4 reasons a presentation outline is a must

Imagine we were asked to read a book that had no title on its cover, no table of contents and no chapter headings.

We would have to begin reading and try to figure out what the book is about. We would find ourselves trying to decode, piece by piece, chapter by chapter, why the book was written and what it’s trying to convey. Think about added effort involved. Think about how dramatically that increases the prospects that we’ll give up on the book and toss it aside.

Now apply that example to a live presentation. People sitting in the audience, not given the benefit of a presentation outline, somewhat lost, feeling like they are working too hard to understand and track the presentation. One can imagine they would soon drift off and start occupying their minds with other things, like their BlackBerry or Android.

And there you have the presenter’s – and audience members – nightmare. A presentation that falls so flat people aren’t interested in paying attention.

That is why it’s critical to offer audience members an outline of your presentation from the outset.

Naturally, it depends how complex your presentation is. Maybe your presentation is so simple and straightforward that the title alone orients the audience. But many presentations, especially those done with the support of PowerPoint, are sorely in need of an outline because they have too many component parts for the audience to track properly over the course of the next 20, 30 or (god forbid) 60 minutes.

Still dubious? Don’t be. The outline does critical things for your audience that will help make your presentation a success. For example, the outline:

1. Foreshadows. To foreshadow is to reveal or indicate beforehand. That can accomplish several things, including whetting an audience’s appetite for your topic, as well as creating anticipation or drama.
2. Gives your audience the big picture. When you give the audience the benefit of a panoramic snapshot of the topic and its component parts, all ensuing information is more readily tracked and absorbed. Start with the whole, then give them the details. Going from general to specific is a better and more digestible way to impart information than going from specific to general.
3. Creates a sense of destiny. No audience wants to be led on a blind journey. They want an informational itinerary. That makes your case or the data you’re providing more meaningful.
4. Helps audience members assimilate information. Though we fancy ourselves multi-taskers capable of learning and doing a multiplicity of things simultaneously, the truth is that humans don’t absorb information very well unless it is presented in a very simple, focused manner. The presenter who is extremely familiar with the information he or she is presenting can’t help but feel it’s simple stuff. But that is absolutely not the case for your audience members.

I’ll give you a personal example of providing an outline. When I gave a short presentation titled The Power of Storytelling to a group at the Walnut Creek (Calif.) Chamber of Commerce, I told my audience that in the next 20 minutes I expect to accomplish three things:

1. To demonstrate why storytelling is the most powerful force in people’s lives
2. To demonstrate how storytelling is being successfully used by business on a grand scale
3. To get you thinking about ways to use storytelling to make your business more successful

By articulating my objectives up front my audience was now prepared to view everything I was about to say through the prism that I had provided. That meant that all the ensuing information I provided could be easily sorted into the three categories or objectives I outlined.

If I didn’t do that I would have left it up to audience members to do the work of organizing everything I was saying to make sense of it. That’s not fair to an audience.

I have one more thing to say on this topic. I’ll share that with you in my next blog post with the help of one of the great speechwriters and linguists of our time. Stay tuned.

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