Wow your clients using Mind Maps® to Plan and Deliver your Presentations
It is September 19th, International Talk Like a Pirate Day (honestly!) and I’m due to talk to Clive Lewis about using Mind Maps in presentations. Now Clive is one of the world’s leading authorities on using Mind Maps for business applications, but I’m worried about how I am going to take him seriously. He has been popping out of his office every few minutes with a seemingly endless succession of pirate jokes, and he is wearing an eye patch!
I shouldn’t have worried; once he started talking about using Mind Maps to prepare for and deliver presentations, his passion for the subject shone through. Clive talks from an impressive experience base. He started using Mind Maps 30 years ago and long before he co-founded Illumine in 1996, he had used Mind Maps virtually every day, firstly as an Accountant (he became a Finance Director by the time he was 30) and then later as a Management Consultant with one of the ‘Big 6′ firms. He has prepared and delivered hundreds of presentations using Mind Maps and is frequently interviewed by newspapers, radio and TV.
We started with the subject of preparation: “The great thing about using Mind Maps in the preparation phase is that you can do a lot of thinking before you start to decide on a structure for your presentation. You can map on a single page all of the different aspects of the presentation: your objectives, what you know about the audience and their likely objectives, the venue and layout, possible content, what you know and what you need to know more about, how the presentation could go wrong, what questions are likely to come up, what do you know about preceding or following presenters, what do you want people to do as a result of hearing and seeing your presentation, what media could you use, ideas for interactivity etc. Put it all on one sheet and actively look for cross-fertilisation of the different elements”
So in other words a brain dump of everything? “Exactly! Think as widely about the subject as possible. Most people rush to get to a point where they have the structure of the presentation nailed down and as a consequence of this, rush through this most vital stage of thinking and exploration. I can’t stress strongly enough how important this is.”
Message understood! I asked him what comes next. “Well, part two is where your presentation starts to take shape. Take a look at your possible content and start to decide what you will (and what you won’t) include in your presentation. Start by annotating your first map and then draft out onto a new map. Include plenty of detail and add ideas for how to bring your subject to life with stories and anecdotes. If it is important, complex or a long presentation, you may need to go through several iterations at this stage until you are happy with the content and shape of your presentation.”
I then asked Clive about what he uses to deliver his presentations. I have seen him present several times and all he seemed to have with him was a single Mind Map. “That’s right” he told me, “For any presentation I will take with me one map with enough information on it to act as a prompt for the delivery of the presentation. I aim for one word for each 30 to 60 seconds of talking. Enough to keep me on track and little enough to give me the flexibility and spontaneity that I believe are key to presenting well.”
My final question was about whether or not everyone could use Mind Maps to prepare and deliver presentations in the way he had described to me. He smiled, remembering what day it was and slid his eye patch back into place. “Aye” he said, “Mind Maps will turn ye into a staaaarrrrrrrrrrrrr.”
Illumine also offers a number of courses and workshops to help you with Mind Mapping, Planning and Presentation techniques:
Illumine Business Mapping (Mind Mapping for Business Advantage)
Our 1 day comprehensive public workshop and in-house course, a ½ day public seminar or a ½ day in-house course:
- Find out more about the 1 day public workshop (London, Manchester, Atlanta and Dubai) and in-house course here…
- Find out more about the ½ day public seminar (London, Manchester and Birmingham) here…
- Find out more about the ½ day in-house course here…
Professional Presentations
Our compact 1 day or comprehensive 2 day in-house course that focuses on presentation techniques that help you to know your audience, prepare effectively and deliver with IMPACT. It’s not a course that focuses on presenting with PowerPoint®.
Mind Map® and Mind Maps® are trademarks of the Buzan Organisation.
MindManager® and Mindjet® are trademarks of Mindjet.
Tags: Business Mapping (Training), Mind Mapping Seminar (Training), Mind Maps, Planning techniques, Presentation techniques, Professional Presentations (Training), Sept/Oct 2008 - The Presentation Dilemma
