delivering information by enumerating. Here's six reasons why you should go to the state fair. One, two, three. Use bullets. Use big arrows. I want to put my version of verbal punctuation in there, and that is the pause. Everybody's in such a rush to get their information out, you forget to use the pause.
My greatest instructor in medical school was an anatomist who knew the art of the pause better than anyone. He was slow and deliberate in the lines that he delivered. And when he built up to the big point, he built it up verbally and with physical language. And then he would turn and pause. And when he did, you better write down what he said because it was going to be on the test.
You should use questions or polling. It's a great way to engage the audience. Engage the audience in any way you can.
What's the best time for a lecture? 11:00 a.m. Obviously, not early early when everyone's showing up late and sleeping, not after lunch, not late in the day.
The place is really important. Know the stage. Go to it ahead of time. Figure out the room, the controls, where the audience is going to be, how you use the microphone, the pointer — get the lighting, sound, and camera correct if that's what you're doing.
He made a big deal about chalk talks versus PowerPoint talks. Chalk talks are way better. The graphic delivery is more effective. It's more dynamic, and it's given at the right speed — the speed at which you write on the board is the speed at which they learn, and there's a big reveal to it. I'm going to tell you why PowerPoints are no good in a second.
What's the best font if you're using PowerPoints? 50 or 40 point font. That's big. That basically means seven lines per slide. We're going to talk about the 7 by 7 rule. He suggests using one graphic or one image per slide. It connects the audience to your point, your data, whatever. Your goal is to inspire and change the minds of those that you're teaching.
Why is PowerPoint a problem? Information overload. He was asked — this is Professor Winston — by a young faculty, could
you review my slides? And he said, yes, you've got too many slides and too many words without ever looking at the slides. And that's true. Everybody's got too many slides and too much text. The 7 by 7 rule is no more than seven lines on a slide, no more than seven words on each line. And then throw in that one image, you might only be able to do it 6x6 or 4x4.
Second problem with PowerPoints, bullet points. We overuse them. We indiscriminately use them. We list things thinking that's a better way of teaching when it clearly is not.
Third, using PowerPoint as a teleprompter, meaning reading your own slides. Well, they should have stayed home and read your slides rather than listen to you read your slides.
Next big mistake most people make is problems in the design of the slide. The visuals, the fonts you use, the colors you use, the contrast you use, the template you use. Most people are pretty bad. Me, I've got a very colorful imagination and I drive people crazy with my slides unless I'm trying to be really good at it, and then I choose a very flat background. It's like when you're doing a video, you don't want to do a video in front of a room full of tchotchkes and your hobbies and your favorite books. You know, this video is being done in my podcast studio with a flat blue background and that's for a reason.
Lastly, including irrelevant content. And then, more importantly, PowerPoints sort of make you neglect the audience. You're looking at the PowerPoint the whole time instead of looking at the audience.
These are big issues because the average attention span of the audience member is definitely less than 20 minutes. It's probably less than 10 minutes for most. And when you poll people on what they remembered from lectures, they're only going to remember three or four points at best.
So when teachers have been asked why do you lecture? They say things like, "I get to clarify the complex because I can do it." Or they say, "I want to teach people how to think." Another way of saying that is I want to change thinking with my education. But the other one is inspire. When you inspire, you're going to be a good teacher. They're going to remember you and the words and points that you made.
What inspires? When you can teach someone how to do something new, when you can show them a new way of approaching a problem, when you show them your passion on an issue, a topic. And the other way to inspire is through educational momentum. What do I mean by that? You deliver content and knowledge that has a built-in reward to it, which means that now they're interested in listening to you because the next thing you may say has got maybe more rewards, right? And that builds momentum and that builds motivation to learning and sticking with your content.
There are a lot of different kinds of lectures you may give. There's a job interview talk. There's a topic update to your peers. Could you be the expert? What about if you're a key opinion leader, a KOL lecturing at a big meeting? Well, you are the expert, are you not? Grand Rounds is when things get serious. This is when you get to shine about what you want to be known for. And you better be good because this is your Grand Rounds.
For me, the best lecture I think is when no one shows up and it's a table talk of me and three, four, no more than eight people and it's less than 30 minutes and I'm not showing any slides. It's a conversation. It's peer-to-peer.
Let's talk about the job interview talk and the objectives. When you're doing one of those, you have to quickly in the first 10 minutes impart several things on the audience. One, your knowledge. Two, your vision. Three, your perspective. And four, your accomplishments. You got to get that across really quick. If you leave all that stuff till the end of a 50-minute presentation, they all tuned out. You lost them all.
Let's talk about some dos and don'ts. Dos. Practice, practice, practice. That's how you get to Carnegie Hall. Face the audience. Avoid the podium. Keep the lights on. Tell everybody to turn off their cell phones and close their laptops because now they're all going to focus on you and they're not going to distract everyone else in the room. Put your body as close as possible to the screen. The wrong setup is when you're on the left side of the stage and the screen is on the right side of the stage and you're separated by 60 ft. Be as close as possible. Use your hands. Use your hands to target your objective and teaching points. Use props. Props are really great diversions. They have great teaching value.
When I'm teaching on how to do a joint exam, I bring a bag full of grapes and a bag full of walnuts. The walnuts are ones you squeeze — squeezing on a DIP and PIP of an OA joint. The grapes, uh, synovitis. You could do the same with a tomato, I should say. What about when you're trying to teach how hard to squeeze? Well, you want to build an image either visually or with
a prop. One image is that it needs to be — when you're examining a joint to elicit synovitis, to elicit pain — it's 1 to 4 kg per square inch. That's enough to blanch a fingernail. That's enough to say ouch when they have a tender point. My grandfather went to a pulmonologist once who was trying to explain to him why his lungs were going down the toilet. Why they were so bad. And he took out his handkerchief and he folded it in half and then in a quarter and then into an eighth, and he showed him, "Grandpa, this is what your lung is. It's no longer the size of that handkerchief. It's now the size of this little small napkin." It's a great visual — using those to explain your points. Go. That's what everyone's going to remember. No one's going to remember that big histogram or that table that had nine rows and three columns.
Okay? Present your information logically, simply, and in order — or prioritize. Change the cadence. Build to a point and then take a mental break. Tell a joke. Do a diversion. Then build to another point. Cadence and rhythm, highs and lows are really important, especially if you're talking more than 20 minutes. I would say put your abstract notes in the speaker notes section of your PowerPoint. That way, people can read more information. And end your presentation with handouts or written summaries. Don't make them available before, because they'll be looking at your stuff instead of looking at you. Your lectures — everyone should look at you. This is all about you. And that is what will make you great.
Things that you don't want to do. Showing up unprepared. Showing up with too many slides. Putting your hands in your pockets. Looking up or looking nowhere. People who are podium leaners and podium drivers — you know what I'm talking about. Don't use the electronic pointer enough to give people a seizure disorder. Don't try to be funny when you're not known to be funny. Don't read the slides. Don't talk politics, religion, gender, or race if it's not germane to the point of your talk. Don't have the compunction to tell everybody everything you know. I know so much about Still's disease. I can lecture you for three hours. Nobody wants to hear me talk for three hours about a disease they're only going to see one case of per year. Deliver only as much as you need to.
I'm going to tell you about the 90% KISS rule. Don't spar with an audience member or an adversary in the audience. Be respectful of them — saying, "I like your perspective. It's different than mine. Tell me more about it." And then talk pros and cons, but be respectful. End your lecture with no time for questions — shame on you. And not giving handouts — they'll shame you for certain in your reviews.
Five ways to make a presentation better. Make it shorter. You don't get extra points for filling the one-hour talk with 58 minutes of content. Be really clear about what this lecture is about and who or what it will change. Don't use slides as a teleprompter. Don't use too many bullets, no jokes, no schtick, no promotion. Be in the here and now. Again, your content should all be about you. It should be better with you present — with your energy, your passion, your humanity. Never hide from that which you are teaching.
So, a few things on ways to get started. Actually, before we do that, let's talk about what are the best lectures. The best lectures I think are TED talks. And are the TED talks great because they have great presenters? Or they're short presentations done by highly knowledgeable, highly passionate people who practice, practice, practice. You know, the line is — if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. That comes from Mark Twain. Meaning the shorter the talk, the harder it is to do. TED talks are successful because they have this 18-minute rule, and usually it's less than 15 minutes for these talks or many lectures. The speaker has passion on the subject. It's all about one idea that's worth spreading. So let's just say you're giving an hour lecture. Well, that's really 45 to 50 minutes. You really got three ideas that are worth spreading. Any more than that is overly aggressive.
TED talks are great because it's storytelling and not data transmission. Storytelling so that you can inspire — help people to rethink or to transform their thinking. There's a theater effect to TED, meaning they're not holding on to a podium. They're walking about. They're making the pregnant pause, the strategic turns to the audience. They have the lights on them. There's no slides necessary, or if they use slides, they'll use three or four slides as an accent to the point you're making verbally. There's a lot of emotional vulnerability in TED talks that makes them great. Why can't you give that when you're talking about, you know, six reasons to go to the state fair? Be creative. Go beyond the usual.
So, when you're getting started, you have to know your audience. You have to know how much time you have.
because that will dictate how many objectives you'll have and that will dictate how many slides to have. There is this rule about no more than what is it one slide per minute. It really should be like one slide per five minutes if you're doing this right. Know your topic but then find a great title. Now don't mislead but find a great title. Start with the end in mind. Know how you're going to — what your prime objective is. What's your big point? Know how you're going to end. And then reverse engineer your talk. What does the audience need? What does the audience expect?
It might be a good idea to start with a teaser, something where you tell them what you're going to show them in the end, and then you can connect the dots along the way. Again, the purpose of your talk is to be better than a good read or a ChatGPT search on this topic. So you should begin by scratching it out on paper, on a napkin, on a receipt, and carry those around with you and keep adding to this in analog mode. You can use paper, whiteboards, whatever you like to use.
Then when you think you have an outline of sorts, an objective, how you're going to end, what you're going to cover in the middle, then go to PowerPoint or Keynote if you're an Apple person, and start to lay it out. One slide per key point. Use visuals to enhance your point. Include stories, cases, vignettes, personal stories, or a challenge.
But when you're done, when you're finished with your 43 slides, then you have to edit yourself. Cut your slides in half. That's right. Get rid of 50% of them. And the ones that you keep, cut the text in half. Get rid of 50% of the text. Now you've got a good slide deck. Now you can practice and awe the audience.
So some advice on teaching: less is more. Let thy speech be short, meaning fewer words leads to better comprehension. Go with the 7 by 7 rule at the most. That's seven lines per slide, seven words per line. This is the same as the t-shirt rule, meaning I should be able to look at a t-shirt from afar and understand the message. The same should be said for your slides. I shouldn't need to magnify it and blow it up.
The presentation has got to be more than the facts. Keep it simple, Sammy — the KISS principle. Go with the unexpected. Tap into emotions. Instead of saying, "I have more slides and data than I have time for, so I'm going to have to go quickly through this," you should say, "My slides and teaching points are going to be very few. Put on your seat belts. Put up your tray tables. Let's fly."
I have two quotes from William Arthur Ward on teaching. He was an inspirational speaker with a number of good quotes, I must say. Number one: we can learn much from wise words, little from wisecracks, and less from wise guys. But that seems to apply to me. Next: the mediocre teacher tells, the good teacher explains, the superior teacher demonstrates, and the great teacher inspires. I like that a lot.
So when it comes to your slides, why should you use polling questions? Why should you use cases? One, it's a mental break and it draws people in. Two, you can establish relevance, and in a case you can reveal new knowledge or even a surprise that might change the direction of your talk.
What about polling questions? It'll help you to define what the audience knows, which may help you in clarifying issues and knowing what questions you may be getting. It'll help you to launch maybe the next teaching point in your slide deck, and it'll let the audience know where they stand about what they know and what they don't know.
Okay? It's all about the audience. It's not about you. That's a hard thing to learn as a teacher. You know, you usually think it's all about you, your knowledge, your superior teaching skills. You've got to make it all about the audience. Then you are the best teacher, because they want to be engaged. What they don't want and what they don't need is all your knowledge, your gigantic data dump on this topic that they came to hear about.
Maybe you should approach lecturing from the way people approach writing books or making movies. Tease in the beginning. Get them interested. Structure your content so there's a first act — the setup; a second act — the conflict; the third act — the resolution or lesson. A beginning, middle, and end. A thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. A backstory, context, conflict, problem and challenges, and resolution — the big takeaways.
I like: stop them, sell them, and then hit them — or shoot them. What? Hit them, shoot them. What am I talking about? In the beginning of my lecture, I like to load a gun and put it in a drawer. That makes no sense unless I'm going to pull it out at the end and fire the thing. Hit them. Hit them with the big lesson, the big message.
The first 25% of your movie — I mean lecture — you're going to establish the need, the problem, the challenge. The next 50% of your content, you're going to build the story, offer the pros and the cons. Where is the
tension, conflict, and consequences of what we're talking about? And then the last 25% you give the pivotal information, the big reveal, the big truth. Give perspective to the learners. What's this about?
The 90% kiss comes from that movie Hitch. And the idea is when you're going to kiss someone, you don't go fully in for the kiss. You go 90% of the way so that the other person will go the other 10%. They'll engage. They'll want more. They'll fight with you. They'll love you. They'll ask you questions. What's going on here? Don't cover everything because they don't want to know everything. And when you leave stuff out, you're now driving them crazy. Now they're going to get up at the microphone and say, "Hey, why didn't you talk about the ferris wheel at the state fair? It's the biggest thing, for goodness sakes." And then you're all set up. They're going to complete the rest of the talk that you didn't show them.
What is a really bad lecture? The worst lecture is one that rambles. It's coming from a person who is shooting from the hip. Clearly not seasoned. It's BS right from the start, right to the end. The person who uses too many anecdotes, especially if they have no purpose or point. The gal or guy who reads slides, has too many slides, has too many words or lines on slides.
You know, when I'm teaching, I like to use this term nostalgia for a certain disease. Nostalgia is when the patient brings in so many notes and documents that the doctor hurts. That's nostalgia. It applies to slides. You got too much stuff on there. That's nostalgia for the audience. And then the worst lectures have no setup, no payoff, no resolution.
How do you end your lectures? Professor Winston said, "Don't end with a thank you. You're wasting time, wasting space." He says, "End with a joke because if it's a good joke, everyone's going to think they spent the last hour having fun." Not a bad idea. End with a story, especially if it's on point, inspirational, and hammers home what you've taught. Go to the big picture, encapsulate, reframe, or come full circle, or get that gun out of the drawer and shoot it at someone. Leave them with a call to action, your vision, their commitment, your commitment. What's the inspiration? Don't be afraid to end with something all about you. This should be all about you. Why not all about you?
And if you don't know what to say, salute the audience. Say, "God bless you and God bless rheumatology." Don't end with a conclusion slide. You already did that four slides ago. There's no need to do acknowledgements. If there is a need to do acknowledgements, make it your third slide, not your 49th slide. And don't end with a slide that says "Questions?" or "The End" in quotations, or a URL address that no one's going to write down and no one's going to go to.
I'll finish with two great quotes. Be so good that they can't ignore you — that comes from the comedian Steve Martin. And Dr. Winston said, "At the end of your lecture, you're either going to be famous or ignored." What you do in the construct of your lecture will determine whether you'll be famous or ignored. Tune in next week.
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