Ace Surgeon Becomes Star Presenter
I was approached by the Vice President of the world’s largest privately-held medical device company, Arthrex (https://www.arthrex.com/corporate/aboutus) and asked to work with one of their star surgeons, Konrad Slynarski (http://slynarski.pl). A talented orthopaedic surgeon and sports injury specialist, Konrad has his own thriving surgical centre in Warsaw, where sports stars from all over the world travel to benefit from his career-saving surgical interventions. Konrad was being groomed by Arthrex to present their new products at huge international medical conferences. As a surgeon and medical technologist, he was peerless, but his overpowering fear of public speaking left test audiences struggling to remember anything about his presentations other than his extreme anxiety and apparently limitless capacity for perspiration. He had no idea how to manage stage fright, couldn’t engage emotionally with his audience, and his presentations were cluttered, data-heavy, and focused on the technical product features, not on the benefits to the surgeons.
Konrad and I spent two and a half days working together in Warsaw and London, where he presented a major Arthrex device to a surgical conference of three and a half thousand easily bored medics. He was a resounding success, and got fantastic feedback from the delegates. I’d given him simple tools and exercises that allowed him to neutralise the impact of nerves, keep him in a present moment state of flow, and appear relaxed and confident to his audience. We redesigned his presentation to focus on audience advocacy - the technology’s benefits to them rather than its features - and answer the audience’s biggest question, “what’s in it for ME? It was short, sweet, and simply designed, proceeding through an unbroken series of audience "Ah Hah’s" (that’s what’s in it for me!) to a compelling and memorable conclusion.
Konrad and I spent two and a half days working together in Warsaw and London, where he presented a major Arthrex device to a surgical conference of three and a half thousand easily bored medics. He was a resounding success, and got fantastic feedback from the delegates. I’d given him simple tools and exercises that allowed him to neutralise the impact of nerves, keep him in a present moment state of flow, and appear relaxed and confident to his audience. We redesigned his presentation to focus on audience advocacy - the technology’s benefits to them rather than its features - and answer the audience’s biggest question, “what’s in it for ME? It was short, sweet, and simply designed, proceeding through an unbroken series of audience "Ah Hah’s" (that’s what’s in it for me!) to a compelling and memorable conclusion.