Presentation delivery using NovaMind

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In this article, you will discover new ways to make your message heard loud and clear. I will show you how to stay on topic and never get lost in your notes. You will be able to fully get to grips with the techniques for building and holding rapport with your audience and keeping them focussed on the presentation, in a way that they will understand and remember.

In the article on presentation preparation, we talked about the 4-Mat system of presenting information in the order: Why, What, How, and What If.

We were talking about the overall structure of the presentation, and didn’t get into the fine details of delivery and wording, but along with the personality types that are being spoken to with the 4-mat system, there are four basic learning styles, and when you use the actual words that these people understand and resonate with, they will be able to see what you are getting at.

Those main learning styles are:

• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinesthetic
• Auditory digital

Everyone responds to all of these triggers, but everyone has a different amount of response to the different triggers, so catering to all learning styles is important as you give your presentation.

Use of trigger words

When you are giving your talk, you don’t want to overdo all these words, but it is good to vary them so that everyone feels included, and also it’s good to use them early in your presentation so that you hook their attention up front. When you try it, you’ll see that it makes quite a difference to the level of interest that your audience has.

So when I started this article, my opening statement was designed to cover both the why and what people, but also to appeal to all four learning styles:

• discover = auditory digital
• new ways = kinesthetic
• your message = auditory
• heard loud and clear = auditory and visual
• show = visual
• stay on topic/get lost = kinesthetic
• get to grips = kinesthetic
• techniques = auditory digital
• building = kinesthetic
• holding rapport = auditory
• audience = auditory
• focussed = visual
• understand = auditory digital
• remember = auditory digital

So as we go through that, do you see yourself as one particular type? Are there any particular words that resonate with you more than others? Do some of the words talk to you more than others? Can you guess which of the four learning types is my strongest, based on how I present the information?

OK, enough of playing with words – let’s talk about why you should use Mind Maps in particular for your presentations.

Why use Mind Maps for Presentations?

Firstly, it’s really easy for you as a presenter, because your entire presentation is right there in front of you the whole time in a very compact form. You always have the topic at the center of the mind map, and the main points as the first level topics, so you never get lost, and always stay on topic.

It makes it easy to establish stronger eye contact and rapport with your audience because you don’t have to remember where you are up to on a huge page of written notes or shuffle your way through cue cards. Instead you have a diagram that resonates with your visual-spacial memory, so you can immediately see where you are up to, and how that relates to what you have just said and what you are going to cover in the rest of your presentation.

The keywords on the topics keep you on topic without tying you to a particular way of expressing it, so you can open up and use your natural language instead of sounding as if you have read it out, as you would if you had read from traditional notes.

Because you can see at a glance how much information there is left to cover in the presentation, you can pace yourself and always finish on time without rushing, even if you do allow audience participation during the presentation.

Now those things are mostly from the presenter’s point of view, but from the audience’s point of view, they get a clearly structured presentation where they can see how it all fits together. The presentation is logical and flows so they can understand it and fit it in with their existing knowledge. They feel that you are talking directly to them because you are triggering their interest through the 4-mat structure and the learning style keywords.

You can also print the mind map out without text on the topics and hand these maps out to your audience. They can fill in the text on the mind map during your presentation as you reveal it to them. This has a multitude of advantages for their attention and absorption of the information because they:

• see it (great for the visual people)
• they hear it (auditory)
• they get to write it down (kinesthetic)
• they get to think about it and put it into their own words and extend the ideas (auditory digital)

So all the learning styles are fully catered for in one place.

This is a very powerful presentation system.

How to give a presentation from a Mind Map

Start by stating the topic – the mind map’s title. Then go around to the innermost topics to give an introduction and tell people why they should listen to the presentation what to expect from it.

Next, for each of the innermost topics, go through all its sub-topics to give the details for that topic.

Finally to wrap up your presentation, go around the innermost topics again and let that be your summary.

Presentation Tips

Here is a “cheat sheet” for you to use for every presentation so that you engage the audience and give great presentations every time:

• Have the main points in the first level topics, so when you go down to the detail levels, you are still conscious of the main point you are making.
• Make sure there is a visual association through the topic lines and colors between related topics, adding clarity to your presentation.
• Stick to keywords on your mind maps, and let your speech flow from there.
• Add humor where possible to make it more memorable.
• Think of your audience as friends: they all want you to do your best!
• Tell stories: start early in your presentation, but don’t finish the stories until right at the end. This will keep people involved and interested.
• Have your projections and visual aids to the left side from the audience perspective – they will remember it better there.
• Keep an eye on the state of the listeners in the room. Think about what emotional states you want people in at different stages of your presentation, and design your content to elicit that state.
• Remember that you will have people who learn differently in your audience – make sure you cater to all four learning styles.

Structure your presentation so that you cover the areas of:

• Why they need to know this information
• What the information is
• How it all works
• What if the situation changes, or they encounter difficulties

Keep questions until you get to the “What if” section of the presentation to make sure the message is covered and then, so that people know that there is going to be an opportunity for them to get their questions answered.

If you have the Platinum edition of NovaMind 5 for Windows (coming soon as a free update for Platinum Mac users), then you would clearly use the NovaMind Presenter, since it is custom designed to allow you to give great presentations from your Mind Maps, presenting the right level of information at the right time, and keeping the context clear, but if you don’t have the Platinum edition, you can still hook up to a projector to show the Mind Map on screen, and you can print out the Mind Map as a handout for your audience.

Now when you give the presentation, you can easily:

• Make sure that your message is heard loud and clear,
• Stay on topic,
• Be interesting,
• Build rapport with your audience,
• and Communicate effectively.