Telling your scientific story: what to remember

Giving a presentation is an essential part of communicating your work as a scientist, but beyond that, delivering an effective presentation has also become a crucial part of growing as a leader in any academic or corporate environment. What I have learned is that while the structure of a talk may vary with the audience and setting, there are fundamentals of storytelling that are effective no matter whom you are speaking to or for how long. What you will find in this essay is not a step-by-step guide of how to construct your scientific presentation – I assume you already know the basics. Instead, I will share the fundamentals of my preparation process. They may not guarantee success, but they will help you avoid common pitfalls. ??

1.????? Your scientific story should be able to stand alone without slides

As scientists, we labor for so long on every project that we sometimes forget others may not be as intimately familiar with the topics as we are. In addition, the data are always so hard earned that there is a natural tendency to overload on data instead of communicating the rationale and thought process of the experiments. From the perspective of an outsider, particularly management, they must understand the why before they can appreciate the what. The why communicates the significance of your work: i) why the questions you pursue matter in the context of the larger objectives of the organization, ii) why the experiments you designed are suitable to answer those questions, and iii) why the findings are of interest to the audience. Once you articulate the answers to these questions clearly, you will find better clarity on how to organize your story and accordingly, organize your data for the presentation.

Consider this tip: pretend you are telling this story to a relative who is unfamiliar with your work without the use of any slides or figures. This practice forces you to construct a coherent story without being encumbered by the details of the data. The details are irrelevant at this point; it is the construct of the story that allows the listener to follow your thought process. This exercise also allows you to self-validate if the sequence of events in your story are logical. What drives your hypotheses? How did you test the hypotheses? Do the results and conclusions make sense? When management listens to your story, they are paying much more attention to the logic of your story than the details. This is because they are more concerned with whether your questions and plans are logical, and less so with whether you have the experimental details correct - they are going to assume that you are technically competent.

2.????? Less is more

You hear this lesson so frequently, but practicing it is surprisingly difficult. Because your work is your labor of love, the temptation is to share everything you have learned in the process, every misstep, and every triumph. You must consciously avoid this tendency. In fact, you must also be selective of "good data," including only what is needed to support the thesis you are there to convey. When constructing your story, first ask yourself what you want the audience to remember. Supposedly, most people can only remember 3-4 ideas at once, so try to limit your thesis to that many points.

The impact of your presentation isn't in how much you communicate, it's in how much your audience retains when they walk out of the room. This notion is so important that I'd recommend you reread the previous sentence, and really internalize it. When I get to a point that is particularly important to my presentation, I often would emphatically declare "if you remember just one thing from this presentation, please remember this". Why? Because there is little value (to you) if the audience retains nothing from your talk; you always want the audience to take some action. Do you want the listeners to support your research, give you more resources, collaborate with you in the future, think you are great? None of that can happen if you bombard them with so much information that they can’t remember a thing when they walk away. Just like mail and spam, it is your job during the preparation process to clean up your story so when it's presented to the listeners, they only get the mail.

3.????? People may not remember everything you say, but they remember how they feel

I am not sure where I have learned this from, but it really resonates with me. Have you ever listened to politicians speak? Most of the time, they don't convey a lot of information, but they focus on using language to make you feel a particular way. This is why you also occasionally hear that most of what we communicate is not verbal. We as humans have evolved to pick up very subtle emotional cues even when no word is spoken.

Minimally you should make sure to inspire confidence in the audience. In many settings, you will be the subject matter expert. Even if you are the most junior scientist in the group, when you are speaking about your experiments, you are the subject matter expert (provided that you do know what you are doing). Inspiring confidence doesn't mean you must know everything. It only requires two things: you must precisely articulate what you know (and sometimes additionally what you don't know) and you have to state it affirmatively. Try not to pad what you say with extra qualifiers and avoid ending your sentences with a trailing voice or a rising tone (unless you are asking a question). Even when you want to communicate uncertainty in your experiments, clearly and precisely state what you know and what you don't, what works and what doesn't. Do not allow the audience to confuse scientific uncertainty with hesitation. The former is an inherent element of research, the latter is an unintentional signal of self-doubt. If your statements do not seem deliberate, the audience may not be able to distinguish an actual limitation of the experiment from your lack of confidence in your own results. This leaves the listeners rather frustrated because they are unable to take action with unreliable information. This feeling alone could mean not only that they may consider the current endeavor not successful, but they may think twice about choosing you for another project. This is not a feeling you want your audience to walk away with.

Beyond that, you should also try to inject personality into your presentation. If you are excited about your research, don't be afraid to inject this feeling into your voice. Excitement is infectious; if you show passion for your work, people will be more compelled to find it exciting. Numerous times I’ve come to a high-profiled seminar only to find the presenter speaking with utmost monotone. Even if the speakers were known to be brilliant, the very fact that they didn't seem to be thrilled about their work left me wondering if any of what they were saying was at all interesting. If you are passionate about a topic, allow people to see it.

4.????? Well, sometimes people do expect slides

The purpose of the slides is to give the audience a visual aid to enhance their understanding of your narration. In other words, the content of your slides should not be so complicated that processing it prevents the audience from listening to you. You can think of the data in your figures only as “proofs” that substantiate what you speak. Tell your story just as you plan without the slides but now the audiences can see the “proofs” with their own eyes to complement what they’re hearing from you. For that reason, the slides are there only to enhance your story – they are the supporting actors, not the leads of your story. Below are some tools I frequently use to apply these concepts.

a.????? Start with an objective for the presentation

This sets the expectation for the journey you will take the audience on. The more consequential your presentation, the less likely the audience is familiar with the topic. That’s because if the audience were already well-versed with the topic, your talk would likely be less important. Defining an objective for the presentation at the onset sets the audience in the right state of mind so they can digest the materials accordingly. If you are there simply to share your scientific story, give them a 2-3 sentence summary of that story. If you are there to ask for endorsement or resources, summarize your findings and explain the what and why of your asks as clearly and concisely as possible. ?

b.????? Title your slides and all figures with take-aways

Being an active listener is mentally taxing. The audience has to simultaneously process what you are narrating and cross check it with the data on your slides. Every slide and every plot should be titled not with its content but with what you want the audience to take-away. An easy check is to see if your title has a verb. For example, say you have a large Western blot, don’t label it with “Western blot;” everyone knows it’s a Western blot. Label it with what the data tell you, eg., “reduction of protein X shows strong dependency on protein Y.” My rule is that if one cannot understand a figure in 5 seconds, then it’s too complicated and you need to either find an alternate visual aid or verbalize how the listeners should read the plot step-by-step. The former is preferable, and you should work hard at designing a plot that gets your point across as clearly as possible. This is a skill on its own and this topic alone is much bigger than what we can tackle here. For now, just remember to make your plot as easily understandable as possible.

c.?????? Replace text or tables with figures when possible

Returning to my 5-second rule, you can see how one can visualize a bar chart or a heatmap much faster than processing a table of numbers. What might be less intuitive, however, is how to apply this same concept to a list of statements that are not numerical. Here is where a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words comes in. If the statements correspond to sequential events, use a flow chart. Otherwise, place simplified images that represent or symbolize the ideas you are trying to convey next to the text. For example: use a magnifying glass to represent a “search” experiment, a “rising curve” for progress, and “warning signs” for risk. In other words, use imagery that has a strong association with the concepts you try to convey; it will allow the audience to process the information much more quickly.

This essay is by no means a comprehensive guide for your presentation, but it is a cumulative lesson from my observations of many great speakers and selecting out elements that they have in common. Again, these are simply principles and not styles. Color these principles with the styles that you are most comfortable with. And when in doubt, call your mom to tell her about your work. ?

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