Why to present better and how as a statistician

Kaspar Rufibach

Expert Biostatistician at Merck

Kaspar is an Expert Statistical Scientist in Roche’s Methods, Collaboration, and Outreach group and is located in Basel.

He does methodological research, provides consulting to Roche statisticians and broader project teams, gives biostatistics training for statisticians and non-statisticians in- and externally, mentors students, and interacts with external partners in industry, regulatory agencies, and the academic community in various working groups and collaborations.

He has co-founded and co-leads the European special interest group “Estimands in oncology” (sponsored by PSI and EFSPI, which also has the status as an ASA scientific working group, a subsection of the ASA biopharmaceutical section) that currently has 39 members representing 23 companies, 3 continents, and several Health Authorities. The group works on various topics around estimands in oncology.

Kaspar’s research interests are methods to optimize study designs, advanced survival analysis, probability of success, estimands and causal inference, estimation of treatment effects in subgroups, and general nonparametric statistics. Before joining Roche, Kaspar received training and worked as a statistician at the Universities of Bern, Stanford, and Zurich.

More on the oncology estimand WG: http://www.oncoestimand.org
More on Kaspar: http://www.kasparrufibach.ch

Transcript

[00:00:00] Alexander: You are listening to the Effective Statistician Podcast, the weekly podcast with Alexander Schacht and Benjamin Piske designed to help you reach your potential lead great science and serve patients while having a great [00:00:15] work life balance.

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[00:01:29] Alexander: welcome to [00:01:30] another episode of the effective statistician. Today I have. Once again, one of my favorite guests. Kaspar on the line. Hi, Kaspar. How you doing? 

[00:01:40] Kaspar: Hi Alexander, 

[00:01:40] Alexander: I can see you again today. We want to talk about the topic that [00:01:45] we have in talking about alongside some other recordings and other meetings many times, and Kaspar has actually presented about this topic at various conferences and [00:02:00] he is, you know, very big advocate for it.

[00:02:03] Alexander: And this is good presentations. Good presentations are really fundamental. And I wanna say Kasper is a awesome presenter [00:02:15] himself. I just heard Alan Bedding, we talked to this morning talking to me how good Kasper is as a presenter, and let’s talk about presentations a little bit. Why should we actually talk about [00:02:30] presentations?

[00:02:30] Alexander: Why do you think presentations are so important? For statisticians and also for other ative scientists. 

[00:02:38] Kaspar: Now first, thanks Alexander for the compliment. I’m happy to hear that the way I present is, is attractive, at least for [00:02:45] some, I think there are two reasons. One reason is we are talking about a topic where we are experts and others have some knowledge, but maybe are not experts and we are the technical people and we [00:03:00] need to digest it.

[00:03:01] Kaspar: For them. And that is why we need to make an effort so that we can connect to our stakeholders. And the second thing is I, I guess as statisticians in drug development and in any industry, [00:03:15] we want to generate impact. We want that the work that we do, the evidence, the knowledge that we generate. It’s taken into account to solve business problems.

[00:03:25] Kaspar: In order to make that connection, I think we need to communicate well and [00:03:30] very much like a quote from your colleague, Alex Garry Sullivan, who I think not just said, but who keeps saying you can’t lead if you can’t communicate. And I think that’s very true. 

[00:03:40] Alexander: And presentation is one way, which we communicate [00:03:45] quite a lot.

[00:03:45] Alexander: I believe that if you become a good presenter, you will be able to also communicate more effectively so that it’s not about the communications through the presentation. [00:04:00] It’s also about communication through meetings and one-to-ones even when it comes to writing. Good presentations of becoming a good presenter will help you to become a better communicator and all these [00:04:15] other ways as well.

[00:04:17] Alexander: When you prepare for a presentation, 

[00:04:19] Kaspar: how do you actually start? Um, one or the way I start is I take a blank sheet of paper and start to write down what my [00:04:30] messages should be. What’s, you are given an opportunity to present and that may be 10 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour, and you know the audience, and I always think of, [00:04:45] I know it for myself.

[00:04:46] Kaspar: If you attend a presentation, typically you can keep in your head, say a scientific presentation. 2, 3, 4 key messages. That’s what if people walk out the door after you talk and they can remember 2, 3, 4 [00:05:00] things. Then you were successful. And then I try to think about first, which two, three or four things I want them to recall from my talk.

[00:05:09] Kaspar: And then I try to build my talk in order that these messages [00:05:15] follow from what I say. So that’s how I approach it. And then I take a, a blank sheet of paper. I draw, I dunno, a four 16 boxes. I put my messages at the end. Then I try to put a rough structure [00:05:30] because I know it for myself. In earlier days, maybe you would open PowerPoint or I never use PowerPoint, but your pre preferred software and then it would start at slide one and start to just put in there.

[00:05:42] Kaspar: But you wanna share, and maybe [00:05:45] that works for some, it never works for me. I need to have a structure and I do this via by a handwriting, and then I try to build. Around the structure. So you asked me how I start. I think an equally [00:06:00] important piece is when I start, and of course that’s not always possible, but in business, when you are as a statistician, a project statistician or a trial statistician, very often you do presentation control notice, which is fine, but say you present at the [00:06:15] conference and you register for the conference in February, you get.

[00:06:18] Kaspar: Notification about your abstract being accepted in April and you present in August. Then I start in April. Ideally with the first draft, I put together a rough skeleton. [00:06:30] I keep adding notes and then I go back to it because it, it will start to think in the back of my head. And then I just have one slide where I just keep all the notes and at some point the messages will become very clear and it develops over time.

[00:06:44] Kaspar: [00:06:45] And then you, at some point you. Build a solid draft and you then iterate, and I have made very good experiences with that. It needs a bit of discipline, but it pays off big time because sometimes it happens. But I don’t enjoy doing presentations the night [00:07:00] before. I give the talk and the quality of the presentations is much worse.

[00:07:04] Kaspar: All sharing just my experiences. But I think there you can generalize that to some extent. I would assume, 

[00:07:10] Alexander: and I laugh that you start with the end in mind. That is the same for all other [00:07:15] communications. When you write an email, when you go into a meeting, be clear on what do you want to achieve? What do you want the audience to know to do, to believe?

[00:07:29] Alexander: [00:07:30] These are the questions that you need to ask yourself, and then you can think about how you achieve that. What kind of techniques do you use? What kind of data do you use, what kind of structure you use? First, you need [00:07:45] to understand what’s your goal, and then effective communication reaches that goal.

[00:07:51] Alexander: Ineffective doesn’t, and then you can think about all the different communication tools that you can use. And as you said, [00:08:00] the slides supports you in how you structure things and so on. Now, you don’t use PowerPoint. What do you use instead?

[00:08:10] Kaspar: Well, I’m some kind of dinosaur. Maybe I’m, I have my. Steamer class, late [00:08:15] tech slide set, which I continue to use, and I think that’s up to everyone.

[00:08:21] Kaspar: For me, this is very beneficial because it has very good reference management. You can integrate our code and plots, and ultimately I [00:08:30] just have one file with everything in there. Of course, it reads in data, it generates plots, and I have slide decks where, for example, you illustrate something for a clinical trial with a time to event endpoint se.

[00:08:43] Kaspar: Then you have an assumption of a [00:08:45] hazard ratio of 0.75, and then somebody asks, oh, how does this look like if you have 0.8, and then I just change this 0.8 in one place. You rerun the slide deck and then you have everything for 0.8 for me, this has turned out to be very efficient and I keep it very modular [00:09:00] so that I can recycle bits and pieces very easily.

[00:09:03] Kaspar: Sometimes you just pull one chapter from another, talk into a new one, and then you can just borrow that. So that turned out to be very efficient for me. 

[00:09:11] Alexander: When you build just slides, what are the things [00:09:15] that you wanna avoid having on the slides? 

[00:09:19] Kaspar: One very important consideration that I think is also in business completely underappreciated.

[00:09:25] Kaspar: I do not build slides as an information. I build [00:09:30] slides that support my presentation. So this go, coming back to your question, what do I avoid? I avoid having too much text. And so this goes to the extent that I think some of my slide texts are not [00:09:45] understandable if you don’t hear me talking to them.

[00:09:47] Kaspar: Yeah. But I have no intention to make them self-contained. That’s not the point. Yep. You have to see me talk about that. Otherwise it’s not supporting the presentation. Otherwise, it’s just reading a [00:10:00] report and I have the impression this is what many presentations suffer from. It’s not clear what the slide deck is supposed to be.

[00:10:10] Kaspar: Is it supposed to be an information graveyard? Or is it supposed to support your [00:10:15] presentation? So this is what I try to avoid. I strip it from everything that not needs to be there. Absolutely. I keep asking myself basically, for every tiny piece, why do I want to have it there? And then you also ask your, you have to ask [00:10:30] yourself if something is on the slide.

[00:10:32] Kaspar: It needs to be clear. Is the audience supposed to read it or do you talk to it? Or why is it there? And I think this is also something that I see. Often people not being diligent enough. Ask [00:10:45] yourself for every plot. For every. Now we see slide decks full of AI generated images. It’s not so difficult to use chat.

[00:10:52] Kaspar: GBT. Why is this picture there? Are people supposed to study it or why is it there? [00:11:00] Maybe that these are not. Entirely generalizable statements. This is also a matter of style, I think, but my style is strip it from everything that doesn’t absolutely need to be there. 

[00:11:11] Alexander: Yeah, I think this is a great design [00:11:15] principle.

[00:11:15] Alexander: Great design is if you can’t subtract anything without hurting the functionality, and it’s not about adding more until nothing fits anymore on the slide. It’s [00:11:30] less, more. And I’ve had that when I first learned about presentations at university, our professor would go at length about reducing every word, every aspect, and every kind of thing [00:11:45] that we have on it.

[00:11:46] Alexander: And can we make it as simple as possible? Because the less is on the slide, the more crisp is a message and the more easy it is for you to talk to the slide. [00:12:00] And the slide supporting you. What you don’t want to have is the audience that reads your slides or listen to you, because mostly they will read the slide and then you’re not a presenter anymore.

[00:12:13] Alexander: You can’t [00:12:15] communicate anymore because you don’t have the attention of the audience. Or worse they down and don’t do anything because it’s too much. Yeah, 

[00:12:25] Kaspar: and my experience, and I think that’s supported by [00:12:30] communication people. If you think about this situation where somebody is presenting, and in our case, typically on a not too easy technical topic, and the audience is trying to understand what the person is [00:12:45] saying.

[00:12:45] Kaspar: So there needs to be some digesting work needs to be done, and either the presenter. Digests the content in a way that it is easily approachable by the audience, or the [00:13:00] audience has to digest what the person is saying. And my experience again is if you try to be short, you get to the bottom or to the core of your message because you, if you then start to strip everything that’s not.[00:13:15] 

[00:13:15] Kaspar: Absolutely important. And for me, this also helps actually myself trying to be very short leads to, for me to distill the essence of what you want to say. And, and one should not underestimate the amount of work that [00:13:30] actually takes, and that’s why I start three months in a advance. Um, this is Eric. This is not just strip words here and there.

[00:13:38] Kaspar: This is really rethinking the whole thing very often and what do I really want to say? And [00:13:45] there is a very famous quote, which I like a lot, and it has been attributed to many people. If you do a little bit of research, you find it has been attributed to gte, to Sheer, and a lot of people. The earliest attribution I find is to bless Pascal and he was writing a [00:14:00] letter to a colleague.

[00:14:01] Kaspar: And the quote is, if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. And so he has written a long lecture and then he wrote at the end, if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. And that [00:14:15] exactly illustrates the point. All these overcrowded slide text, these completely stuffed slide deck, they lack time investment because.

[00:14:24] Kaspar: The presenter would have to sit down for hours and days and distill the [00:14:30] absolute message. And another mantra of mine is, I heard this at some point, device plug your eyes. And if you look at how CEOs of large corporations present, typically they don’t show up with three slides. They show up [00:14:45] with two slides or three slides, and then they talk for one hour.

[00:14:48] Kaspar: And I think their communication department. Has likely spent days and months to craft these three slides, and that is illustrating, I think this point, [00:15:00] and we in our kind of rushed daily business. Very often, whether we don’t have the time or we don’t take the time is a matter of debate. Very often you hear, I don’t have the time.

[00:15:11] Kaspar: It’s all about prioritization, isn’t it? So if you [00:15:15] really want to be a good presenter, you have to invest a lot of time because otherwise you just throw information out there and you leave it to the audience to do the interpretation that often they’re not able to, they’re tired, they’re not willing. You lose that.[00:15:30] 

[00:15:30] Kaspar: So you have to do that. I think 

[00:15:32] Alexander: as a presenter, you serve your audience. It’s not about you as a presenter, it’s about the audience. And if you do a bad presentation, you this [00:15:45] serve the audience to the point where you lose the audience. And now that’s I think, is a really important. Point if you lose the audience, what 

[00:15:56] Kaspar: do you think you said you deserve then?

[00:15:59] Kaspar: [00:16:00] I think it’s for me and the more maybe senior I get, the less patient I get. If I’m invited to meetings and somebody is just presenting in a way that I don’t take anything outta it or it would take me a huge effort, the [00:16:15] messages are not clear. It’s not clear why the person is even talking. I just. Style out.

[00:16:20] Kaspar: I have better things to do. I think it’s a waste of the audience time to, and it’s borderline arrogant if you are not doing the, I’m very harsh here [00:16:30] and I’m aware, but this is how more and more I feel, it’s if you just. You have 10 people on the line or in a room at the conference, 10 highly paid, very busy people who don’t have a lot of time and you [00:16:45] don’t come very well prepared.

[00:16:46] Kaspar: Why am I here today? What are my messages? Why do I get to these messages? You are wasting their time and it’s just not, it’s not right, and I see it so often to [00:17:00] the extent that I have proposed in teams that I worked in that. Whenever we feel, again, somebody is presenting in this style, the most senior person in the room should just say, we stop here.

[00:17:12] Kaspar: You come again in a week and you have a better presentation. [00:17:15] Unfortunately, that courage is not very prevalent. That would educate people if you would be so harsh, because honestly, it’s just a waste of everybody’s time if it’s not well prepared. If after a 30 minute presentation you have a one hour [00:17:30] discussion.

[00:17:30] Kaspar: What the presenter actually wanted to say. And as a team, you then distill the messages. This is the work the presenter should have done before. 

[00:17:37] Alexander: Yeah, yeah. Completely agree. And how you then come across as a [00:17:45] presenter is hurting you. It’s hurts your personal brand. And believe me, you have a personal brand if you want it or if you don’t want it, I have one.

[00:17:54] Alexander: And your personal brand is what others talk about you when you are [00:18:00] not in the room. Uh, if you want to come across as the nerdy, not able to communicate person and lose these difficult presentations where people don’t understand anything and so on. [00:18:15] If you want to be an influential statistician, data scientist, wherever you’re listening, then you can better terms of your presentation in terms of your communication.

[00:18:28] Alexander: People will talk [00:18:30] differently about you and that will help you with promotions and all the other things at university. Maybe it is about appealing to be smart, clever, and so on. In business, it’s not about that [00:18:45] IT business, it’s about offering a solution, providing insights, moving the team forward, and it’s not about you.

[00:18:53] Alexander: So the better you present, I believe. The better your chances [00:19:00] to be regarded as a valuable team player, valuable expert, and that makes such a big difference. 

[00:19:08] Kaspar: I have nothing to add. I like some of your quotes when you say a personal brand, and it’s especially us, the nerdy [00:19:15] people that we are, and very often we do things in our room and in isolation, and we are actually sometimes just interested in the feedback.

[00:19:24] Kaspar: From our, our direct peers. But it is, as you say, you have a personal brand. You like it or [00:19:30] not, you cannot escape that. It’s true. And then the other thing, what you said resonates with me, that kind of, if you want to do these early presentations and what we learn at university, I think one aspect here is as scientists and as statisticians.

[00:19:44] Kaspar: It’s exactly as [00:19:45] you say. We are trained to share what we did, and that’s okay because that gives us this credibility. We have this scientific question and here is the logic, and we went through all this and this is the credibility buildup that you do. And this is okay, for [00:20:00] example, at the conference, if given enough time, you can go through all this.

[00:20:04] Kaspar: You can still have messages at the end, what you’ve learned on this journey. But if you present to governance bodies, if you present to leadership in companies. They don’t care what you did, honestly. They don’t [00:20:15] care what you did, what method you used and what you did because you had outliers and this and that and blah, blah, blah.

[00:20:20] Kaspar: You have the credibility. Otherwise, they would not have hired you. They assume you do all this correctly. They just want to know how does it affect my business [00:20:30] and yeah, but I observe on a regular basis is that statisticians and scientists are not enough aware of this. They still, in a business context, they are in this mode of.

[00:20:41] Kaspar: Reporting what they did, and of course they did [00:20:45] a lot of clever things, but your CEO or your head of department, they don’t care about that. They know you’re clever, that’s why they hired you. They wanna know what do you propose, what does it change in the business? And I think this, this is also something [00:21:00] that helps me a lot.

[00:21:01] Kaspar: I try to think of from the perspective of the audience, how can I help them? Then most likely they don’t need to know about what method I used or whatever I, I have built by [00:21:15] describing the methods and showcasing how clever I am. So to say I have built that reputation and now I have the reputation. Now it’s just to put that in action and change.

[00:21:26] Kaspar: Businesses propose a trial design and they trust me. I [00:21:30] can figure out the details. They just need to know. How long is the trial? What are the costs? What are the risks? How can they mitigate them? These are the things they’re interested in and not that used, uh, I dunno, A closed test with a complicated alpha recycling.

[00:21:43] Kaspar: And you can talk to your [00:21:45] favorite statistician colleague about that, but not to your decision makers and make sure you make these considerations. What do they need? It’s, I keep saying it’s not about what you want to say, it’s about what they need to hear. And that can be very. Actually, 

[00:21:59] Alexander: yeah. [00:22:00] That’s why I very often recommend in the business case to have a deductive approach in terms of the presentation.

[00:22:09] Alexander: So rather than starting with your problem with data and then ending with your [00:22:15] recommendations, start with your recommendations, then speak about, okay, these are the recommendations and results from my simulation study, and therefore I recommend doing a. Instead of B, because of [00:22:30] these time cost observer considerations.

[00:22:33] Alexander: Then you can speak about, I’ve done X, Y, Z to come up with that because you can very often stop after you presented the results and see all these kind of different things and only [00:22:45] go into these details if there are questions. As you said, most non statisticians will not care about. What kind of your, all on what scenarios you have looked into and how your primary analysis looks like.[00:23:00] 

[00:23:00] Alexander: Yeah. That’s all secondary important is what you came out with. 

[00:23:05] Kaspar: I absolutely agree. And there’s actually another aspect, and I can just underpin that with a recent episode. I was asked to present in some high governance meeting and I was [00:23:15] allocated 20 minutes. And then of course you know how this goes in these meetings.

[00:23:18] Kaspar: You are just in the waiting room and then. You see, oh, I was supposed to talk, I dunno, quarter past and then it was like half and they still had not called me in, so I ended up with, instead of [00:23:30] 20 minutes, I had seven. And you need to be prepared for that. Uh, and I then don’t start my presentation. Oh, I know, oh, what should I do?

[00:23:38] Kaspar: I just go and I have my first slide, which are the conclusions, and it was perfectly fine. Of course, I would have left to [00:23:45] present 20 minutes, but I just got seven and, but I was ready. That’s the other thing, to have your messages ready because ultimately, of course, the message is what counts and how you arrive at these messages is also important.

[00:23:59] Kaspar: [00:24:00] But if there’s not enough time, the only thing that counts are the messages and put them on your first slide and then you’re ready if your time’s cut. So that’s another. Benefit of this, you called it inductive way, and I think this is, [00:24:15] again, this is a very academic thing that you resent for one hour with 40 slides, and then the bombshell is on slide number 40.

[00:24:22] Kaspar: You have built everything towards that, but that doesn’t work in business. And [00:24:30] it’s the message messages come first. What do you conclude? What do you recommend? And then of course, we expect you have a solid. Underpinning of these conclusions, of your recommendations. But as I say, it’s assume you have that.

[00:24:44] Kaspar: Um, and if [00:24:45] there’s time, if there’s appetite, you can discuss that. If not, it’s secondary pro. So when people wanna become better presenters, what 

[00:24:55] Alexander: actions, what you recommend. 

[00:24:57] Kaspar: So be wise, plug your eyes. That’s one thing. [00:25:00] I attend lots of presentations. I’ve been to many conferences and sometimes you sit there and you think.

[00:25:05] Kaspar: That person is doing really well. And then I start to sit down and often with handwriting I try to figure out what made it attractive, why was [00:25:15] it good, and then try to integrate that. That’s one thing. The next thing is I have never given a good talk when I prepared it the night before. I think this kind of.

[00:25:26] Kaspar: Having it in the back of your mind because you have, and [00:25:30] if it’s just, sometimes I just copy paste an old folder and then I, I clear the slides and it’s virtually empty. I have the title I have to date, I have a few preliminary notes, and maybe I have a table of content. And then it [00:25:45] starts to think in my head and I iterate until I have a good version.

[00:25:50] Kaspar: And I think this is something you can start doing tomorrow. Yep. And then the next thing is always think of yourself. If you attend a one hour [00:26:00] presentation, how much do you still remember 30 minutes after you left or go? And you try to push what you want people to remember into their head by making it very explicit.

[00:26:12] Kaspar: Because my experience tells me [00:26:15] that if you have your messages, then also developing and building your presentation is very easy because you have to somehow, you have to find your way to these messages. It’s then just mere execution. But the point is arriving at [00:26:30] these messages may take a lot of time and invest that time.

[00:26:34] Kaspar: So to recap, start early, have your messages ready. These are things you can start doing tomorrow. Yeah. And copy another thing that maybe, yeah. [00:26:45] And the, the third point was, be wise, black your eyes, if the lights up, it, it even amounts to people come to like you at the beginning. People come to me and say, I like the way you present.

[00:26:54] Kaspar: And then you attend a presentation from that person. Next time they don’t do it, they do it completely differently. [00:27:00] Well, of course it’s a matter of style and not everybody has the same style and, but yeah, if you like somebody’s way, if you think you can take something away, then try to mimic it. There is no copyright.

[00:27:11] Kaspar: One thing I wanted to say, actually, especially when you present to [00:27:15] governance bodies, and even in scientific presentations and this, but especially in business, I have presented to governance bodies in large companies where you have a lot of clever people, and it happened to me more than once, [00:27:30] that you had a proposal for a trial design say, and then you went there, and then the team was presenting and everything was very shiny and everything was perfect.

[00:27:39] Kaspar: You knew, you walked into the room and you knew there are two aspects that are a bit weak [00:27:45] here and maybe the team found we emphasize other things and then there were these higher people and they were listening to you and then one, and this literally happened to me a couple of times. And then they would raise their hand and say, okay, it’s all nice.

[00:27:58] Kaspar: I have these two questions [00:28:00] and they will exactly raise these two points. And so don’t try to fool anyone if there are elephants in the room. If there are, I dunno. Rumors, somebody needs to do something before you can actually do what you propose. Make these [00:28:15] very explicit. There is no point in hiding them because they will surface at some point.

[00:28:20] Kaspar: Don’t try to hide anything. This is also something very explicitly do. Yeah. If I hear people saying, but then this person has first to send that [00:28:30] email, otherwise this will not work, and I put it on the slide and say, okay, this is contingent on this and this happening. Not. We will have to feature this because it’ll pop up anyway.

[00:28:40] Kaspar: Yeah. Yeah. I even have an explicit picture of an elephant in the room. That’s my [00:28:45] only AI generated picture that I use in. That’s nice. 

[00:28:48] Alexander: Yeah. The other things I can recommend is get feedback on your presentations. It’s even, I recommend if you know someone in the audience could be [00:29:00] your supervisor, prime them before and ask them.

[00:29:03] Alexander: Could take notes and give me feedback afterwards, because then you will get really valuable insights into what you’re doing well and where you [00:29:15] can improve. And if you give a online presentation, you can even watch yourself, how you deliver and how you come across. We talked a lot about the slides today, and of course it’s also about.

[00:29:28] Alexander: How you verbally [00:29:30] deliver, how you are from a guest chosen and mimic point of view. And then I encourage you to take formal training. Now, of course, I offer training in terms of presentations that he [00:29:45] don’t need to come to me. Yeah, I’m always of course happy if you come to Gary or myself. It. If there is some kind presentation training that is offered by your HR department or whether you can attend something at a [00:30:00] conference about it, take notes and then take actions and include these learnings into your presentations.

[00:30:07] Alexander: And last thing is exercise. Do it again and again with new presentations. Grab these [00:30:15] opportunities where you can present so you can become better. These will help you a lot over time, and I know public speaking is associated with fear, with big fear in fact, and he will [00:30:30] only overcome this fear if you start doing it more.

[00:30:34] Alexander: So face your fear and go through that fear. There’s a lot of personal development and growth happening on the other side, and I absolutely [00:30:45] believe it’s really worth it. 

[00:30:47] Kaspar: I absolutely relate to your last point, and there is much to gain and yeah, take the challenge The, I’m also supportive what you said about formal, first of all, about watching your own [00:31:00] recordings.

[00:31:00] Kaspar: I do that very often and I have learned a lot through watching my own recordings, what I do well, what worked well, what didn’t work well, and then I try to remember next time I take notes. I have my list of notes of learnings over time so that I can absolutely [00:31:15] recommend Ough trainings. Is also okay. I’m also listening to that kind, uh, podcast where senior people share their experience.

[00:31:22] Kaspar: That’s all. Okay. But, uh, maybe I can tell an anecdote because I was doing a leadership training in my former company and [00:31:30] then at the end I was asking one of those coaches where I really had the good relationship to whether I could engage him. To further finance my presentation skills and this and that.

[00:31:43] Kaspar: And then that was granted. And I [00:31:45] started to talk to him and said, here is what I would like to do. And then basically what he said it is, I can tell you how to build slides. I can tell you how to build a good presentation. That’s all scratching on the surface because the way you show up is an expression of who [00:32:00] you are literally.

[00:32:02] Kaspar: And that needs to match. You still need to be authentic and you need to feel. He always said about this box you, this box in which you feel comfortable needs to be large, and then you appear authentic. [00:32:15] Maybe that all sounds very abstract, but I think that the point is a little bit, try to borrow from other people.

[00:32:22] Kaspar: As I said, good elements, but presentation training is just the last piece. [00:32:30] If you don’t know your topic well, if you don’t know what to say, if you’re not comfortable in the environment where you are. People will immediately see that even if they cannot name it, they will see that. And that’s in some sense, a good presentation.

[00:32:44] Kaspar: An [00:32:45] engaging presentation ultimately is just a result of everything that comes before. And there is room for financing using presentation trainings, but don’t expect that to fix everything. You need [00:33:00] to feel comfortable. You need to be an expert on about what you talk and if that’s guaranteed. A good presentation should follow.

[00:33:07] Kaspar: Ideally, 

[00:33:08] Alexander: I’m pretty sure no presentation training will be this. You do it once [00:33:15] and send you a great presenter. Yeah, that will not help, or it’ll not help in that regard because the most essential part is applying what you learn, testing it, refining it, and as you said through that [00:33:30] exercise. Expanding the box in which you feel comfortable, and you can, especially at conferences where there’s this in-person presentation, you can see when people enter the stage, how [00:33:45] comfortable they are on the stage, whether they own the stage and whether they bring a lot of energy into this room or whether say.

[00:33:54] Alexander: Hide somewhere. Uh, and you can directly see that they’re super uncomfortable where they are. [00:34:00] And of course we all started that way. Yeah, to be very clear, and I don’t think there’s any natural born presenters. Yes, there’s surely people with more talent, but in the end it’s a lot of work that goes into becoming a great presenter and a good, [00:34:15] great communicator.

[00:34:16] Alexander: Any final summary? Said you would like the listener to, to leave with. 

[00:34:21] Kaspar: I can reiterate maybe the most important points that I think can make a difference. Rather quickly distill your messages, be [00:34:30] clear on what you want to say. Think about having a short presentation needs more time than having a long one.

[00:34:36] Kaspar: Because in the long one you just dump what you have, which is not ideal. So I think that’s a very important point. Start early. Don’t start the night before. [00:34:45] And then maybe the other thing is. It’s not about what you want to share, it’s about what the audience needs to hear, and maybe there would be a lot you want to share how clever you are.

[00:34:56] Kaspar: Somebody told me, kill your darlings. If the audience doesn’t need [00:35:00] to hear your darlings, then kill there. There is no point then it’s only, it’s a selfish thing. You only share them because of yourself. And there’s no punt. Be brave enough. Be senior enough. Be modest [00:35:15] enough to just share what they need to hear.

[00:35:18] Kaspar: If you want to say something, then do it in isolation, record it, and then watch it and have fun, but it’s not for the audience. Maybe these are the three key things. And then yeah, exercise, [00:35:30] iterate, do recordings, take notes. And over time, 

[00:35:34] Alexander: you’ve Thanks so much. For that awesome discussion, and I’m super happy that we have this episode now, given that we have talked about this topic so frequently.

[00:35:44] Alexander: See you [00:35:45] next time. 

[00:35:45] Kaspar: Thank you, Alexander. Yeah. Talk to you soon.

[00:35:52] Alexander: This show was created in association with PSI, thanks to Reine and her team at VVS. Well position the [00:36:00] background and thank you for listening. Reach your potential leap right science and serve patients. Just be an effective [00:36:15] statistician.