How to Brainstorm Productively for Presentations

Brainstorming is like the middle child of the presentation process. It’s easily forgotten or overshadowed by the first-born (content and storytelling), and the last-born (delivery and design). Though the first and last-born represent the most important parts of a presentation, the middle child offers a solid plan that holds everything else together. Without that imperative stage of brainstorming, a presentation can feel misguided or unfocused. Here are some tips on how to productively brainstorm for a presentation.

Use the Right Side of Your Brain

Brainstorming is the first stage of preparing for a presentation and it’s a creative process, which makes it a task for the right side of the brain. It may be difficult for left brained people to switch to a more creative, less process-based way of thinking, but think of brainstorming as a time to let your hair down. Have fun with it; don’t take it too seriously. The left-brain is all about logic, sequence, and rationality. You will need those aspects eventually, to be sure, but at this stage you need to let your mind wander and be free of restrictions. Brainstorming is the time to think of all possibilities, all options, so you can weed out the great ideas amongst the mediocre. You can’t choose the best option without having determined what the available options are. Think outside the box; let your right brain rule, if only for a short while.

There’s No Such Thing as a Bad Idea

In the land of brainstorming, there are no bad ideas. Think of how freeing that knowledge can be. During this magical time, it’s not only acceptable to throw out all crazy, irreverent, out-of-the-box ideas it’s encouraged. Whether you’re brainstorming by yourself or with a group of people, don’t limit yourself to safe ideas. Instead, let your mind expand and think of wild possibilities because considering those out-there ideas might lead to something really great. Get everything written down, and only when you’ve truly exhausted all possibilities should you go through and begin to clear out what is unusable.

Jerry Weissman reinforces over and over again in Presenting to Win that the data dump– a shapeless outpouring of everything the presenter knows about the topic– should be done before the presentation. This process is essential to avoid telling the audience too much and to narrow the focus of the presentation. The brainstorming period is the time to unleash everything you know about your presentation’s topic so you can determine clearly and with relative ease what is the main focus of the presentation. There are no bad ideas and this is the time to put everything out there, so start thinking.

Brainstorm in a Way that Works for You

Some people like lists, others like webs. Some like free writing, some like doodling. She might like writing on a white board, he might like scribbling with a pencil and paper, and they might like taking notes on an iPad.

A classic way to brainstorm is by creating a web of sorts, with main objectives in large circles attached to smaller circles of supporting evidence. Another way is simply listing everything on a sheet of paper and then highlighting correlated topics with different colored highlighters. For those who’d appreciate a more left-brained approach to brainstorming, try answering journalistic questions (who, what, where, when, why, how) or think of your presentation from the perspective of different audience members.

Everyone has a method to brainstorming, to recording his or her creative thoughts. What’s yours? Take it and run with it.





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