The Soft Skills You Need to Advance Your Scientific Leadership - Programme

MODULE 1: Setting Up and Delivering a Workshop – Confessions of a trainer!
16 March 2022; h. 9:00 am – 01:00 pm CEST

 In this workshop, we will consider

• Mode of delivery: face-to-face vs virtual platform
• The learning curve: your early workshops will be a challenge
• Participants and their expectations
• Scheduling
• Participant comfort
• Communication before the workshop
• Workshop series: lightening the administrative workload
• Materials and resources
• Starting and introductions
• Venue and arrangement of equipment and furniture if face-to-face
• IT issues if delivered virtually
• Participation and exercises
• Slides for workshops and other visual aids
• Starting the workshop
• Matters arising and feedback after the workshop
• Contingency planning and troubleshooting
• Dealing with feedback
• Workshop Design Toolkit

MODULE 2: Oral Presentations – Skills to help you survive or even shine
21 April 2022, h. 9:00 am – 01:00 pm CEST

In this workshop, we will consider

• What you need to know before preparing slides.
• Managing equipment and the environment.
• Rehearsing and keeping to time.
• Increasing the impact of an oral presentation.
• Presentation nerves.
• Voice and body language.
• Questions and difficult people.
• Individual participant presentations.

Practical elements of the workshop will include:

• Critique of a well-known orator: how they use voice and body language to maximise interest and impact
• Participants will have the opportunity to deliver a short presentation (3 minutes) with up to 6 slides prepared before the workshop. Participants and lecturer will give constructive feedback.

MODULE 3 : Great Topic – Shame About the Slides! Creating clear and professional-looking slide decks to communicate biomedical science
08 June 2022, h. 09:00 am – 01:00 pm CEST

Rogues’ gallery: slides you would not be proud of
Purpose of a slide deck: diversity of presentations
Challenges when preparing slides
Presenting live vs. viewing at leisure
Have a good structure – flow and bridges
Slides for oral presentations: 10 tips

In this workshop, we will consider

• Slide rules: time per slide, avoiding text and clutter
• Distraction: appropriate delivery of text, images and speech
• Lists: often necessary, but make them as pleasant to view as possible
• Fonts, bullets, spacing, alignment, and how to prevent ‘jumping’
• Useful tools: ‘Slide Master’, ‘Format Painter’, alignment tools, guides, paragraph and line spacing
• Backgrounds, colours, contrasts, margins, resolution
• Text and images on the same slide
• Examples of complex slides
• Principles of designing self-guided learning slides, with examples
• Proofing: achieving a professional finish

Exercises/discussion

• Discussion: diversity of presentations
• Discussion: challenges when designing slides
• Which style of emphasis do you prefer?
• Which method of combining text and an image on a slide do you prefer?
• Experience/discussion about using some useful PowerPoint tools
• Exercise: critique a sloppy slide