When we work with both large and small teams of Medical Science Liaisons, it strikes us that as slide presentations are developed, there is little thought to how this presentation will be received. Of course, the science has to be right, but that often fills the screen in massive detail, encouraging the presenter to “massively present”! The very way we build our slides seems to determine how the slides are presented… and how they will be consumed.
What if the next time you must build a deck (or you inherit one!) you think about the audience and their needs? What if the opening to every slide has an elegant simplicity that summarizes the succeeding slide? Perhaps start with only the title and build the slide as the presenter “clears” the content and brings the audience along using the story of the data.
This helps you as the presenter to remember that the importance of the slide may not be in its detail but in its conclusion, in your take on the topic, and most importantly – as Nicholas Georgiades, PharmD puts it – on the “higher level” of this slide. The “higher level” is keeping in mind not what you present, but what the listener hears and finds useful.
We’ve all been to perfect (and perfectly boring) pharma presentations that give us little useful information, that neglect the speakers’ insights on the topic, and that, in effect, disengage us. Next time you present, consider the preceding slide before the slide… The simple, useful, helpful slide that sets up teaching through a story, not just the reading.