A 3-item Checklist to Make Sure Your Next Presentation is Meaningful

My colleague, Heather, has been on fire recently with the templates she’s shared on Train Like A Champion. In case you’ve missed them, she’s shared:

Trello Templates for Learning Design,
a Resource Allocation Template for those needing to stay organized while managing multiple projects, and most recently
Writing Assessment Distractors (how do you create realistic “wrong” answers on multiple-choice assessments).

All of her recent templates have made me wonder if there’s a template or checklist I could share. Then it hit me. While Heather has been sharing some templates for fairly advanced training professionals, perhaps I could take a step back and offer something up for anyone who ever has to give a presentation, regardless of their experience or comfort level in front of an audience.

Is it possible to create a universal checklist of “must-have” items that can be used by anyone with any presentation style or comfort speaking in public?

A video I saw several years ago of Phil Waknell speaking to an audience to help prepare them for TED-like talks, gives a very insightful set of parameters for anyone who may need to present. Here is that video:

I encourage you to watch his talk, but for those who may not have 15 minutes, I’ll share the bottom line: at the end of any presentation you give, your audience should walk away saying three things:

I didn’t know that
I’m glad I do now
I’d like to know more

Perhaps you like to use PowerPoint in every presentation. Perhaps you prefer flipchart and small group discussions. Perhaps you fancy yourself the next Steve Jobs. Perhaps next week you’re giving your first presentation. Those are the three simple things your audience should walk away thinking after any successful presentation.

What do you think? Is it really this simple, or do you think there should be more to measuring a successful presentation? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.

Brian Washburn

administrator

Brian is an author, a sought-after speaker, and an experienced instructional designer who has been a passionate member of the learning and development field for more than two decades. His work has been published in TD magazine, and he was named a Top Young Trainer by Training Magazine in 2011. Brian is the author of two books: What’s Your Formula? Combine Learning Elements for Impactful Training and Instructional Design on a Shoestring.
He is the visionary behind Soapbox, our automated instructional design tool that creates instructor-led training programs in under 10 minutes.
Over his career, Brian has designed and facilitated numerous training programs for a wide range of organizations, including a global training program for a Fortune 500 company and a global train-the-trainer program for Management Sciences for Health.
Brian holds an MA in Organizational Development from Antioch University.
Brian is always available to chat about learning & development and to talk about whether Endurance Learning can be your training team’s “extra set of hands”.

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