MAP Your Way to Effective Presentations

By Michael Grepo

One of the biggest fears that I think anyone has is to get in front of a group and give a less than perfect presentation. Introverts like myself feel especially vulnerable in such situations. To help myself (and others), I’ve come up with an easy-to-remember way to cover the steps needed to prepare effective presentations: MAP.

The first and most important thing is the Message:

You must have it clearly in your head what the message is that you want to give to your audience. This applies whether your audience is one person, ten people, fifty, or more. You can’t expect your intended audience to come to your conclusion if you aren’t clear on it yourself. Ask yourself what do you want your prospects to take away with them after you are done? It should be easy to see why this is the first thing to think about: How else can you come up with a logical, well thought-out presentation unless the ultimate message is clear in your head?

The next step is to develop your Action Plan:

Once you have figured out your message, you should think about how you want to convey what you have to say to your audience. Some factors to consider include:

• How much time will you have? Will you have 20 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, or more?
• Where are you going to make this presentation? Will it be around a table, in front of a classroom, a large auditorium, or some other setting?
• How much time do you have to prepare for your presentation? Do you have a day, a week, or a month to develop your presentation?
• What tools would help you make your presentation most effective, given your time and environmental considerations? Should you use handouts, a slide presentation, other visual aids, or even other presenters to assist you?
• How well do you know the information that you will present? How much research must be done?
• Who will be your audience? Will it be just your immediate supervisor, a group of students learning something new, or a room full of experts?
• How complication or elaborate does your presentation need to be? Is the path to your ultimate message or conclusion relatively straightforward, or do you need to weave a storyline together, presenting a fair amount of information and analysis?

Once you answer these questions, you will be well on your way to having an Action Plan that defines your strategy for creating your presentation. Now you can plan out the process you will use to create your presentation, e.g., research, meetings, story outline, draft and review, how you might want to use presentation tools such Microsoft PowerPoint to help convey information and tell the story. 

In you Action Plan, you should include the time you will need to practice giving your presentation. Why practice?

• Timing, to know how long your presentation will run
• Familiarity, to be acquainted with the material in the order you are going to discuss it
• Efficiency, so you don’t read it and you are able to focus more on the audience and the moment

Rehearing is especially important if you are not creating the presentation by yourself. To be an effective presenter, you should be very familiar with the material and how it should be communicated to your audience. Practicing is the only way to become comfortable with the content and flow of your presentation. And the confidence that you feel from really knowing what it is you’re going to say and how you are going to say it will be evident to your audience.

Finally, you should have a Punch line:

Come up with a distinctive way for your audience to remember what it is you are trying to tell them. You don’t have to have a true “punch line” or witty saying. You can help your audience create an image in their head. You can create an acronym (e.g., “MAP”). You can even restate your major point or message in a way that is different or surprising. Your goal is to give your audience something that hooks them or gives them something they relate to, so that they easily remember the point of what you said after you conclude your presentation.

So, make sure to MAP your presentations to help ensure you have successful ones:

• Message
• Action Plan
• Punch line
  

Learn more about Michael Grepo in our Contributors section.