Present. Why? Because it’s a great way of getting your work out there: letting people know what you are doing, opening up conversation, getting feedback. When you present, you enter into dialogues with your community: people who can help you, encourage you, give you new ideas.
It’s scary. I know. I used to be absolutely phobic about presenting. I used to think, ‘What happens if I just clam up in front of all these people. Just stand there, dumbstruck, with all those eyes on me. Nowhere to go.’ But I did, really, push myself to present: to go for opportunities even if I knew I’d be terrified. And over time (albeit more time than I would have liked), it began to get easier.
For counselling and psychotherapy researchers, a great place to present your work is the annual research conference of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. It’s low key, friendly, and audiences are always really encouraging of people’s work. For counselling psychologists, another great opportunity to present is the BPS Counselling Psychology annual divisional conference.
Normally when you do a presentation, there will be a ‘Chair’ who will make sure you start and end on time, and possibly introduce you.
Research presentation are normally around 20 minutes, and then around 10 minutes for questions and discussion. But each conference will have their own guidelines.
Generally, conference delegates can pick and choose what they go to, and there’s likely to be a few strands of presentations running at once. So it hard to predict how many people will come to your talk, but it’s likely to be somewhere between about 10 and 50.
Research papers can either be presented individually, or as part of a ‘symposium’ (sometimes called a ‘panel’), where papers on a similar theme are grouped together. Normally, you can either submit as an individual paper or as part of a symposium—but if you do have colleagues doing similar work, creating a symposium can make for a more coherent set of presentations.
Prepare… prepare… prepare…
Know your timing: check that the length of your presentation fits into the allocated time slot. Be particularly wary of having much too much material for the time available. Keep an eye on the time during your presentation and, if helpful, write on your notes where you should be up to by particular points, so you know if you need to speed up/slow down.
Practice your slides to get a good feel for them, and so you know what’s coming next.
Turn up to the room early and check your slide show is uploaded and works. Know the pointer, how to change slides, etc. Technological issues are often the biggest saboteur of a good presentation.
Try to introduce yourself to the Chair before you start (if there is one), and check how they are going to run things (in particular, how/whether they will let you know how much time you have left).
If you get anxious doing talks, think about how you could manage that. For instance, do you need things written out in detail to fall back on, or have breathing techniques ready if you get panicky?
Presenter View on Powerpoint can be a really helpful tool for being on top of your presentation. Essentially, it means that, when you present, you (and only you) can see what slides are coming up, and also any notes on your slides. It can be a bit technologically fiddly though.
Presenter View or not, it’s generally best to take along a printed off copy of your slides (say, 3 slides to a page), so that you can always quickly check content on other slides when you are doing presentation, and just in case the technology breaks down.
A great short video on what happens when you fail to prepare a presentation, and everything else you can do wrong, can be found here.
Slides
Keep the lines of texts per slide to a minimum. Generally no more than 6-10 lines of text per slide. If you have more to say, do more slides, they don’t cost anything! (I do really mean this one: so many presentations I see have 20+ lines of texts per slide, making the slide pretty ineligible).
Related to the above, font size shouldn’t normally be less than 30 points, and definitely not less than 16-20 points.
Texts should be bullet points, rather than complete sentences (so don’t have full stops at the end of them). Your bullet points should capture the essence of what you want to say (which you can then expand upon verbally), rather than spelling the point out in full.
Try to avoid
Sub bullet points,
And sub-sub bullet points.
The slides start to get very messy.
Be consistent in your formatting: e.g. fonts, type of bullets, colour of headings.
If you have text on your slides, talk ‘to’ it. Don’t have text on the slide that you never refer to. (Though it’s OK to say things that aren’t on your slide).
Use the space on the slides—make text large rather than small text squashed away.
You don’t need line spacing between your bullet points. If you take those out you can make your font larger.
Try to avoid too many citations in your bullet points as they can be distracting. You can cite sources at the bottom of the page or have a page of references at the end of the presentation if people want to follow up. Having said that, if you’re discussing a key text, make sure you give a reference so that your audience can follow up.
Sans serif fonts (e.g., Arial, Tahoma, Century Gothic) are generally more suited to presentations than serif fonts (e.g., Times New Roman, Palatino). NCS: Never Comic Sans!
Try to use images/graphics wherever possible, ideally each slide. You can also embed videos (but check sound works before your presentation). Images and videos can be a great way of conveying the reality of your research: for instance, a photo of the room where the interview took place, or a short video of you doing the coding (bear in mind confidentiality, of course).
Diagrams can be really helpful, but do make sure you spend time talking them through and explaining what different elements mean. Don’t just leave it up to your audience to work it out for themselves.
Don’t make slides too complex/‘flashy’: for instance, by using transition sounds. Everyone hates transition sounds!
Having said that, a simple transition between slides, like ‘Fade’, can be a nice way of going from slide to slide.
‘Animations’ allow you to present one bullet point at a time, and can be helpful for ensuring that you and your audience are on the same points. Again, though, just use simple entrance animations, like Fade, so that it doesn’t detract from your content.
For a research presentation, it’s generally fine to use the standard sections of a research paper to structure your talk: Introduction (including literature review), Aims, Methods, Results, Discussion. Headings can be on separate slides to keep the sections really clear.
Give clear titles to each slide so that the audience know what you are trying to say.
Don’t scrimp on presenting your results: they’re often the most important and interesting part of your paper, so ensure you leave a proper amount of time to talk through them (say 50% of your overall time, if a qualitative presentation).
Everyone uses Powerpoint—think about trying Prezi.
Watch copyright—you shouldn’t use images that aren’t in the public domain. You can find many images that are available for reuse via Google Search/Images/Settings/Labelled for reuse.
ConnectING with your audience
This is the key to everything: talk to your audience. Try to connect with them. Imagine, for instance, that they are a friend that you really want to explain something to. You’re not trying to be smart, or clever, or get them to approve of you—you just want to explain something to them about what you’ve done, what you’ve found, and what it means. So breathe, focus, speak to the people in the room (or online). Try not to just rattle through what you have to say.
That means trying, yourself, to connect with the ‘story’ of what you are saying: if it’s meaningful to you it’s more likely to be meaningful to your audience.
Remember that, nearly always, your audience are there to learn from you—not to judge you. They haven’t come along to your presentation thinking, ‘Hmm, I wonder if [insert your name here] is a good presenter or not. I’d really like to know.’ In fact, the harsh truth is that they’re almost certainly not thinking much about you at all. Rather, they’re thinking, ‘Hmm… I’d be interested to know more about [insert your topic here]’. So the question you should be asking yourself is not ‘How can I prove I’m good enough?’ but, ‘What can I teach these people?’
Lead your audience through your talk. You may be really familiar with your material, but they are unlikely to be. So explain things properly: from why you did your research, to what your findings mean, to what it says, ultimately, about clinical practice.
Know who your audience is and adjust accordingly. For instance, a group of experienced practitioners may know, and want, very different things from a group of early stage researchers. Think about what your audience will want from the talk. And what they might already know (that you don’t need to repeat)?
Try not to read directly from your notes, or from your slides. Best to use them as stimuli.
Avoid jargon or lots of acronyms. Keep it as clear and easy to understand as you can. If you need to use acronyms, explain clearly what they mean.
Speak loud and clear—check people can hear you, if need be, particularly at the back.
Watch that you’re not talking too fast, particularly if you’re anxious. Try the talk out with a friend/colleague and get some honest feedback from them.
Pace your talk, so that you have enough time for all of it. It’s a classic mistake to get very caught up in the first part of your talk, and then have to rush the rest (and often the most interesting bits).
Make sure you leave time for questions—so that you’re audience can really engage with you.
Don’t be defensive if asked questions: accept that there may be things to develop in your paper if you can see that.
It’s really bad form to run over time, as it means you’re eating into the next person’s allocated slot (or everyone’s coffee/lunch). So if you’re asked to stop, stop. (I once saw a presentation where the speaker, already running 30 minutes over time, starting asking the audience whether or not they thought he should be hauled off. Very, very awkward!)
It’s fine to bring yourself in to the presentation, and often that’s a way of helping the audience connect with you. For instance, why did you, personally, want to do this study? What did you, personally, get out of it?
Humour can be a great way of connecting, and cartoons can often lighten a talk and engage and audience. But don’t force humour if it’s not there or if it’s not ‘you’.
And, finally, don’t stand in front of the projector!
Posters
If you’re not keen on presenting a paper orally, you can always present a ‘poster’. That can be particularly appropriate if your work is still in progress. And it’s another great work of initiating dialogue around your work with other members of the counselling community.
DISCLAIMER
The information, materials, opinions or other content (collectively Content) contained in this blog have been prepared for general information purposes. Whilst I’ve endeavoured to ensure the Content is current and accurate, the Content in this blog is not intended to constitute professional advice and should not be relied on or treated as a substitute for specific advice relevant to particular circumstances. That means that I am not responsible for, nor will be liable for any losses incurred as a result of anyone relying on the Content contained in this blog, on this website, or any external internet sites referenced in or linked in this blog.