4 Lessons From HBO’s Chernobyl On Giving Great Presentations
Do you get nervous when giving a speech or live presentation? Or are you interested in becoming a better public speaker and storyteller? If so, I’ve got some great tips to share with you about becoming a better, more confident, and effective communicator. To do this, I’m going to draw on some lessons from… Chernobyl.
Wait, did you say Chernobyl?
Right, you might be wondering what what the heck a nuclear disaster has to do with giving presentations and public speaking. What I’m actually referring to is the HBO hit mini-series Chernobyl, specifically the events that transpire in the season finale.
If you haven’t watched the series, it tells the story of a nuclear disaster that occurred in Chernobyl in 1986. The series is mainly told from the perspective of Valery Legasov, the lead scientist tasked with investigating and containing the disaster (and who is played by actor Jared Harris).
The series finale culminates in a court hearing where Legasov must testify on what exactly went wrong at Chernobyl. Overall, the series is fantastic, but these court-hearing scenes solidified my love for the show and got me thinking about what aspiring storytellers can learn from it.
If you haven't watched the series, I highly recommend you do so. But even if it’s not your thing, the series finale, episode 5, features what I think is a masterclass in effective storytelling.
Legasov’s dilemma is that he must explain the science of nuclear reactivity to a generalist audience, and he does so masterfully. I’m not sure how much of these court hearings is based on fact. But even if it’s a complete work of fiction, the lessons we can get from these courtroom scenes remain the same.
There are four key lessons from the series finale that I believe anyone interested in becoming a better presenter and storyteller needs to take note of. These lessons include:
Demonstrating your expertise
Showing the audience empathy
Observing the 3 P’s (planning, preparation and practice)
Using abstraction effectively
In this article, I’ll unpack each of these lessons individually. But if you’d rather watch a video, you can check out the vid below. Otherwise, read on below.
1) Demonstrate your expertise
Consider for a moment who Legasov was addressing. His audience comprised a mix of the general public, lawyers, Soviet government personnel, etc. Many of these people weren’t experts in the science of nuclear reactivity and likely had little to no understanding of the topic. Also, we, the viewers, are part of Legasov’s audience, as the show needs to communicate these concepts and ideas to us so we can follow along.
Throughout his courtroom testimony, Legasov continuously demonstrated and reinforced his expertise in the science of nuclear reactivity, how RBMK reactors work, and what led to the eventual meltdown at Chernobyl. He did this by telling stories, breaking down complex concepts, and communicating with a calm and confident demeanour.
Legasov is also effective because he is deeply knowledgeable about the underlying subject matter, which is evident to the viewers. But he doesn’t establish his expertise and credentials by tirelessly ranting about his qualifications. Don’t get me wrong; it can be useful to introduce yourself and share some of your achievements when giving a presentation or speech. However, when speakers lean too far into their own bio and credentials, it can diminish trust and attention in your talk.
In my opinion, a useful example of where a presenter failed to demonstrate their expertise (among other things) can be found in Benny Johnson’s TEDx talk called Find your Inner Scientist (you can find it on YouTube). Johnson spends the first 2.5 minutes trying to explain what he does as a reporter at Buzzfeed, claiming the internet to be “his laboratory” and talking about how he’s a former chemical scientist who now creates cat memes. He follows this up with a minute-long video of random internet memes. Nothing in Johnson’s introduction fits together in a cohesive way, nor does it establish him as an expert or authority in anything (even cat memes). It’s a complete mess.
It might seem like a stretch to contrast a TedTalk with a fictional retelling of courtroom testimony on nuclear reactivity. These speakers obviously had different audiences and objectives. But, in both cases, they’ve been selected to address an audience because they are ostensibly experts on a particular topic. Furthermore, in both scenarios, their core objective is to educate and enlighten the viewers.
On the other hand, in Legasov’s courtroom testimony, he doesn’t talk about himself at all. Rather, he starts with a clear and compelling statement:
“To understand what happened at Chernobyl, you only need to know this. There are essentially two things that happen inside of a nuclear reactor. The reactivity that generates power either goes up or it goes down.”
He then proceeds to explain the science of nuclear reactivity in a simple yet effective way. By focusing on his message and effectively sharing his knowledge, he builds rapport and trust with his viewers.
So, if you’re giving a presentation as an expert, try to strike a balance between ‘telling’ the audience who you are, and showing them. You can do this by telling stories and breaking down complex ideas or concepts. But another helpful technique is to not over-bake your opening statements when introducing yourself. Remember that your expertise doesn’t need to be told to your viewers ad nauseam. Instead, expertise can be demonstrated through your message, delivery and the lessons you have to share.
2) Show the audience empathy
The second important lesson of Legasov’s presentation is empathy. He understood that his audience didn’t have much knowledge or understanding of the topic at hand, and he delivered a presentation that was accessible to his viewers. In short, he was aware of and empathic with his audience's experiences and knowledge levels.
Being a great presenter demands that you know your audience. Are you addressing experts or generalists? Do they have any understanding or exposure to the topic or subject matter? Are they familiar with key concepts and jargon? For example, imagine a Ph.D. candidate presenting their latest peer-reviewed paper. This individual would need to adapt their presentation to an audience of her/his academic peers compared to, say, an audience of generalists.
A common mistake some public speakers make is not tailoring their presentations to their audience. Even in the world of sales, not understanding your audience is a huge mistake. For example, say you’re selling enterprise software. You wouldn’t pitch to a CEO the same way you pitch to someone more junior in the organization.
In sales, there’s something known as qualifying, which is the process of collecting information (either before or during a meeting) to qualify whether the prospect could be a potential buyer and to understand their needs. Public speakers can also leverage this technique by qualifying their audience beforehand.
I give many talks at conferences and events, and one of the things I always do before a speaking engagement is collect information about the people attending the event. If I’m speaking at a conference, I ask the organizers for as much information about the attendees as possible. If I’m teaching a workshop or class, I prepare a pre-workshop survey that I send to the students so I can understand their prior exposure to the subject matter.
In summary, great presenters seek out information about their audience beforehand and tailor their presentation content, style and language accordingly.
3) The 3 P’s of storytelling
The third aspect of Legasov’s presentation that makes it fantastic is that he clearly adhered to the 3 P’s of storytelling. That is, his courtroom testimony could not have been so effective without planning, preparation, and practice.
Some experts fall into the trap of thinking they can wing a presentation by relying on their knowledge. Of course, some people are fast thinkers and can give great, off-the-cuff presentations. But these people are a minority. The truth is that all great storytellers combine their expertise with thorough planning, preparation and practice.
When I give presentations, I consider my audience and the subject matter. I consider the room dynamic and setup (e.g. is it a small classroom or a big lecture hall, how will the seats and tables be arranged, etc). After initial preparation, I create an outline of my speech or presentation slides to iron out my story). If I use a presentation tool like PowerPoint, I use animations and builds to help augment my story and give my audience focal points. Finally, once that’s all done, I rehearse. It’s a lot of work, but it pays off. And if you tend to be nervous in front of big groups, preparation will help soften your nerves.
When it comes to bigger presentations, like keynotes or conference sessions, one thing I always do is rehearse (i.e. practice). This is especially important if you’re working within a time limit and presenting with slides. So, if you are giving a presentation to a large audience, or if you’re a nervous speaker addressing a small group, find yourself a quiet space to rehearse.
Overall, planning, preparation, and practice take time. But the more time you put into a presentation, from planning to content creation to rehearsal, the better the outcome will be.
4. Use abstraction effectively
The last thing we can learn about Legasov’s courtroom testimony is his use of abstraction.
What does this mean?
The philosopher and academic Luciano Floridi developed a concept known as the levels of abstraction, which provide a structured way to view and interpret various phenomena, be it in computer science, philosophy, or other disciplines like business and marketing. The basic idea is that phenomena can be described at various levels of abstraction, where lower levels are more technical and detailed and higher levels are more conceptual.
Let’s take large language models as an example. Here are two definitions of how an LLM works.
Definition 1 (high level of abstraction)
Large language models (LLMs) are powerful machine-learning models that can understand and generate natural language. They are trained on massive datasets of text and code, which allows them to learn the patterns and relationships that exist in language
Source - https://medium.com/@akash.kesrwani99/what-arellm-large-language-model-51d1315acaf4
Definition 2 (low level of abstraction)
A large language model (LLM), such as GPT-4, is a deep learning algorithm trained on a massive dataset that can perform a variety of natural language processing (NLP) tasks and generally rely on what’s known as a transformer model. A transformer model is the most common architecture of a large language model, and it consists of an encoder and a decoder. A transformer model processes data by tokenizing the input, then simultaneously conducting mathematical equations to discover relationships between tokens. This enables the computer to see the patterns a human would see were it given the same query.
Source: https://www.elastic.co/what-is/large-language-models
These definitions sit at different levels of abstraction. Definition 1 sits at a higher level and is, hence, more abstract. While definition 2 sits at a lower level and is less abstract. The point is, you don’t have to be a computer scientist to understand how LLM’s, at least on a basic level. As a presenter and storyteller, you can use and sometimes even traverse different levels of abstraction to communicate ideas with your audience.
Let’s come back to Legasov and the opening statement I mentioned earlier.
“To understand what happened at Chernobyl, you only need to know this. There are essentially two things that happen inside of a nuclear reactor. The reactivity that generates power either goes up [he holds up a red card] or it goes down [he holds up a blue card].”
The red and blue cards are used as props to explain the science of nuclear reactivity in an abstract way. Red cards demonstrate factors (e.g. uranium fuel) that cause reactivity to rise, while blue cards demonstrate factors (e.g. boron control rods) that cause reactivity to decrease. It’s a beautifully simple yet effective way of using abstraction to teach an audience about something complex.
Ultimately, this method offers an accessible and informative overview of 1) how nuclear reactivity works and 2) what went wrong at Chernobyl.
Watching this series reminded me of another great presentation by the late Hans Rosling. Rosling, a Swedish physician, academic and storyteller, was known for breaking down complex ideas and giving highly engaging presentations. He was known for presenting with statistical visualization software that he developed, known as Gapminder. This software animates scatter plot charts showing how socio-economic data, such as income and life expectancy, trend over time. But it was Rosling’s 2010 TED talk, titled Global population growth, box by box, that I was reminded of when watching Chornobyl’s series finale.
In this presentation, Rosling dropped his usual digital format, powered by his Gapminder software, and opted to communicate his data through physical objects instead. In just 10 minutes, Rosling masterfully teaches the audience about population growth and socio-economic disparities between industrialized and developing nations using nothing but IKEA boxes.
Given how technically impressive his Gapminder presentations were, his Box-by-Box TED Talk may sound reductive. But when I first watched it, I found this to be his most informative and engaging presentation yet.
Back to HBO’s Chernobyl, Legasov’s method of using blue and red cards was incredibly effective because his choice of abstraction was perfectly in tune with his presentation style and delivery. Furthermore, it worked because Legasov demonstrated his expertise, empathized with his audience’s experience, and was thoroughly prepared. When you combine all these things with the choice of the right abstraction, you get a great presentation!
Key-takeaways
HBO’s Chernobyl isn’t just a great show; it also teaches valuable lessons about how to be a better public speaker and storyteller. These lessons include 1) demonstrating your expertise by telling stories and breaking down complex topics, 2) empathizing with and knowing your audience, 3) planning, preparation and practice, and 4) using abstraction effectively.
I hope you enjoyed this post, and thanks for reading.
