I want to start this post by saying that you will give talks in front of groups of people that include non-experts 99% of the time. One of the traits I had until my postdoc (and see extremely frequently in others) is that I thought everyone else knows everything I know and more. When I gave presentations as a PhD student, I assumed everyone in the audience had an intimate knowledge of my research area already and blasted them with high-level concepts and equations without explaining the necessities like:
- Why am I and others interested in this topic?
- What tools do I have already to study this topic?
- What tools did I develop for this project?
What I’m trying to say is that, in general, it is very difficult to get a sense of what other scientists know so that you can tailor your lecture for different audiences. For me, this took years of discussions with people at conferences (many of them difficult and embarrassing because I under- or overestimated what other people know). And overcoming this fear of embarrassment is linked to imposter syndrome. From my point of view, one extremely powerful tool to overcome these fears is exposure therapy. You may have heard of this in other contexts such as overcoming the fear of swimming by dipping ones toes in the water and slowly placing more of your body in the water over time. In the context of scientific communication, this means starting by having open conversations with people who are earlier in their careers, who are often less intimidating to speak with. As you get comfortable having these conversations and learning what other people know and understand, you can work your way toward approaching more senior members of the scientific community by sitting with them at conference meals (post-Covid, that is) and introducing yourself and your work. It is so comforting for me to sit with friends and coworkers for every meal at conferences, but I’ve worked to push myself to sit at tables full of strangers. Striking up conversations with many different types of people at conferences is extremely difficult for some people, including me, and I used a version of exposure therapy to get myself more comfortable with it.
Now you may be thinking, this is quite the tangent, but I promise I’ll bring this back to giving great talks. Gaining a feel for the scope of knowledge other smart scientific people have in general takes a long time and a lot of work. So how can you start working on giving great talks earlier in your career? The answer is simple: practice talks.
Now I know that many of you are shuddering at the thought of giving a practice talk, as you generally get a lot more constructive feedback than you would after an official talk. But these constructive comments, especially from people in different research groups and research areas, can really show you how much other people understand and how you can craft your talk to reach different audiences. So, invite as many people as you can to your (now virtual) practice talks, do them early, and, if possible, do more than one practice talk after some serious self-rehearsal with a voice recorder.
I’ll talk a little about what to include in the content of a talk, though there are already many good resources on this topic online. I personally prefer the storytelling approach. By this, I mean that after you’ve set the stage for what the open questions in a field are and why they’re interesting, you’ll want to show how your unique capabilities (through equipment, codes, and ingenuity) helped solve an outstanding problem. As much as you can, avoid equations, blocks of text, and spreadsheets! If you absolutely need to include one or more of these things, fill your slides with arrows and boxes around the important points. Write in words what the equation or data trends show. Use pictures and figures to complement the data/equations.
At the end, it’s best to summarize the story you told. Remind listeners of the problem you were trying to solve, why it’s important, and how you solved it. Thank the listeners, your research group, and collaborators, as well as funding sources.
The components of a great talk:
- Why is this topic important?
- What is one outstanding question we aim to solve?
- How did we work on solving it? (Bonus hint: avoid blocks of text, equations, and spreadsheets. If one of these is necessary, include a complementary explanation or figure and more graphics that point to the part of the equation/spreadsheet that’s important)
- Summary of 1-3
- Acknowledgments
And…because I love a list as much as anyone else…
My exposure therapy steps for overcoming scientific communication anxiety:
- Start conversations with peers and early-career researchers in similar research groups
- Talk to people presenting at poster sessions in fields outside your understanding
- (post-Covid): Sit with new groups of people at conferences and introduce yourself and your work. Ask people to explain theirs.
Repeat these steps in any order as you speak to different types of people and work your way up to talking to the people you find most intimidating. Don’t be afraid to say that you don’t understand something. That is a sign of confidence and bravery. If someone scoffs at your lack of understanding, it’s their problem (though you may want to go look it up later if you feel it’s important). Be bold and go for it!