Giving a great talk

By Emily Margosian, Assistant Editor, November 1, 2024

DermWorld talks to Ilona Frieden, MD, FAAD, and Kelly Cordoro, MD, FAAD, about their public speaking tips for delivering a successful scientific lecture.

DermWorld: Earlier this year you co-hosted a session at the AAD Annual Meeting on tips for giving a great talk. Why did you feel it was important to hold a workshop for physicians on the topic of public speaking?

DermWorld: Is a talent for public speaking something that has come naturally to you during your career or is it a skill you’ve had to build?

Dr. Frieden: Decades ago, at the end of my training when I was starting to be asked to give lectures, I had terrible stage fright. I loved teaching one-on-one or in small group settings, but the idea of getting up in front of an audience was something that I didn’t feel comfortable with. That was something that I had to overcome.

DermWorld: What are some mistakes to avoid when giving a talk to a virtual or live audience?

Dr. Frieden: There are many potential pitfalls. You want to avoid recycling old material without thinking about who the audience is. That’s something we really emphasize in our workshop. Are you speaking to the public? Medical students? Dermatology residents? Whether the audience is an eighth-grade classroom or an advanced seminar, the content needs to match the audience. The biggest mistake you can make is not deeply thinking about who your audience is before you embark on content creation.

Often, I think we feel we need to be speaking to the smartest person in the room, but a better concept is to speak to the “middle of the room.” Ideally, you want to make sure all audience members walk away having learned something. Especially if it’s a mixed audience, that again goes back to the first principle of who am I creating this for?

Dr. Cordoro: When you’re conceiving your talk, it’s important to not focus on what success looks like for you as a speaker, but what success looks like for your audience at the end of the presentation. Based on that, develop the goals of the presentation and create your talk in service to those goals.

DermWorld: During your workshop, you emphasized three phases of planning a good presentation: conceptualization, slide preparation, and delivery. What factors should presenters take into consideration during the conceptualization stage?

Dr. Cordoro: Identify your key take-home messages. Any talk should probably not have more than two or three take-home messages. Then you develop your slides in service to those messages with little deviation. Often, we’re asked to give learning objectives — these are important! Carefully defined learning objectives are your guide to creating your entire talk.

Dr. Frieden: Like Dr. Cordoro said, you want the audience to leave with a few key messages. You don’t want to regurgitate 20 different studies and march through data like, ‘This study shows this, and this study shows that.’ We call that the “forced march.” Instead, you want to synthesize key takeaways. You do the work, so your audience doesn’t have to. If you looked at 20 articles, condense and give your synthesis. Our goal is that everyone leaves the room or webinar with the sense that they learned something. They got at least one key takeaway that they can take back to their practice.

DermWorld: What are some of your tips regarding slide design?

Dr. Frieden: Font should be large enough that people in the back of the room can read it. We recommend using visuals right away, especially for a dermatology audience, because we are a highly visual specialty. If it’s a clinical talk, photographs can help draw people in.

Dr. Cordoro: Be a slide minimalist! Slides should be easy to comprehend and visually pleasing. You don’t want your audience to have to try to read a busy slide as you are talking. What you’re saying and what they’re seeing should be in sync. One of our rules of thumb is if you don’t address it or talk about it, take it out. Keep the slides simple. Do not try to cram too much in.

Your audience is there to hear a succinct story. Listeners’ attention span and focus has changed over time, largely due to social media, information overload, and easy access to information. When you’re giving a talk, keep slides short and interesting, break up the talk into sections, and give time between sections for people to ask questions or take a stretch. It will be hard for you as the presenter to make it easy for the audience. The most effective presentations strike the perfect balance between well-synthesized content, supportive slides, and outstanding delivery.

DermWorld: What steps can speakers follow to ensure they deliver an engaging presentation?

Dr. Cordoro: Delivery is critical, and it doesn’t come naturally to everybody. A big element is to know yourself — your strengths and areas where you have vulnerabilities. Make sure that you practice your talk and make adjustments even if you are a naturally inclined public speaker. We’ve found that transitions are an area where people struggle. Transitions are the words you say between slides and ideas — connecting the pieces together well keeps your audience with you.

Another tip is that you must be confident in yourself to receive your audience’s confidence. If you don’t project yourself with confidence and positive energy, you may lose the audience right away. Your first words and initial slides set the stage. The intro will determine whether the audience immediately engages and wants to hear more or tunes out. Speakers can and should pre-plan and even script the initial remarks of high-stakes presentations for maximum engagement.

If you know that you speak too slowly, adjust by cutting your content down. Create fewer slides than you think you need. That way you don’t have anxiety about finishing on time or feeling the need to rush through slides because that internal sense of stress can really destroy your delivery. Less is more!

It’s also important to think about your body language, your voice, and your tone. These are all areas that you can keep in mind when you’re practicing. A speaker’s posture is important. You want to be confident and composed but not too rigid. Speakers can use eye contact, facial expressions, changes in cadence, and gestures to bring their audience in. These of course will vary depending on the setting, and we need to understand the context and setting of the meeting in advance and plan accordingly. We don’t want to be too informal, because informality can convey a sense of arrogance, and your message might not land because of that.

“The most effective speakers don’t present information in an overly intimidating way. Rather, they elicit a crowd psychology of the feeling that we’re all in this together. We want talks to be bridges not barriers.”

One of the big pitfalls in delivery is that a speaker might be a true expert and know a lot of technical content, but they overwhelm their audience. The most effective speakers don’t present information in an overly intimidating way. Rather, they elicit a crowd psychology of the feeling that we’re all in this together. We want talks to be bridges not barriers. When you hear people give overly technical talks, sometimes you walk away with the sense of, ‘I’m never going to understand that and be able to use it in practice.’ When your goal is audience education, practice improvement, skill building, or what have you, you want to make your information accessible, not intimidating.

Dr. Frieden: I recommend asking colleagues and friends ahead of time to give you feedback after a presentation, so that they don’t just say “great job” but can give you helpful feedback such as telling you, your slides were too crammed with information or where the energy of your talk might have faltered or where something perhaps wasn’t clear. Taking that approach is the road to improvement, so you can get better at public speaking. Over time, it becomes self-reinforcing in order to have a successful experience giving a talk.

DermWorld: What are some key differences in presenting over Zoom versus in person?

Dr. Cordoro: The main difference is that there are so many competing interests on Zoom. With a Zoom audience, you must assume that their attention span is even less than what you’re normally working with. Recognize as a speaker that you will not have the same live engagement and visual feedback that you’re used to in a room full of people. You’ll have to find ways to visualize and imagine your audience in order to stay stimulated and engaged. Otherwise, your low energy will translate, and you’ll have less uptake on your messaging.

Dr. Frieden: Giving a talk on Zoom can be difficult because you feel like you’re speaking into a void, and a lot of what goes into being a good speaker involves drawing energy from your audience. When you’re virtual, you must create all of that energy yourself. You never want to be bored with your own talk. People will pick up on that immediately.

DermWorld: How can speakers adjust their presentation to better reach a virtual audience?

Dr. Cordoro: On Zoom, less is more. It’s important to keep your slides clear, limited, and probably present less content. Keep your content and delivery very focused.

Another important part of presenting on Zoom is to clarify the use of the chat and budget time for questions if you plan to use it. If you do plan to use the chat function, I’d strongly recommend assigning someone to cover it while you’re speaking, because it’s nearly impossible to give a presentation and try to follow the chat at the same time. Ask a helper to keep track of questions and synthesize them for the Q&A portion if you plan to have one.

I also think whether your audience is live or virtual, it’s important to provide them with a roadmap. Your audience needs to know where you’re starting and where you’re going to have the motivation to keep engaging with your talk. For example, you could say something like, ‘For the next 30 minutes, I’m going to be speaking about pediatric psoriasis, and I’m going to divide it up into three parts. We’re going to talk about the clinical features, genetics, and treatment. Between each part, I’ll give five minutes for Q&A.’ People want to know where they’re going, or they’ll lose interest.

I also think on Zoom, people want to know if they’re going to be able to ask their questions. We’ve heard time and time again that audience members will think, ‘Gosh, you just said something about an infantile hemangioma, and I’m going to fixate on that point until I can ask my question.’ They lose the rest of the talk. However, we find it helps if the speaker says, ‘I’m going to take your questions at the end, so jot them down or save them.’ That way, they know they will have the opportunity to ask the question later and can refocus.

Ilona Frieden, MD, FAAD, is professor of dermatology and pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, and former director of pediatric dermatology at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital.

Kelly Cordoro, MD, FAAD, is professor of dermatology and pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, and division chief of pediatric dermatology and the pediatric dermatology fellowship director at UCSF.

Their paper, ‘How to prepare and deliver a great talk’ appeared in Clinics in Dermatology.

Additional DermWorld Resources