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10 Common Presentation Mistakes

Avoiding common pitfalls in your presentations.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Most of us have experienced dull, irrelevant or confusing presentations. But think back to the last really great presentation you saw – one that was informative, motivating and inspiring. Wouldn't you love to be able to present like that?

This article looks at 10 of the most common mistakes that speakers make when giving presentations. By avoiding these, you'll make your presentations stand out – for all of the right reasons, and none of the wrong ones.

Mistake 1: Not Preparing Enough

Steve Jobs was a famously inspiring speaker. His speeches may have looked effortless, but, in reality, each one took days or weeks of preparation.

Careful preparation is essential. The amount of time you spend on planning depends on your situation, but it's a good idea to start early – you can never be too well-prepared.

Proper preparation also helps you to manage presentation nerves . When you know your material inside and out, you're far less likely to feel nervous. Our presentation planning checklist and Skillbook " Even Better Presentations " can help you to plan your next event properly.

Mistake 2: Not Familiarizing Yourself With the Venue and Equipment

Imagine that your presentation starts in an hour. You arrive at the venue and, to your horror, the projector won't work with your laptop. The slides you spent hours preparing are useless. This is a disaster!

You can avoid a situation like this by taking time to familiarize yourself with the venue and available equipment at least once before your presentation.

Often, the sorts of problems that can jeopardize your presentation will be situations beyond your control, but this doesn't mean that you're helpless. Conduct a risk analysis to identify potential issues, and come up with a good "Plan B" for each one.

Mistake 3: Ignoring Your Audience

Sometimes, speakers can get so wrapped up in delivering their presentations that they forget about the needs of their audience.

Start your presentation by telling your audience what to expect. Let them know what you'll cover first, whether and when you'll stop for a break, if you'll be taking questions during the presentation, and so on.

Providing these "signposts" up front will give your audience a clear idea of what to expect, so that they can relax and concentrate on your presentation.

Mistake 4: Using Inappropriate Content

The primary purpose of any presentation is to share information with others, so it's important to consider the level you'll pitch it at.

Do some research on your audience. Why are they here? How much do they already know about your topic, and what do they most want to learn from you? It's no use giving a presentation that's so full of jargon that no one understands you. But you wouldn't want to patronize people, either.

Try to put yourself in people's shoes, to get a clearer idea about their needs and motivations. You can also greet individuals as they arrive on the day, and ask questions to get a feel for their level of knowledge. This will also help you to personalize your presentation and make a connection with each person in your audience, so that they'll be more attentive to what you say.

Mistake 5: Being Too Verbose

Short, concise presentations are often more powerful than verbose ones. Try to limit yourself to a few main points. If you take too long getting to your point, you risk losing your audience's attention.

The average adult has a 15- to 20-minute attention span. So, if you want to keep your audience engaged, stick to the point! During the planning phase, make a note of the themes you want to cover and how you want to get them across. Then, when you start filling out the details, ask yourself: "Does my audience really need to know this?"

Our articles on the 7 Cs of Communication and Communications Planning have more tips for communicating in a clear, concise way.

Mistake 6: Using Ineffective Visuals

Poor slides can spoil a good presentation, so it's worth spending time getting yours right.

We've all seen slides with garish colors, unnecessary animation, or fonts that are too small to read. The most effective presentation visuals aren't flashy – they're concise and consistent.

When choosing colors, think about where the presentation will take place. A dark background with light or white text works best in dark rooms, while a white background with dark text is easier to see in a brightly lit room.

Choose your pictures carefully, too. High-quality graphics can clarify complex information and lift an otherwise plain screen, but low-quality images can make your presentation appear unprofessional. Unless an image is contributing something, embrace the negative space – less clutter means greater understanding. Use animation sparingly, too – a dancing logo or emoji will only distract your audience.

Mistake 7: Overcrowding Text

The best rule of thumb for text is to keep it simple . Don't try to cram too much information into your slides. Aim for a maximum of three to four words within each bullet point, and no more than three bullets per slide.

This doesn't mean that you should spread your content over dozens of slides. Limit yourself to 10 slides or fewer for a 30-minute presentation. Look at each slide, story or graph carefully. Ask yourself what it adds to the presentation, and remove it if it isn't important.

Mistake 8: Speaking Incoherently

Even though we spend a significant part of the day talking to one another, speaking to an audience is a surprisingly difficult skill, and it's one that we need to practice.

If nerves make you rush through a presentation, your audience could miss your most important points. Use centering or deep breathing techniques to suppress the urge to rush. If you do begin to babble, take a moment to collect yourself. Breathe deeply, and enunciate each word clearly, while you focus on speaking more slowly.

Our article on better public speaking has strategies and tips that you can use to become a more engaging speaker. One useful technique is storytelling – stories can be powerful tools for inspiring and engaging others. Our Expert Interviews with Annette Simmons and Paul Smith have tips that you can use to tell great stories.

Mistake 9: Showing a Lack of Dynamism

Another common mistake is to freeze in one spot for the duration of your presentation.

Some presenters feel most comfortable behind the podium. Try to emulate great speakers like Steve Jobs , who moved purposefully around the stage during his presentations.

As well as working the stage, he used gestures and body language to communicate his excitement and passion for his subject. Pay attention to what your hands are doing – they're important for communicating emotion. But only use gestures if they feel natural, and avoid being too flamboyant with your arms, unless you want to make your audience laugh!

See our Expert Interview, " Winning Body Language ," to learn more about body language and what it says to your audience.

Mistake 10: Avoiding Eye Contact

Have you ever been to a presentation where the speaker spent all of their time looking at their notes, the screen, the floor, or even at the ceiling? How did this make you feel?

Meeting a person's gaze establishes a personal connection, and even a quick glance can keep people engaged. If your audience is small enough, try to make eye contact with each individual at least once.

If the audience is too large for this, try looking at people's foreheads. The individual may not interpret it as eye contact, but those sitting around them will.

It takes practice and effort to deliver a good presentation. But, if you know how to avoid the pitfalls, your presentations will be great.

Common presentation mistakes include not preparing properly, delivering inappropriate content, and speaking poorly.

Time spent on careful planning always pays dividends. Check out the venue, and familiarize yourself with equipment in advance to avoid possible problems.

Keep your content clear and concise, with visual aids to match. And make sure that you pitch it at the right level for your audience's understanding, so that your presentation doesn't patronize or bewilder.

Remember, public speaking is a performance. Practice speaking clearly with a slower pace than your normal speech to avoid "rapid-fire" delivery. Use eye contact, body language and gestures that complement your message to keep your audience engaged.

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Five Presentation Mistakes Everyone Makes

Nancy Duarte

Learn from the most common traps.

We all know what it’s like to sit through a bad presentation. We can easily spot the flaws — too long, too boring, indecipherable, what have you — when we watch others speak. The thing is, when we take the stage ourselves, many of us fall into the same traps.

ND Nancy Duarte is a best-selling author with thirty years of CEO-ing under her belt. She’s driven her firm, Duarte, Inc., to be the global leader behind some of the most influential messages and visuals in business and culture. Duarte, Inc., is the largest design firm in Silicon Valley, as well as one of the top woman-owned businesses in the area. Nancy has written six best-selling books, four have won awards, and her new book, DataStory: Explain Data and Inspire Action Through Story , is available now. Follow Duarte on Twitter: @nancyduarte or LinkedIn .

28 Common Presentation Mistakes. Which are you making?

Articles and Resources
> Interpersonal and Communication Skills
> 28 Common Presentation Mistakes. Which are you making?

The best presenters and speakers continually hone their skills and test out new material. Regardless of how much presenting experience you have, don’t assume you have nothing new to learn. But don’t strive for perfection either. Instead, identify a few issues that you could improve upon and work on those first – starting with whatever will have the biggest impact on your presentations.

So how do you go from average to outstanding presenter? Have a look at our list of the 28 biggest presentation mistakes that most presenters make. Is there anything we missed?

1. Starting poorly

Make sure to start your presentations with impact. Saying, “Welcome, my name is ___. Today we will be talking about…” is boring . Do something different – be bold, creative, inspiring! And arrive early so you won’t feel flustered, which will carry over into your presentation. Most importantly, be interesting!

2. Failing to address the audience’s concerns

Before you even think about creating a presentation, know what your audience is struggling with so that you can solve their problem or address their concerns.

3. Boring your audience

If you can’t be interesting, don’t bother speaking in front of people.

4. Failing to engage emotionally

We like to think that humans make rational decisions, but studies show that people make decisions based on emotion, and then rationalize their decisions afterwards.

5. Using too much jargon

Your language needs to be appropriate for your audience. They can’t listen to you while they’re trying to figure out what you said. If you speak in circles around them, they may never fully catch up. If you can’t avoid the use of jargon or a technical term, be sure to explain what it means when you introduce it, and don’t introduce too many at once.

6. Being too wordy or rambling

Don’t use up an hour of time when 20 minutes will do. Respect people’s time and get to the point. Be concise and don’t ramble. But don’t rush, either. Yes, it’s a fine line.

7. Going over your allotted time

This is a simple matter of respect. If your presentation goes over your allotted time, there’s a good chance your audience will lose interest and leave anyway – or at the very least, stop listening because they’ll be focused on other commitments and trying to figure out how they will adjust.

8. Lack of focus

Your slide deck should help you stay on track. Use it as a guide to make sure you move logically from one point to another.

9. Reading slides verbatim

In all likelihood, your audience can read perfectly well without your assistance. If you’re just going to read to them, you might as well save everyone some time and just send them a copy of your slide deck. This isn’t the place for a bedtime story.

Challenge yourself to put as few words on the slides as possible, so that you can’t read from them. Could you do your entire presentation with only one word on each slide? If not, this is an indication that you may not know your materials well enough.

10. Poor slide design

PowerPoint gets a bad rap because 99% of slides are very poorly designed, but it’s not Bill Gates’ fault that the world lacks design skills! Just because a feature is available in PowerPoint, doesn’t mean you need to use it.

In fact, when you start designing a presentation, it’s best if you don’t even open PowerPoint. Use Microsoft Word to create an outline first. Focus on the content and structure, and only when that is outstanding, move to PowerPoint and start designing your slides.

If you don’t know how to design good slides, find someone who does or learn. While poor slide design probably won’t make or break your presentation, it can undermine your credibility and distract your audience – or worse – help put them to sleep.

Depending on the type of presentation, you may want to consider the 10/20/30 rule from Guy Kawasaki . Ten slides for a 20-minute presentation with fonts no smaller than 30 points. It’s not appropriate for all types of presentations, but it’s a nice guideline and slide-to-duration ratio.

Be careful when buying PowerPoint templates – while they may look pretty, more often than not, the design is not conducive to great presentations. The fonts are almost always too light and/or small to be read at the back of a room and the designers often cram too much on one slide. Buying presentation templates only works if you understand good design. Don’t trust that just because a “professional” designed it, that it’s any good. It can take longer to fix a poorly designed slide than to just build one from scratch.

11. Cramming in too much information

If the audience can’t make sense of the data, or if they have to stop listening to you so they can read, you’re doing it wrong. Simplicity and white space are your friends. Think, “How would Apple design a slide deck?”

12. Incorporating too much data

Ask yourself, “Why am I including this data?”, “What action do I want to inspire?”, and “If I removed this, could I still make my point?” to help determine if the data relevant enough to include.

“We have met the Devil of Information Overload and his impish underlings, the computer virus, the busy signal, the dead link, and the PowerPoint presentation.” – James Gleick

13. Relying on PowerPoint as your only presentation tool

Even when used correctly, PowerPoint should not be your only tool. Use flip charts, white boards, post-it notes, and other tools to engage your audience. Try to break up the amount of time the audience spends staring at a screen.

14. Making it about you

As the presenter, you are the least important person in the room. When you understand that and focus on the goal of helping your audience, you can eliminate a lot of the nervousness that comes with presenting.

15. Being a Diva

To be a great presenter, one could argue that you have to have a slightly inflated sense of ego and tough skin. It’s not easy standing in front of a room full of people (often complete strangers) who will critique your performance without knowing anything about you or the kind of day you’ve had. That inflated ego can be useful in protecting you when things don’t go well.

But your ego doesn’t give you permission to act like you’re more important than everyone else. You’re the least important person in the room, remember?

The best presenters are those who are authentic and who truly want to help people. Try to accommodate the organizers and see things from their perspective when they need you to adapt. Make it easy for people to work with you and they will ask you to come back.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

16. Not practicing enough (or at all!)

“Winging it” works well for very few people. The people who successfully speak without much practice are those who are fantastic natural speakers and who know their material inside out and upside down. Even if you’re one of the lucky few, you need to get the timing right – so practice anyway!

17. Apologizing or drawing attention to your fears or shortcomings

When you’re having an “off day” it’s natural to want to say something like, “I didn’t sleep well last night so forgive me if I seem tired.” But when you do that, you’re undermining your own credibility because your audience might not have even noticed you were tired. But now that you’ve drawn attention to it, they will focus on it, look for clues, and may even include a comment on your feedback form. Don’t give them reasons to complain!

18. Technical difficulties

There are no excuses for not preparing technology ahead of time. Make sure you’ve tested everything before your presentation. Always carry extra batteries for your presenter remote (if you use one).

If you arrive late, you’re setting yourself up for failure and run the risk of starting off stressed, which can have a domino effect on the rest of your presentation.

19. Overusing animations and transitions

Many people struggle with vertigo, motion sickness, and nausea. Out of respect for those people, never move text; if you must animate it, the text should remain static on the screen as it fades or wipes in. This allows people to fix their eyes on a focal point and start reading before the animation finishes. Don’t make your audience follow bouncing, flying, zooming, spinning, growing, or floating text… or anything else for that matter!

Transitions are quite unnecessary, but if you must use them, only use a quick fade. If your transitions are too slow, they’ll interfere with your normal speech pattern.

Remember – no one will leave your presentation and think, “Wow, those animations were great!”. They will comment on the content and your ability to present it. And the food… or lack thereof.

20. Not using enough relevant stories

Connect with people on a personal level to build rapport and trust. People will remember your stories much more easily than they will remember any facts you present. Just make sure the stories are relevant to your presentation or you’ll risk annoying people for wasting their time.

21. Making your stories too long

Don’t drag out your stories with useless details. The worst stories begin something like this:

“So last Tuesday I was walking the dog and… or wait, was it Wednesday? No, it must have been Tuesday. Hmm, now I’m not sure. Oh, wait. I was wrong. Actually, it was Monday and I know that because I had just come back from the gym. Right. So, last Monday, I was walking the dog and…”.

By now your audience is ready to pull their hair out. To make your stories more interesting, keep them succinct and only include relevant information. If you mess up unimportant details that don’t affect the outcome of the story, don’t correct it – just keep going.

End strong with a punch line, a twist, a lesson, or a call to action.

22. Lack of eye contact

Obviously, you want to be sensitive to different cultures, but In North America, lack of eye-contact can make people distrust you. If making eye contact adds to your nerves, pick three main focal points around the room (one on the left, one in the centre, and one on the right). Move from one focal point to the other as you speak, making eye contact with a few people from each area.

23. Failing to pause

A pause is like the mount on a diamond ring. The diamond is the message, but the mount is what presents it to the world and helps it shine! Help your message shine with a well-placed pause.

24. Poor use of humour

Humour can enrich any presentation, as long as it’s appropriate. Self-deprecating humour is almost always safe. Poking fun at yourself also helps put people at ease, and when you hear laughter, it can help you relax.

25. Ending with Q&A

This is a mistake that almost everyone makes. If you end with a Question and Answer session, what happens if you can’t answer the last question? What if the answer isn’t one the audience likes or wants to hear? Ending with Q&A risks ending on a negative note. Instead, do your Q&A a few slides before finishing up so that you can end strong.

26. Summarizing the entire presentation

If you can recap your entire presentation in 5-10 minutes, why did you waste an hour of the audience’s time? Emphasize only the main ideas very briefly.

27. Not including a call to action

What was the purpose of your presentation? Were you trying to teach something? Did you wan to persuade the audience to take an action? Whatever the goal, make sure to tell people what you want them to do next.

28. Not asking for (anonymous) feedback from the audience

Feedback is useless unless it’s anonymous. If you just want people to tell you how great you are, ask them in person. You’ll rarely find anyone who won’t be willing to tell a little white lie to save face.

But if you actually want to improve your presentation skills, ask for honest, anonymous feedback in writing. This is where that tough skin comes in handy, but it’s the best way to learn.

And over time, as your presentation skills improve, so will your feedback.

“There are always three speeches for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.” – Dale Carnegie

To improve your presentation skills in a safe environment with the guidance and feedback of an experienced presenter, register for PMC’s Skills for Effective Presentations course. This workshop will help you gain the confidence you need to go from average to outstanding presenter – sign up today!

“The instructor was welcoming and knew how to provide feedback without intimidating or embarrassing participants.” – Anonymous participant

“This workshop was well structured. The number of students was perfect, don’t need more as small group is excellent. The instructor was well informed – very interesting and would recommend this course for sure!” – Carol B.

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The 10 Most Common Presentation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

January 02, 2024

Many of us make common mistakes in our business presentations. Often these presentation mistakes are ways of working that seem efficient (but are not) such as: (1) planning your talk with PowerPoint, (2) writing your talk without planning, (3) skipping practise sessions and (4) narrating dull slides.

To help you avoid common presentation mistakes that many of us regularly make, you have here some examples of the most common mistakes.

Each of these presenting mistakes are ‘false friends’ – where you feel as if you are making progress but in reality you are diverting from the true path and giving yourself more work than necessary.

Study these presentation mistakes and identify where you can improve.

Do you avoid planning your presentation up front?
Are you too quick to start producing presentation slides?
Are you reluctant to try out your presentation ideas on others early in the process?
Do you use boring safe language?
Do you try and say too much in your presentations?
Are you unsure how to bring your presentation to life with levity.

These are all simple, natural presenting mistakes that cause thousands of presentations every day to be less effective than they should be.

While avoiding these traps will not make you a brilliant presenter, each trap you identify will take you much nearer to being a confident and convincing presenter.

Presentation Mistakes #1 – Do you waste time with PowerPoint?

Summary: powerpoint is a poor planning tool. only open powerpoint after you have decided what you are saying..

Most people, when they start writing a presentation, they open PowerPoint. They create slides, perhaps use old slides, design new ones and feel as if they are making progress because they can see ‘progress’ – something they can print and share.

BUT: Starting with PowerPoint is the equivalent of creating a movie by filming before you have a story or a script. You end up with a lot of footage, but it is near impossible to turn this into anything usable. You waste time and you waste money.

Instead, Create a powerful talk that barely uses any visual aids. Use the planning and language tools outlined in this blog article to create a talk that can work on its own without slides. You may realise that your presentation does not need slides. If you do want visual aids, only start creating them at the end of the presentation process, not at the start.

And why not rename ‘slides’ as Visual Aids. This change of language will help you think differently. Each Visual Aid must help your audience interpret what you say. Only create Visual Aids where they are absolutely necessary. Make life easier for your audience.

“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail”. – Benjamin Franklin

Avoid Presentation Mistakes – Top Tips

Stop using PowerPoint to plan
Only use PowerPoint to create your visual aids or handouts after you have decided what to say.

Presentation Mistakes #2 – Do you make yourself or your idea the focus of your presentation?

Summary: while your presentation might be about your product or your business, you will be more effective if you make your audience the centre of attention..

A typical bad presentation starts: “In today’s presentation I will talk about how we performed last month, what our plans are for this month and how we are changing the way numbers are reported. I’ll talk about project Pegasus and give an update on the latest company sales figures”

Why is this not good? This presentation opening is more like a table of contents than anything else – and it contains little that is useful for the audience.

The art of communication is translating what you want to say into what it means for your audience. You’ll grab your audience if you talk about them and their interests. If what you say is useful, your audience is more likely to pay attention.

Instead, start like this: “As we all know, this has been a tough month. You’ll hear more about last month’s disappointing performance and learn about our plans for this month and what that means for your departments. I’ll also share with you the changes you can expect to see in how we report our numbers. You’ll also be pleased to know that project Pegasus is on track. We can already see a positive impact on our sales numbers – which I am sure we are all very pleased to hear.”

What has changed?

Each ‘I will talk about’ has been translated into a ‘you will….’
By using many more personal pronouns (we/ our/your) the talk is easier to listen to.
In the revised text you hear much more useful information (is it good news, bad news) and
The audience is involved in the story (‘we are all very pleased to hear’).

In short, the audience is now the centre of attention of this talk.

“Nobody cares what you think until they think that you care” – Maya Angelou

Give your audience useful information from the start.
Talk about them and what your information means for them
Avoid ‘tables of contents’. Say something interesting in every phrase.

Presentation Mistakes #3 – Is your presentation a data dump?

Summary – a data dump is not a presentation. the real job of a presentation is to analyse and interpret information so it means something for your audience. you must add value..

A typical bad presentation sounds like: “Sales last quarter were 3.6m, this is up 3.2% on last quarter and down 2.8% on the previous year. This is 4.6% behind budget and 4.5% better than forecast. Breaking it down by division we can see that North was 8.2% over budget while South was 1.2% behind budget…….”

What’s wrong with this? If you compile data then it’s tempting to share your hard work. But talking through raw numbers is a waste of everyone’s time. Instead, you want to look impressive.

That means, you must add value. You should describe what those numbers are saying. For example, you might say:

“As we can see, sales at 3.2m last month were as expected. The important thing to note is that North won the new IBM contract, which was unexpected, while South had three customer delays which pushed their sales back by a month. We are still pretty confident of reaching our end of year numbers.”

By speaking in this way you are giving your audience valuable information throughout (sales: “as expected” …. North: Unexpected IBM contract….South: customer delays,… pushed sales back by a month…’confident of reaching end of year numbers”).

The real art here is doing the hard work for your audience. If you make it easy for the audience you’ll not only have a better presentation, you will also look more impressive in front of your audience.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln

When you report data, add value.
It’s your job to do the hard work.
Explain what the data means for your audience.
Make it easy for your audience.

Presentation Mistakes #4 – Do you use written language in your talk?

Summary – the written word and the spoken word are two different languages. one belongs on the page, the other in the mouth..

A typical bad start: “It is a pleasure to welcome you to this symposium, which is part of our programme to mark the 75th anniversary of the Central Bank of Ireland. I am especially delighted that Francois Villeroy de Galhau is joining us today to give a keynote address. I am looking forward also to learning from the excellent lineup of speakers later in the afternoon. “The topic of financial globalisation is a natural theme for the Central Bank of Ireland. At a macroeconomic level, the global financial cycle is a primary determinant of financial stability conditions in small open economies. This lesson was painfully learned across the advanced economies during the international credit boom that occurred over 2003-2008.” Remarks by Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, to the Financial Globalisation Symposium as part of the programme to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Central Bank of Ireland, Dublin, 2 February 2018

What is wrong with this? When you preparing words for a talk or presentation, you want to avoid planning through typing. The spoken word and the written word are like different languages. If you type first, you’ll probably find:

The sentences are too long,
The words are too complicated
The rhythm of spoken language is lost
You miss powerful rhetorical tools that make spoken language interesting and easy to listen to.

Written language must be translated into spoken language.

So, instead, say it first then write it. Then say it out loud again. Check that you are using plenty of rhetorical tools. Listen for the rhythm of your speech and whether it’s easy to say (and easy to listen to). For example, this might have been a speech writer’s first draft for the Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland.

“Welcome everyone to this great occasion. It’s 75 years since the Central Bank of Ireland was born. In that time we have grown up. – We were born as a new institution in a new country – and we are now standing tall alongside our brothers and sisters in Europe and around the world, a full participant in the global economy. In our busy life we’ve lived through financial cycles, a few near misses and, most recently, an international credit boom. “Financial globalisation is a topic close to our heart. What happens globally determines what happens locally. The global credit boom that ended in 2008 showed us how our financial stability is at the mercy of global forces.”

“Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.” – Herman Hesse

Always speak words before writing them down
Use plenty of rhetorical tools
Use an audience to test that it’s easy to understand

Presentation Mistakes #5 – Are you trying to say too much?

Summary – great talks usually say less, but use more reinforcement, illustration and examples.. the art of presenting is knowing what to take out..

Imagine an over-enthusiastic primary school teacher explaining atoms to her students.

“Atoms are the basic building blocks of everything around us. And each atom is made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. These atoms are very small – you can fit 10^19 atoms into a grain of sand. The really interesting thing about electrons is that they are both particles and waves – they have a duality. In fact all matter demonstrates duality – but it is most easily seen in electrons. Now let’s look at protons and neutrons. These are made up of more elementary particles call quarks. The Standard Model of particle physics contains 12 flavours of elementary fermions and their antiparticles……”

By now the children are very confused.

What went wrong? When you say too much you give your audience a problem. If your audience has to work hard to interpret what you say, you have failed in your job as a presenter. Your job as a presenter is to make it easy for your audience.

Great communication involves simplifying, reinforcing and giving examples. Imagine this alternative start:

“Atoms are the basic building blocks of everything around us. The air we breathe is made of atoms. The ground we walk on is made of atoms and we are all made of atoms. Atoms are very small. See this grain of sand here? Guess how many atoms are in this grain of sand? It’s a big number: a one followed by nineteen zeros. That’s a lot of atoms. There are roughly as many atoms in this grain of sand as the total number of stars in the observable universe. To look at it another way. If this apple were magnified to the size of the Earth, then each atom in the apple would be approximately the size of the original apple……”

“Simplify, then exaggerate” – Geoffrey Crowther, Editor, Economist Magazi ne

Say less, but say it better
Cut out non-essential information from your talk
Don’t be afraid of reinforcing, illustrating and repeating what’s important

Presentation Mistakes #6 – Are you guilty of Death by PowerPoint?

Summary – death by powerpoint happens when bad presenters let their slides lead. they ‘talk through’ what’s on the screen. instead, you want to talk directly to your audience, using visual aids as support..

Imagine this bad, and typical presentation: “As you can see on this page, we have looked at fifteen initiatives to revitalise the businesses. We examined the pros and cons of each initiative, as outlined in the table below. Following our analysis, it looks like initiatives 3, 7, and 8 are the most interesting. We’ll now look at each of the fifteen initiatives and explain why we came to our conclusions.”

That’s what death by PowerPoint feels like.

Death by PowerPoint has three causes.

The speaker is narrating slides rather than speaking directly to the audience. i.e. the speaker expects the audience to both read and listen at the same time.
The speaker talks about HOW they have done the work they have done rather than WHY this work matters and WHAT their work means.
The speaker adds little value in what they say.

To Avoid Death By PowerPoint, get straight to the point.

Try this alternative start (read it out loud) “As you know, we were asked to find ways to revitalise the business. After speaking to everyone in this room, we identified the three projects that will make a real difference. We’ve chosen these because they deliver the greatest return on effort, they have the lowest risk and they can be implemented fastest. By the end of this meeting, we want all of us to agree that these are the right projects and to get your full support for rolling these out over the next 6 weeks. Is that OK?”

“I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking. People confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides” – Steve Jobs

Get to the point immediately.
Don’t rely on your audience reading. Tell them directly what’s important.
WHY is more important than WHAT is more important than HOW

Presentation Mistakes #7 – Do you use meta-speak?

Summary – meta-speak is talking about talking. avoid it. speak directly to your audience..

Imagine this bad presentation: “I was asked today to talk about our new factory. In putting together this talk I wanted to tell you how we designed it and went about planning it. I also wanted to cover the process we used to get it delivered on time and on budget.”

What wrong with this? It’s as if the speaker is narrating their thought processes about planning this talk. While that might be interesting to the speaker, it is of little value to the audience. Avoid.

Instead, get right to the point, Speak directly.

“We have just opened our new factory. And we did this in just 12 months from board approval to the cutting of the ribbon in the loading bay. How did we achieve this? And how did we deliver it on time and on budget? Today I’ll share some of the lessons we leaned over the last 12 months. And I’ll reveal some of the mistakes we nearly made. And I’m doing this because it just might help you when you are faced with what seems like an impossible problem…”

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein

If you see meta-speak creeping in, cut it out
Make your language direct.
Get right to the point.

Presenting Mistakes #8 – Do you gabble or speak too fast?

Summary – speaking too fast helps nobody. you should learn how to incorporate pauses – many pauses – long pauses – throughout your talk..

Try saying this out loud: “A-typical-speaker-will-speak-in-long-sentences-and-keep-speaking-linking-phrases-together-so-that-there-is-no-gap-and-no-time-for-the-audience-to-absorb-what-the-speaker-has-said-and-no-time-to-plan-what-to-say-next-this-causes-the-speaker-to-feel-more-nervous-so-they-speed-up-and-it-frustrates-the-audience-because-they-have-no-time-to-process-what-they-have-heard-before-the-speaker-is-onto-their-next-point…”

This typically happens when a speaker is nervous. So they rush. And it is then hard for the audience to listen.

Instead, try speaking this out loud: “Good speakers use short phrases — They share one thought at a time — — By leaving gaps — it’s easier for the audience. — The good news is — it’s also easier for the speaker. — When a speaker uses pauses — they have time to compose their next sentence. — This helps the speaker look more thoughtful — and more convincing. — It also helps the speaker feel more confident.

“The most precious things in speech are….. the pause.” – Ralph Richardson

Pausing takes practice. Few people do it instinctively.
Use shorter phrases – one idea at a time.
Aim for a pause at least every ten words
Record yourself, listen to your pauses and hear how they add gravitas
Keep practising until your pauses feel natural and sound natural.

Presentation Mistakes #9 – Are you too serious?

Summary – levity can help you look more professional and will help your audience pay attention to what you say..

Too many presentations overly serious, dull and un-engaging.

Why? When we have something important to say we want to look ‘professional.’ But professional and serious are not the same. When you are too serious it’s harder for your audience to connect with you.

If you really want to look professional, bring the audience into your world. Levity and humour helps you achieve this. This does not mean you should tell jokes, but you should help the audience smile and feel clever for understanding what you say.

See how you can do it differently. This is the third paragraph of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s EU Privacy speech . He uses humour followed by flattery to get his audience open and receptive to what he is about to say.

“Now Italy has produced more than its share of great leaders and public servants. Machiavelli taught us how leaders can get away with evil deeds…And Dante showed us what happens when they get caught.

“Giovanni has done something very different. Through his values, his dedication, his thoughtful work, Giovanni, his predecessor Peter Hustinx—and all of you—have set an example for the world. We are deeply grateful.”

“Inform, Educate & Entertain”. – Sir John Reith, BBC

Have a smile on your face when preparing your talk
Look for opportunities to introduce humour and lighten the tone
Play with ideas.

Presenting Mistakes #10 – Do you avoid practising?

Summary – it’s tempting to avoid practise and to wing it on the day. this is the amateur approach..

The best presenters, like great athletes, do all their practising in advance , so that their performance on the day looks effortless.

People make excuses to avoid essential practise:

“I’m always better without practice”
“I don’t want to over-prepare”
“I sound wooden when I over-rehearse”
“I’m more natural on the day”
“This is an artificial environment. I’m much better in front of a real audience.”

But many people are deluded. They believe themselves to be good speakers.

So, instead, think of yourself as a professional athlete, actor, pilot or dentist. These professionals make their work appear effortless only because of hours of preparation. A great presenter should think the same.

Use your rehearsal to try out every aspect of your talk and to iron out what works. Use a critical audience. Keep changing and improving it until it’s as good as it can be. If you are not a brilliant speaker, then spend time building your skills. This practice includes:

Cut any waffle or anything boring
Say something interesting at least every 10 words
Use more rhetorical tools (see Chapter x)
Keep reinforcing your key points
Start strong, end strong

“The more I practise, the luckier I get”. – Gary Player, champion golfer

Dedicate proper practise time – at least three sessions for an important talk.
Use a critical audience
Keep cutting, changing, fixing and tweaking
Only stop when you are able to pay attention to your audience’s reaction rather than remembering what you want to say.

Summary – key presentation mistakes to avoid

When you understand the common mistakes presenters make, you will find it easier to create and give a compelling, successful presentation.

Reminder: Top ten ways to avoid common presentation mistakes

How to avoid presentation mistakes – for ever, if you really want to improve your presentation skills, then get in touch. our team of expert presentation coaches has been helping business executives polish their presentation skills for over 15 years. we are trusted by some of the world’s largest businesses. click on the link below to discuss your needs., transform your presentation skills with tailored coaching.

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We can help you present brilliantly. Thousands of people have benefitted from our tailored in-house coaching and advice – and we can help you too .

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For 15+ years we’ve been the trusted choice of leading businesses and executives throughout the UK, Europe and the Middle East to improve presentation skills and presentations through coaching, training and expert advice.

Unlock your full potential and take your presentations to the next level with Benjamin Ball Associates.

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Common Presentation Mistakes In 2020: A Guide on How to Avoid the Biggest Four

by Anne B. Freedman | Jun 23, 2020 | Speaking

Before the current crisis, it was already a huge challenge to connect with audiences because of the diminishing attention span caused by social media and cell phones. Given todayâ€™s new obstacles to listening and even more distractions, this detailed guide is designed to help you identify and avoid the most common presentation mistakes online or in person , so you can improve the odds of success when itâ€™s your turn to speak to others.

To minimize any of the notorious â€œFâ€ words that come to mind when you think about speaking online or in public, I will give you a rundown of the most common presentation mistakes speakers make and how you can avoid them. First, Iâ€™ll explain why a lack of preparation dooms most speakers. On the flip side, if you find yourself doing impromptu speaking, it doesnâ€™t mean you canâ€™t do a terrific job.

Youâ€™ll learn how a presentation that maintains the interest of those in your audience differs from a deadly lecture. Next, you will also gain an understanding of the need to delete more content than you expect, strategically, before you speak. And Iâ€™ll give you pointers on storytelling and reading your audience that will keep you on top of your speaking game â€“ online and in person.

At the end of this blog youâ€™ll know exactly what not to do during a presentation â€“ and have a clearer path to avoiding the most common presentation mistakes.

Presentation Mistake 1: Winging It

While itâ€™s true that most people know what theyâ€™re asked to talk about, itâ€™s also true that the most common presentation mistake is the most obvious: not enough preparation .

How to Tell If a Speaker Is â€œWinging Itâ€

Here are some clues that let you know when a speaker (maybe you?) has not prepared enough for the presentation:

The speaker is obviously unprepared for the situation or question and looks uncomfortable or nervous.
You hear many fillers such as â€œer,â€ â€œuh,â€ â€œum,â€ and â€œyou know,â€ between sentences because the speaker doesnâ€™t know what to say next.
The message is disorganized, hard to follow and not particularly impressive.
The speaker asks the audience or the person who made the introduction how long the presentation is supposed to last and is clueless about the expectations of the organization that invited them.

Youâ€™ve no doubt seen presenters exhibiting behaviors in the examples above. Itâ€™s painful for everyone hearing the presentation and especially in 2020, during online meetings. Itâ€™s also painful for the person whoâ€™s in front of the group or on camera.

Experienced speakers and leaders never make the mistake of â€œwinging itâ€ when they get up to speak extemporaneously. They are pulling up content that has previously worked from their experience â€œbag.â€ They know how to pace themselves, how to interact with the audience, and how to make their points. Public or persuasive speaking is an acquired skill you can develop with practice and commitment.

No one in an audience appreciates sitting through an awkward, poorly crafted message, which is what happens most often when someone wings it.

A woman sitting at a table with papers and a laptop.

Tactics to avoid this most common presentation mistake:

Preparing better will help you reduce presentation nerves. Ideally, you want to have the points of your whole presentation written and practice them aloud several times. In my free 5-day minicourse to create a presentation, I explain some of the best ways to organize your content. Here are some tactics I find really effective to avoid falling into this common presentation mistake:

Give yourself ample time to clearly identify the two or three main points you want to get across in your remarks and build your message around them.
If you receive a last-minute request to speak or answer a question, write down the two or three critical ideas you want to get across, on a napkin or in Notes on your cellphone, if necessary. You can also do this mentally by allowing yourself to envision those two or three points.
Try to recall a good, relevant story that you tell with comfort to incorporate into your comments.
For best results, always practice aloud, out of order, and time each element to make sure you are not exceeding your scheduled allotment of time. For last-minute situations, assume control as if you had practiced.

Presentation Mistake 2: Lecture versus Interaction

If you think about a classic sermon by a member of the clergy, or a typical university lecture, the majority are one-sided affairs. Somebody talks. You listen. It can often by dry and dull, or worse, dreary and draining.

Sometimes weâ€™re lucky, yes? The speaker is riveting. Thoughtful. Inspirational. Full of valuable ideas and data. After all, there are clergy who know how to connect to their congregation and there are also a few wonderful professionals and teachers out there, right? Additionally, every once in a while, weâ€™re thrilled when corporate or nonprofit leaders, coaches or entrepreneurs can make feel glad were on hand when they spoke.

What Kind of Presenter Do You Want to Be?

In 2020, online audiences â€“ and the live ones when we return to that kind of presenting â€“ are expecting cinema-like experiences when they sit before you. Whether itâ€™s a team meeting, sales presentation, speech, webinar or fundraising effort, they want to enjoy themselves, too.

Instead of patiently and politely listening to a speaker drone on and on about a particular area of expertise or point of view, audiences can and do whip out their cell phones to text or Google.

How to avoid this mistake to keep your audience engaged:

For you to avoid committing this common mistake in your presentation and to counteract the chance of being boring or otherwise not connecting with your audience, I recommend you incorporate what I call The Speakerâ€™s Three Eâ€™s:

Entertain them . First, strive to create entertainment value in your message. Examples of this first Speaker E are a relevant and preferably humorous story or a set of delicious, smile-evoking comments. You can also use a funny sign, prop, video clips or a combination of elements.
Educate a bit. The Second Speaker E is to plan the educational value you are including. What practical take-aways are you giving in your message? No one wants to waste time there days. Are you sharing your expertise and experience in such a way that your audience feels lucky to have been listening to you? What tips, pointers, references, visual examples or other content can you impart so that the message does not seem like a dull lecture? How can you organize what you know so that the audience can absorb it as painlessly and completely as possible?
Energize with inspiration. The final Speaker E is energizing inspiration. What can you impart that will help people overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed, stressed, pulled in too many directions at the same time and needing inner strength â€“ especially in these troubling times? When you are the presenter, no matter what your role or objective, I believe you have a much better chance of accomplishing your goal when you tune into the motivations of your listeners and charge up the atmosphere with your own brand of energy.

One thing to consider when youâ€™re choosing an online format is whether you plan to deliver a lecture-style presentation or a participatory experience. You can make your virtual meeting more interactive . If you use the webinar option, your audience can ask you questions by writing in the Chat or by electronically raising a hand. You can choose to unmute them or not to answer a question, but you canâ€™t see anyone. It becomes even more critical that you can come across energetically by projecting your passion and knowledge in a strong, deliberate way. If you use a Meeting format and what is called the Gallery or Speaker view, you can see everyone whoâ€™s in your session, and unmute them to ask or answer questions more interactively. Each format has advantages and disadvantages, and weâ€™ll go over more details in a coming blog post.

While itâ€™s true that each of us is motivated by different things, I believe itâ€™s our obligation as a speaker and as a leader to build into your messages a genuine taste of your passion for the topic as well as why you believe in its importance. When you build the 3 Eâ€™s into your message, youâ€™ll be the kind of speaker and leader we all want to hear.

Presentation Mistake 3: Overlooking Storytelling

Ever since we were children, stories have delighted us, scared us, and motivated us to action. Itâ€™s been my experience that your audience will not remember the facts you so diligently gathered and organized, no matter how impressive. What they will value and repeat to others are the relevant and well-told stories you share about your expertise, your trip, your project, or whatever has led you to be in front of them that day.

Your Storytelling Has No Limits

Ideally, when you present a story , you take us with you on your adventure so that we can re-experience it with you, and sample the full range of emotions, colors, sounds, tastes and conversations that left their mark on you.

In the beginning of my speaking career, I deliberately kept myself out of the story equation â€“ staying true to my journalism roots. With experience, though, I realized my responsibility was to really connect with the audience. I started to share my relevant life and professional experiences with my audience and individual clients. If youâ€™ve read some of my previous blogs , youâ€™ve already had a taste.

Good storytelling is a form of live theater and the top actors always practice extensively before appearing on stage or on camera. The actorsâ€™ job is to make you believe that they are actually the character youâ€™re seeing.

Here is how you can avoid this common presentation mistake of overlooking storytelling:

While the stories you tell may be a part of your personal or professional life experiences, itâ€™s one thing to describe to your family members and friends what happened, and a whole different challenge to present it to an audience or meeting room full of strangers. Take your cue from the world of fine actors and allow yourself ample time to fine-tune the pieces of your stories with spoken-out-loud practice, so that you come across as natural and credible.

One technique that actors use to elevate the energy level in their delivery is to attach certain emotions or a set of emotions to a particular group of lines, or an individual line of text, i.e., angry, happy, frustrated, satisfied or light-hearted.

Go through the story youâ€™ve written out that you want to tell and highlight critical parts in different color markers, on paper or using the feature in your document software. What you donâ€™t want to do is tell the story in only one color, a sure-fire way to lose your audienceâ€™s attention.

You can embrace your nervousness as an ally. You can also deliberately look for opportunities to use storytelling to interact with your audiences.

One of my favorite former newspaper editors, David Lawrence, Jr., shared his approach to public speaking with me:

I like to be nervous before every speech. Really.

A speaker always knows â€“ or at least I do â€“ when it has gone well, and when it has not. There have been occasions when Iâ€™ve approached the podium and thought to myself: â€˜Piece of cake. Iâ€™ve got this one knocked.â€™ In every one of those occasions, Iâ€™ve not done my best. Being a bit uptight makes me think harder, perform better.

Every chance I get, in starting a speech, I play off something the introducer said or something happening in the room, and I almost always do this with humor. I do that to loosen up myself, and the audience.

David is the retired publisher of the Miami Herald and founder of a pioneering nonpartisan grassroots organization that supports the need for increased investment in the first five years of a childâ€™s life, The Childrenâ€™s Movement of Florida. He is a recognized community and educational leader.

Hereâ€™s some of more of Davidâ€™s advice:

Before I speak anywhere I do a bunch of research â€“ much of it on the Internet â€“ about the real world for children of that community or state. People know when youâ€™re really prepared, and when you arenâ€™t. They appreciate that youâ€™ve really worked to know their community.

I just about every speech, I insert the personal. That frequently includes stories about my own life, including my growing-up years, and my family. People are hungry for people of values = people who inspire them â€“ and for just plain, straight talk.

To connect â€“ to create the kind of relationship you want with your audience of team members, potential or current clients or donors â€“ avoid hiding emotionally or personally, even if that is a more comfortable route to take. You can do it!

Presentation Mistake 4: â€“ Ignoring Audience Reaction

If two thirds of your audience are fully engaged with their cellphones or other devices during your presentation, chances are youâ€™re losing the global attention span challenge(https://speakoutinc.com/win-global-attention-span-challenge/). Other clues include an excessive amount of yawning and coughing, and nose blowing, not attributed to a sudden or existing epidemic.

Widespread slumping in the seats â€“ visible online in a Zoom call or in person â€“ or a sea of knees inching towards the door (live) are also not good signs.

How to avoid this fourth most common presentation mistake:

What is recommended when you find yourself with an audience or a group at a virtual meeting that is not paying attention to you and your message?

First, I do not recommend that you ignore their reaction, no matter how upset you are. Itâ€™s not necessary to get on your knees and grovel in apology. Itâ€™s also not a good idea to take off your clothes, whistle loudly or stomp your feet. You do need to change course and move away from the tone and direction you planned or risk things going even sourer.

It takes guts, practice, and true knowledge of your subject â€“ and the audienceâ€™s interests â€“ but you can reengage a group or meeting that has drifted away , out of your control.

One tactic is to have ready, in advance, a set of purposely stimulating questions that can easily provoke interaction with the audience members. Why? If things start going south, you wonâ€™t need to make up questions on the spot. You can also prepare a set of polling questions in certain online platforms that allow you to pose questions and get responses, to which you can also react.

Avoid this mistake by using some of these re-engaging questions

What have you done when faced with this kind of situation?
What worked best and why?
Would you share what didnâ€™t work well and why you thought that happened?
When do you think is the best time to change the direction your group is doing?
How do you introduce a new concept like this in your office?
What use do you see for this kind of approach to work in your world/office/community or personal life?

Another way to salvage a failing presentation is to switch tracks and move to an area of your message that you know has worked well before. If youâ€™re covering three points, for instance, and the first one is falling flat, give yourself the okay to jump to the third and most compelling part of your message. Then, strive to create an interactive environment where you are not the only one speaking.

Remember, most audiences want the speaker to succeed. No one likes to be bored or feel as though their meeting is a waste of time. By recognizing youâ€™re off track and then getting yourself back on, everybody wins.

Other types of mistakes to avoid:

The mistakes I have included in this blog refer to key parts of the presentation process, but there are many other things that I recommend you do to assure that you make the impact you want. One is using a P resentation checklist , which always comes in handy for me.

Here are other common presentation mistakes to avoid:

Not familiarizing yourself with the online platform (i.e. Zoom or Go To Meeting) youâ€™re using.
In-person, not checking out the venue before youâ€™re there to speak.
Failing to understand the role of visuals (https://speakoutinc.com/whats-the-role-of-powerpoint-presentations-in-your-world-today/)
Using inappropriate language or humor.
Failing to persuade your audience into action (https://speakoutinc.com/how-to-persuade-the-four-different-personality-types-in-your-business-and-nonprofit-life/)
The expression, â€œfake it â€˜til you make it,â€ does not bring about the optimal results in persuasive speaking online or in person.
Designing a presentation that strategically involves your audience and gets them to respond periodically helps assure that you keep people engaged throughout.
You can convey both emotion and valuable information through carefully planned and practiced storytelling, helping assure the results youâ€™re seeking from your presentation.
Good speakers learn to listen to an audience with their eyes and react with strategies to rekindle interest. Be on the alert for telltale signs that attention may be waning such as too much texting, looking at their watches or phones, unexplained coughing, paper shuffling, or multiple private conversations around the room.

Free Resource

how to give the perfect presentation

10 most common presentation mistakes, avoid these basic presentation errors, 1. lack of preparation.

Too often a good presentation is ruined because the speaker has not taken the time to prepare. Preparation involves attention to both the personal and professional aspects of the presentation. Personal elements include body language, voice, and appearance. Professional aspects include researching the subject, organizing the content, and preparing the visuals. So, whether your presentation lasts for five minutes, five hours, or five days, you owe it to yourself and your audience to prepare thoroughly.

2. Poor Use of Visuals

Visuals should enhance your presentation, not detract from it. Most business people around the world today have learned how to use PowerPoint technically, but not professionally. Slides are overcrowded, unattractive, and inconsistent. They are loaded with lengthy, unnecessary words, written in sentences, instead of bullets. They include detailed information that should be provided to participants in the form of handouts. They underutilize the power of images. By taking the time to learn how to create powerful visuals, you will have a creative edge over the competition.

3. Inappropriate Humor

Off-color jokes could doom your presentation, because you are taking the risk of offending someone in the audience. Humor is culture-sensitive. What is considered funny in one part of the world may be considered private and taboo in another. So, avoid using humor in professional presentations, and consider other ways of breaking the ice and establishing rapport with your audience members.

4. Inappropriate Dress

The best advice is to dress conservatively so that the audience can pay attention to what you are saying, not what you are wearing. In your private life, feel free to express your individuality. In professional arenas, it can be disastrous to show your true colors. Like it or not, professionals around the world expect to see you dressed a certain way. It is best not to surprise them; otherwise they will be concentrating on your unusual appearance instead of your worthwhile message. Women in particular should be extra careful to present a professional appearance, and stay away from low necklines, short skirts, jangly jewelry, wacky hairstyles, and flashy colors.

5. Not Knowing the Audience

Custom-design your presentation to fit the needs of your audience. Find out the size and demographics of your audience beforehand. What are the ranks and positions of the people who will be attending? Who are the decision-makers? How much knowledge do they have of the subject you will be presenting? What is their native language? What other cultural expectations or protocol should you be aware of? By considering such factors beforehand, you increase the effectiveness of your presentation dramatically.

6. Non-Functioning Equipment

Since so much of our business world is dependent on technology, always check your equipment beforehand. There is nothing more frustrating than malfunctioning equipment, which can cause unnecessary delays and frustration. One solution is to have a printout of your visuals for yourself. That way, you will have the necessary information you need to deliver a presentation, even if you do not have the necessary equipment. If you solve the problem in this way, you will also gain the empathy and appreciation of the audience, who may have been in your shoes at some point in their own professional careers.

7. Starting or Ending a Presentation Late

Like you, the members of the audience have time restrictions. Respect them. In the United States and Canada, the mark of a professional is one who starts and finishes the presentation on time. However, time is viewed differently in eastern and western cultures. When traveling or presenting in an international context, consult a local partner or colleague to find out what is considered “normal”, even if it seems strange or differs from your own practices back home.

8. Using a Monotone Voice

Your voice is the primary means of communicating with your audience. No matter how interesting your material, if you speak in a monotone voice, you will lose your audience. An effective voice should be vital, audible, and clear. Of course, voice will be affected by age, gender, physiology, health, motivation, and past experience. Nevertheless, people of all kinds can learn how to make their voices more effective by learning about voice production, breathing techniques, vocal exercises and voice care. If necessary, work with a voice coach to learn how to improve your voice.

9. Too Much Material in Too Short a Time

If you have too much material, cut back or cut out. It is annoying and pointless for a speaker to try to rush through a presentation. If you have strict time restraints, be selective about what information to include. Pass on extra information in the handouts. Remove a number of detailed slides and keep only the most basic ones. Allow for the fact that you may have less time available to make your presentation due to interruptions, malfunctions, delays or other circumstances. By restricting the information flow, you will have a greater impact on your audience. They will remember more and be in a better position to speak to their superiors or take action on your recommendations.

10. Not Clarifying the Topic

Make sure you know clearly what you are expected to speak about. Second, don’t assume the audience knows what you are going to speak about. To avoid confusion, always include information about the topic of your presentation in your introduction. Get into the habit of saying, “Today, I’ll be explaining…” or ”My presentation today will show…” Do this without exception. Some members of your audience may also be global learners, who need to know the destination before they can follow along the detailed path of your presentation.

how can I custom design my presentation to an audience from another country?

By reading! There are several excellent books available that provide information about the cultural norms, habits, values and expectations of various countries. One especially useful book is When Cultures Collide by Richard Lewis, an experienced cross-cultural expert. There are also many websites that provide cross-cultural insight. You could also look for information produced by the foreign ministries of various countries, or visit a consulate / embassy and request further information. Today, depending on where you are, it may also be possible to simply talk to someone from the host culture.

I have a lot of information I need to provide in an upcoming presentation. I know I will run short on time. Is there anything I can do?

Looks like you have no choice but to reduce the amount of material. There is nothing to be gained by overloading your audience with information. Include only the most critical information on your slides and put the rest into a handout which you distribute after your presentation is over. If you hand it out beforehand, you will lose the attention of the audience as some of them will be leafing through the handout instead of paying attention to your presentation.

i am good in grammar but when i start a presentation then my voice quality is not good.means i am not a good speaker.so please tell me the best way to improve it.

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Being able to speak in public can change your life! Presentation Prep is your complete, free guide to delivering speeches, lectures, and presentations more successfully and confidently. Whether you're a native English-speaker who suffers from public speaking anxiety, or a non-native speaker who needs guidelines for presenting to international audiences, this site will give you everything you need. Presentation Prep is written by Rebecca Ezekiel, an experienced corporate trainer who specializes in the areas of communications, presentations, and cross-cultural skills. Her online English language training videos are watched by millions of students worldwide.

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7 Common Presentation Mistakes You Must Avoid

December 3, 2020

Avoiding common presentation mistakes is key to establishing yourself as a quality presenter. Additionally, you create stronger connections with your audience and effectively convey your message. For a beginning speaker, it is important to be aware of typical slip-ups and common presentation mistakes. It alleviates anxiety going into a presentation and minimizes the negative self-talk afterwards.

Reasons Speakers Make Common Presentation Mistakes

Most experts and coaches point to lack of experience by beginners and novices as the number one reason for making common presentation mistakes.

However, in my twenty plus years of public speaking and coaching, I’ve seen well-seasoned presenters make most of these mistakes. And, quite often, in the same presentation. I see these presenters make these mistakes over and over.

I attribute the plethora of these common presentation mistakes to a few things.

One reason is ingrained habit..

Most people never seek expert advice on how to present effectively. Most audiences don’t provide necessary feedback for a presenter to improve. Over time the common mistakes become habitual.

A second reason is lack of planning.

Many presenters create a slide deck first and create content on the fly. This typically leads to a poorly designed slide deck and lack of clarity on message and structure.

A third reason is many presenters model what they see others doing.

This creates a horrible and perpetual cycle common presentation mistakes. An unspoken mind set of “If others are doing it then it must okay for me to do it too.” develops and becomes difficult to break.

Small Font on Slide Deck

One of the most common presentation mistakes is using a font size that is too small. Even experienced speakers do this. Why presenters and slide deck designers do this are numerous.

One reason, often made by novice speakers, is not considering the distance between the audience and the projection screen. A common thought is that because the slides are projected, they will always be readable. That is not the case.

A more egregious factor in using small font, is trying to fit too much text on the slide. There are two main causes for this. One, is using the slide deck as an outline. The other is overuse of the bulleted list layout of the presentation software.

Avoid doing this mistake by separating your outline from your slide deck. Also make sure you know your content well. Another strategy is to use a minimum of 30pt font on each slide. Lastly, stick to one point per slide and relay the point with as few words as possible.

Bad Font Colors

Fortunately, bad font colors are becoming a less common presentation mistake. Today, available templates, themes, and color schemes reduce this issue. Most use basic color theory and display well in multiple environments.

Being unaware of color theory leads to selecting colors that don’t go well together. Often, bad font colors interfere with the audience’s ability to read the text on the slide.

For slides being projected, LCD projector color calibrations are commonly off. Colors then display differently and often, look like a different color altogether. This makes it challenging to see the text against the background.

common presentation mistake - bad font colors

An easy way to avoid off colors is to use a color scheme generator. Here are some recommendations: Paletton ; Adobe Color Wheel ; Coolors.co .

Another technique is avoid using red or green as the main font colors. Anyone who is color blind typically has the hardest time seeing these two colors. Most important, is to use high contrast between the font and background.

Overuse of Jargon and Acronyms

As our knowledge about a specific topic or discipline grows, we tend to forget what it was like to not know what we know. This is typically referred to as the “curse of knowledge.” As a result, expert presenters make another common presentation mistake by overusing jargon or acronyms.

When speaking to a non-expert audience, it is essential to remove jargon and acronyms as much as possible from the presentation. Your focus should be clarifying and simplifying the message. This is not the same as “dumbing down,” which makes you look arrogant and patronizing.

The extent to which one uses jargon or acronyms is directly tied to the audience. If the audience is comprised of experts then use of jargon and acronyms is expected. However, it is still important to use them wisely and only when necessary within the presentation.

If you are having a difficult time creating a speech for non-experts, work with someone who is representative of the audience. This individual can provide insight and ideas on how to convey the same message but in a way that relates to the intended audience.

Talking Too Fast

While I marvel at people who can talk very fast, this is not something you should be doing during a speech. This frequent presentation error more often than not is due to nerves. The why behind being nervous is vast but speaking fast is a common side effect.

When a speaker is talking too fast, the audience struggles to keep up. Frustration builds at they feel like they are missing key information. Most will come away from the presentation not knowing what your main message was.

If you are new at presenting and nervous, the audience may be sympathetic at first. But, if you are unable to slow down, their sympathy will turn to irritation.

Another reason for talking fast is running out of time and trying to cram 20 minutes of a speech into 5 minutes. This is unprofessional and don’t do it. Skip to the end and conclude on a positive note.

For both of these scenarios, practice is the best way to avoid this common presentation mistake. The more prepared you are the less nervous you will be.

Also, through practice, you will know if you are trying to cover too much content in the allotted time. Take steps to cut content. Not doing so and thinking going over time is okay is disrespectful to the audience.

Reading Your Slides

A presenter who reads their slides is one of my biggest pet peeves. From my point of view, this is an outright presentation gaffe. The purpose of a presentation is not to read your computer screen or worse, the projection screen.

The goal is to connect with the audience in a meaningful way. Several presentation gurus have researched and written about this all too common presentation mistake. The general consensus on why presenters do this is related to slide content.

Specifically, having too much text on the slide. Presenters are more inclined to read their slides when everything they want to say is on the slide. Lack of familiarity with the subject matter and nerves also contribute to this habit.

A way to prevent this from happening is to separate your outline from your slide deck. The best way to do this is keep the outline on a separate document. Each slide should have minimal text conveying the main point you are trying to make.

Additionally, make sure you know your content. Set enough time aside to practice your presentation. This will help you become familiar with the content. This technique also aids in reducing nerves.

Too Much Animation

When presentation software was first available, overuse of animation was a typical presentation error. Presenters became enamored with the spins, bounces, and fly-ins.

This practice got so bad that it was common for audiences to leave a presentation slightly nauseated.

Fortunately, most experienced presenters avoid this frequent blunder. But novice presenters still fall into the trap of bells and whistles.

When using animation, identify how it is aiding you in conveying your message. Connecting the animation to your message helps you avoid this common presentation mistake.

In a previous blog, I illustrated an animation method to limit content visibility . This technique highlights the specific point you are discussing it. While impactful, the animation is minimal.

Going Over Allotted Time (the worst common mistake)

Nothing is more frustrating when a presenter goes past their allotted time. Most audiences will forgive a small overage like 5 minutes. However, more than that and any credibility the speaker built up to that point is now completely gone.

Going over the allotted time, is a signal to the audience that you do not respect them or their time. It also shows a lack of preparedness and self-awareness.

Occasionally, technical difficulties may affect your ability to start on time. Even if this happens, you should be prepared enough to adjust your presentation to still finish on time.

The easiest way to ensure you finish on time is to be clear about your main message and the points you need to make. And then practice, practice, practice.

All presenters want to do well while speaking. Not one goes into a presentation thinking they are making common presentation mistakes. Unfortunately, this happens far too often.

The typical and common presentation mistakes include going over the allotted time, reading slides, and talking too fast. Often, the cause is a lack of clarity about one’s message, lack of content knowledge, and lack of practice.

What common presentation mistakes have you observed? Do you do some of these common mistakes? What recommendations do you have for novice presenters? Share in the comments below.

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9 PowerPoint Mistakes to Avoid for Perfect Presentations

It's easy to screw up your PowerPoint presentation. Let's take a look at mistakes you probably make when presenting your slideshow, and how to correct them.

Giving an effective PowerPoint presentation is an art. We've all sat through a dreadful slideshow that we couldn't wait to escape from. Whether due to a drab speaker or lousy slides, there's usually room for improvement.

The good news is you can prevent your audience from hating your next presentation! Let's review the most common mistakes people make when preparing and giving a PowerPoint presentation. Knowing these recurrent blunders gives you a leg up, and helps you nail your next important talk.

1. You Load Up Slides With Text

Perhaps the biggest mistake people make in presentations is overloading every slide with text. This detracts from your talk for several reasons. For one, people are naturally inclined to read everything on the screen. If it takes them half a minute to digest everything, they aren't listening to you during that time.

If you have too much text on a slide and advance the slideshow before someone has a chance to read through everything, they might get upset and stop paying attention to the slideshow at all. Less is more with text. Don't be afraid to use space to add emphasis to what's present, or break a particularly meaty section into two slides.

When in doubt, remember that people are either going to pay attention to your slides, or pay attention to you. If you tend towards wordiness, stick to bullet points and short phrases instead of sentences. For a rule of thumb, limit yourself to five bullet points per slide, with no more than five words per bullet point.

2. You Use Stupid Transitions

Every new version of PowerPoint includes more wacky transitions , but you shouldn't use them. Aside from being resource-intensive on weaker machines , many slide transition effects are distracting and don't add anything to your talk.

You should certainly use a transition to keep the slideshow interesting, but stick with something simple like a wipe or slide. And never, ever select the Random option since it will undoubtedly choose the wildest transition at the worst time. You don't want your audience to worry more about what transition is coming next than what you'll say next.

3. You Mix Fonts and Colors

While you don't want your slideshow to feature black Times New Roman text with a white background, it's easy to overdo it in the other direction, too. If you choose to get colorful , stick to a few colors that blend well and use them for emphasis.

The same goes for fonts. You should choose a font that's easy to read. As fancy as handwritten script looks , it's probably impossible to read if you're not standing right in front of the screen . Try to stick to one font throughout the entire presentation, and definitely don't mix fonts on the same slide!

Few colors and fonts make for solid presentations because they mean consistency. It's childish to cram as many pretty fonts and colors onto one slide as you can. It looks messy, and while Georgia font isn't too exciting, people would prefer to read your text instead of admiring how fancy it looks.

4. You Read Slides Verbatim

This one might take the prize for worst possible trait during a PowerPoint presentation. Reading your slides word for word will bore the audience, and makes you seem rigid instead of dynamic .

Remember two important notes to help with this problem. First, PowerPoint slides don't need to contain every little bit of information you're discussing. Use them as little attention-grabbers so your audience understands the current topic, but wants to listen to you explain more.

Second, your PowerPoint slides are not for your use! Your slideshow is not the presentation -- the presentation is your talk. PowerPoint slides are simply a tool you use to better communicate. You shouldn't need your slides to stay on topic. Practicing will help with this.

If you have trouble remembering what you want to say, use the notes section of each PowerPoint slide. Then when you display the slideshow, your monitor will display a snapshot of the current and next slide, along with any notes you've jotted for that slide. Stopping to turn around and look at your slides, or reading them aloud, will not effectively bring your message to the audience. Anyone in the audience could stand up and read the slide, but you know the material.

5. Your Charts Are Complex and Useless

Adding media other than text (in moderation) to a slide makes it more interesting and grabs the audience's attention. When you're representing data in the presentation, charts are an easy way to show the relevant information in one image.

Charts are great , but it's important that you don't go overboard with them. The audience won't have the patience to decipher all sorts of colors, trend lines, keys, and text. If the chart isn't self-explanatory for the average audience member, or if you can't explain it in a sentence, you need to make it less complicated .

6. Your Template Is Boring

Take the extra few minutes to find a template that fits your presentation, or even make your own if you're so inclined. While some of the built-in PowerPoint templates might seem a little generic, you'll likely find one that's sharp without being overbearing. Don't choose anything that's too wacky with all sorts of colors, but feel free to find something unique.

Black text on a white background is ugly, but white text on a black background is passable if you don't have any other options. If you need some help, check out awesome free PowerPoint templates for everyone.

7. You Minimize PowerPoint for Other Media

As great as PowerPoint is, often you have to leave the slideshow to put some other content on the screen. Maybe you want to show a relevant YouTube video or visit the company's website. While this is sometimes unavoidable, it's jarring to jump back and forth between windows, even with slick keyboard shortcuts .

That's why you should embed everything you can inside your presentation. We've shown how to embed YouTube videos inside PowerPoint and it's easy to take a screenshot of any website to paste into your slides. If you can avoid leaving the slideshow, do so for a smoother experience.

8. You Don't Remove White Space From Images

Here's a common error that only takes a few seconds to correct. Often seen in college lecture slides and the like, many folks tend to copy and paste images from a Google search into their slides. The trouble is that most of these images include an ugly white border around them, which looks amateurish.

You can remove this white border easily using a free image editor like Paint.NET . Just open the image, and use the magic wand tool to select the white space around the image. Press Delete to remove the white space, then hit File > Save As and make sure you save the image as a PNG . A PNG file makes that deleted space transparent, while JPEGs don't support transparency .

Paste the fixed image into your slideshow and it will look so much better!

9. You Don't Ensure Everyone Can See the Material

Preparation is an essential part of every presentation, but you should do more than just practice your talk. Failing to ensure that people will be able to see everything you've put together could torpedo all your work.

If you have the chance, test your slideshow in the room where you'll be speaking, on the equipment you'll use. Make sure that no graphics or text appear cut off on the projector, and test out various seats in the room to confirm that the text isn't too small from far away. This might sound excessive, but it goes a long way in producing a professional presentation.

What Presentation Mistakes Do You Hate?

PowerPoint is a relatively simple tool , but it's clearly difficult to master. From mistakes in slide creation to blunders during your talk, there's a lot that could go wrong when you're responsible for a presentation. You can improve many of these with practice, which will improve your confidence, too.

In the end, a prepared presentation can salvage poor slides. However, a lousy slideshow damages the audience's impression of you, so it's best to nail everything if you can. Using these tips, your slideshows will be cleaner, flow better, and further engage the audience! You can't ask for much more than that.

What do speakers do with PowerPoint that makes you cringe? Let us know your most hated slideshow mistakes down in the comments!

Image Credit: cunaplus via Shutterstock

10 Presentation Design Mistakes to Avoid (With Examples)

One of the most important aspects of a successful presentation is designing an effective slideshow. Unfortunately, it’s also a part most professionals often neglect or don’t pay attention to.

This is why most of the bad presentation designs share a pattern. They are usually made using the default PowerPoint templates. They use the same default fonts as every other presentation. They also include terrible stock photos. And try to stuff as much information as possible into a single slide.

We noticed all these mistakes and more while exploring some of the most popular presentations on SlideShare. They were slideshows with thousands and even millions of views. But, they were riddled with mistakes and flaws.

In this guide, we show you how these mistakes can be harmful as well as give you tips on how to avoid them. Of course, we made sure to include some examples as well.

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1. Adding Too Many Slides

One of the biggest mistakes you can do when designing a presentation is adding way too many slides. This not only makes your presentation unnecessarily long but it can also affect the audience’s engagement. After a few slides, your audience will surely lose interest in your presentation.

Rand Fishkin is a well-known entrepreneur in the marketing industry. This is one of his presentations that received over 100,000 views. And it features 95 slides. We believe it could’ve generated more views if he had made the presentation shorter.

A presentation with 95 slides is a bit of an overkill, even when it’s made for an online platform like SlideShare.

Solution: Follow the 10/20/30 Rule

The 10/20/30 rule is a concept introduced by expert marketer Guy Kawasaki . The rule recommends that you limit your presentation to 10 slides, lasting only 20 minutes, and using a font size of 30 points.

Even though the rule states to limit the presentation to 10 slides, it’s perfectly fine to design a 20-slide presentation or even one with 30 slides. Just don’t drag it too far.

2. Information Overload

presentation example- infromation overload

Statistics and research data are important for backing your claims. Even in your presentations, you can include stats and data to add more validity and authority. However, you should also remember not to over-do it.

A good example is this popular SlideShare presentation with more than 1 million views. Since this is a tech report slideshow, it includes lots of stats and data. But the designer has made the mistake of trying to include too much data into every slide in the presentation.

If this slideshow were to present to a large audience at a big hall, most of the audience won’t even be able to read it without binoculars.

Solution: Visualize Stats and Data

A great way to present data is to visualize them. Instead of adding numbers and long paragraphs of text, use charts and graphs to visualize them. Or use infographics and illustrations.

3. Choosing the Wrong Colors

How long did it take for you to read the title of this slide? Believe it or not, it looks just the same throughout the entire slideshow.

The biggest mistake of this presentation design is using images as the background. Then using colors that doesn’t highlight the text made it even worse and rendered the text completely unreadable.

Solution: Create a Color Palette

Make sure that you start your presentation design by preparing a color palette . It should include primary and secondary colors that you use throughout each slide. This will make your presentation design look more consistent.

4. Using Terrible Fonts

Fonts play a key role in improving the readability in not just presentations but in all kinds of designs. Your choice of font is enough for the audience to decide whether you’re a professional or an amateur.

In this case, the slide speaks for itself. Not only the font choice is terrible but without any spacing between the paragraphs, the entire slide and the presentation is hardly readable. How did this presentation generate over 290,000 views? We’ll never know.

Solution: Avoid the Default Fonts

As a rule of thumb, try to avoid using the default fonts installed on your computer. These fonts aren’t designed for professional work. Instead, consider using a custom font. There are thousands of free and premium fonts with great designs. Use them!

5. Adding Images from Google

You could tell by just looking at this slide that this person is using images from Google search. It looks like the designer lazily downloaded images from Google search and copy-pasted a screenshot onto the image. Without even taking the time to align the screenshot to fit the device or removing the white background of the image.

Or he probably added a white background to the images after realizing the black iPhone blends into the black background. Most of the images used throughout this slideshow are pretty terrible as well.

Solution: Use High-Quality Mockups and Images

The solution is simple. Don’t use images from Google! Instead, use high-quality images from a free stock image site or use a premium source. Also, if you want to use devices in slides, make sure to use device mockup templates .

6. Poor Content Formatting

There are many things wrong with this slideshow. It uses terrible colors with ugly fonts, the font sizes are also too big, uneven shapes, and the list goes on.

One thing to remember here is that even though apps like PowerPoint and Keynote gives you lots of options for drawing shapes and a color palette with unlimited choices, you don’t have to use them all.

Solution: Use a Minimal and Consistent Layout

Plan a content layout to be used with each and every slide of your presentation. Use a minimalist content layout and don’t be afraid to use lots of white space in your slides. Or, you can use a pre-made PowerPoint or Keynote template with a better design.

7. Writing Long Paragraphs

Adding long paragraphs of text in slides is never a good way to present your ideas to an audience. After all, that’s what the speech is for. The slides, however, need to be just a summary of what you’re trying to convince your audience.

Don’t make the mistake of writing long paragraphs that turns your slideshow into a document. And, more importantly, don’t read from the slides.

Solution: Keep It Short

As the author Stephen Keague said, “no audience ever complained about a presentation or speech being too short”. It takes skill to summarize an idea with just a few words. You should always try to use shorter sentences and lots of titles, headings, and bullet points in your slideshows.

8. Not Using Images

This entire presentation doesn’t have a single image in any of its slides, except for the company logo. Images are a great way to keep your audience fully engaged with your presentations. Some expert speakers even use images to add humor as well.

The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is popular for a reason. Instead of writing 200-words long paragraphs, use images to summarize messages and also to add context.

Solution: Use Icons, Illustrations, and Graphics

You don’t always have to add photos or images to make your presentations look more attractive. Instead, you can use other types of graphics and colorful icons. Or even illustrations and infographics to make each slide more entertaining.

9. Designing Repetitive Slides

This presentation about Internet Trends is one of the most popular slideshows on SlideShare with more than 4 million views. If you go through the slides you’ll notice the entire presentation is filled with nothing but charts and graphs.

Your audience will easily get bored and lose attention when your presentation has too many slides containing the same type of content.

Solution: Use a Mix of Content

Make sure to use different types of content throughout the slides. Add text, images, shapes, icons, and other elements to create each slide more engaging than the other.

10. Using Complex Infographics

presentation example-complicated graphics

Even though images and graphics are great for visualizing data, it’s important to use the right designs to showcase the data without confusing the audience.

For example, this slideshow made by HootSuite is filled with stats and data. Most of which look fine. Except for a few slides that include complicated designs filled with information all over the place.

Solution: Design Simpler Graphics

There are many great online tools you can use to design your own infographics and visuals. Use them. But, also remember to use simpler designs that are easier to understand for all audiences.

In Conclusion

There’s no such thing as the perfect presentation design. Every slideshow has its flaws. But, if you learn to avoid the common mistakes, you’ll have a much higher chance of winning over your audience and delivering a more engaging presentation.

If you don’t have any slideshow design experience, consider picking one of the bee PowerPoint templates or best Keynote templates . They feature designs made by professionals and you won’t have to worry about making any mistakes again.

10 Common Presentation Mistakes that You Should Avoid

Every presenter has faced that gut-wrenching moment of realizing something went wrong during a presentation. Whether it’s an audience member’s blank stare or a glaring mistake on a slide, these moments can shatter confidence.

Many of these hiccups stem from 10 common presentation mistakes that, surprisingly, most presenters commit without even realizing. The good news is that you can avoid these pitfalls, ensuring a smoother, more impactful delivery.

As we delve deeper, you’ll discover strategies to dodge these typical blunders and tips to elevate your presentation game. So, before stepping onto that stage or clicking “share screen,” arm yourself with the knowledge to present flawlessly.

General Overview of Conference Presentations

Conference presentations is a nexus for knowledge-sharing, idea exchange, and professional networking in various disciplines.

Public speaking events, especially conference presentations, occupy a central role in academia and the corporate world. These sessions disseminate recent research findings, innovative solutions, or fresh perspectives on enduring challenges. When well-executed, they inform and inspire attendees, fostering an environment ripe for collaboration.

Though the content is vital, the delivery style can significantly influence the audience’s reception. Engaging visuals, a clear voice, and a coherent narrative structure can elevate the material, making complex ideas accessible. Conversely, lackluster delivery can diminish even the most groundbreaking findings, leaving an audience disengaged or even confused.

Presenters often grapple with the balance between depth and breadth in preparing for these events. It’s crucial to provide enough context for understanding without overwhelming listeners with excessive details. Tailoring content to the intended audience, ensuring clarity, and eliciting engagement is foundational to a successful conference presentation .

Why Do People Make Mistakes During Their Presentations?

Presentations are intricate endeavors, often marred by unexpected errors. Let’s uncover why these mistakes occur during public speaking events.

Lack of Preparation:

Preparation is the cornerstone of a successful presentation. Some individuals need to pay more attention to the effort required. As a result, they need to catch up, leading to errors.

Nervousness and Anxiety:

For many, public speaking evokes intense anxiety. This nervousness can cloud judgment, disrupt focus, and hinder smooth delivery. Under stress, even seasoned speakers might need to improve.

Over-reliance on Technology:

Modern presentations lean heavily on tech tools. When these malfunctions or aren’t mastered, it can derail the entire session. Dependence without backup plans proves costly.

Misjudging the Audience:

Tailoring content to the audience is crucial. Misreading audience knowledge or interest levels can lead to disconnects. This results in information that needs to be simplified or more complex.

Time Management Issues:

Allocating appropriate time for each segment is challenging. Speakers might spend too long on one topic, rushing the rest. This haste can lead to critical oversights.

By understanding these common pitfalls, presenters can take proactive measures to avoid them, leading to more impactful and error-free presentations.

10 Common Presentation Mistakes

1. lack of preparation:.

Presentations are a pivotal communication tool, but often, mistakes compromise their impact. One notable blunder is insufficient preparation. Diving deep into the subject ensures a robust grasp. Surface-level knowledge often reveals itself during live sessions. Audience queries can expose these gaps quickly.

Many assume that familiarity with content negates rehearsal needs. However, knowing material differs from presenting it engagingly. Practice ensures a seamless transition between points.

Overconfidence can lead to missing presentation nuances. Simple errors like slide misalignment or spelling mistakes arise from hasty preparation. These distract and reduce overall credibility.

2. Overloading Slides:

Effective slides can transform a presentation, yet a frequent pitfall needs to be more manageable with excess information. Slides saturated with content can overwhelm viewers. Cluttered visuals divert attention from the presenter’s message. Audiences struggle to extract critical points amidst the chaos.

When slides bear long text blocks, attention wanes. People either read ahead or tune out, missing the verbal narrative. The speaker-audience connection weakens considerably.

Concise, impactful visuals aid memory. Overstuffed slides, however, hinder information retention. Complexity can confuse, causing key takeaways to be lost.

3. Speaking Monotonously:

Presentations require more than just factual accuracy; they demand an engaging delivery. A frequent pitfall is speaking in a monotonous tone. A uniform tone throughout can lull listeners into disinterest. Variations in pitch and pace can make content more engaging. Monotony can drain energy, making messages forgettable.

Speaking monotonously often suggests a need for more passion. When presenters aren’t emotionally invested, it reflects in their delivery. Consequently, audiences may question the material’s significance.

Monotony doesn’t just bore; it hinders memory. Varied tones aid in emphasizing key points. With them, crucial information might be recovered on listeners.

4. Ignoring the Audience:

Engaging presentations hinge on a vital element: audience connection. However, a prevalent misstep is overlooking or ignoring the audience.

Failing to engage leads to audience detachment. With direct interaction, listeners may feel more valued and energized. Consequently, key messages might need to be recovered or understood.

Active presenters observe audience reactions. Ignoring cues like yawning or confused expressions can be detrimental. Adjusting mid-presentation can recapture waning attention spans.

Post-presentation feedback is a goldmine. Ignoring opportunities to gather it misses improvement chances. Constructive criticism paves the way for enhanced future sessions.

5. Over-reliance on Notes:

Navigating the nuances of presenting often leads to pitfalls, with a notable one being an over-reliance on notes.

Using notes as a crutch restricts spontaneous interaction. It disrupts the flow, making sessions seem rehearsed. Authenticity suffers, diminishing audience connection. Constantly referring to notes can create a barrier. This visual distraction shifts focus away from the message. Audiences might perceive it as unpreparedness.

Rigid adherence to written notes curtails adaptability. When unexpected questions or topics arise, speakers might need help. Prepared notes might only sometimes offer the needed pivot.

6. Poor Time Management:

Mastering the art of presentation involves myriad skills, including effectively managing time. Yet, many need to improve in this area.

Often presenters need to pay more attention to the content’s depth. They either drag points or skim critical segments. Both extremes diminish message efficacy and audience engagement.

The ideal rhythm in presentations varies the pacing. Rapid transitions can confuse, while prolonged sections can bore. Striking balance ensures sustained audience attention.

Speakers sometimes overlook the audience’s need for clarification. Ending precisely on time denies interactive opportunities. Incorporating buffer periods can enhance comprehension and engagement.

7. Technical Glitches

Navigating the world of presentations is challenging, and even the tech-savvy isn’t immune to technical glitches. Trusting tech without a test run is a pitfall. Equipment can malfunction unexpectedly, disrupting presentation flow. Always test before presenting to ensure functionality.

Software variations can distort visuals and formats. Not every system supports all file types or software versions uniformly. Cross-platform checks prevent such incongruities.

Relying solely on one device or platform is risky. Tech failures are unpredictable, necessitating backup plans. Carrying alternate devices or files can salvage situations.

8. Unsuitable Content:

Presentations aim to inform and engage, yet they falter when content doesn’t align with the audience. “Unsuitable Content” is a typical pitfall. Tailoring to the audience’s knowledge is paramount. Presenting advanced topics to novices alienates them. Similarly, basics bore an expert crowd.

Overlooking cultural or regional sensitivities can offend. It’s essential to research the audience’s background and adapt content. Respecting differences fosters connection and understanding.

Audiences seek value and relevance in presentations. Outdated information or unrelated tangents divert attention. Staying focused and updated ensures better engagement.

9. Lack of Visual Aids:

In a visually-driven world, impactful presentations hinge on engaging visual aids. Their absence can significantly detract from message efficacy.

Visuals amplify understanding, enhancing retention. With them, Conference presentations can become more varied and easy to follow. A purely text-based approach often needs to be revised.

Images, graphs, and videos captivate attention. A lack of these aids diminishes audience engagement levels. Viewers drift, losing track of the core message. Complex concepts become digestible through visuals. Without visual aids, presenters struggle to convey intricate points succinctly. This results in potential confusion or misinformation.

10. Not Handling Q&A Well:

The Q&A segment of presentations offers a dynamic interaction with the audience. However, mishandling it can undermine a speaker’s credibility. Some presenters evade tricky questions, fearing exposure. This strategy can backfire, eroding the audience’s trust. Transparent, honest answers enhance credibility and respect.

A presenter may master their content but neglect potential questions. Anticipating inquiries and preparing responses solidifies one’s expertise. It ensures a smoother, more informed interaction.

Reacting defensively to challenging questions can alienate listeners. Accepting feedback and addressing concerns demonstrates professionalism. An open demeanor fosters a positive rapport with the audience.

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Tips to Avoid Any Mistakes During Your Presentation

Giving a presentation without errors is a blend of preparation and adaptability. Below are tips to help navigate common pitfalls.

Dedicate ample time for research and rehearsal. Know your content inside out, making delivery more natural and confident.
Keep slides concise and to the point. Overwhelming slides distract; aim for clarity and simplicity for maximum impact.
Vary your tone and pace to engage listeners. Practicing modulation ensures the audience remains attentive and interested.
Maintain regular eye contact and read their reactions. Adjust your approach based on feedback and engagement cues.
Use notes as a guide, not a crutch. Familiarity with content lets you speak more naturally and fluidly.
Segment your content and assign time slots. Rehearse with a timer to ensure you stay on track.
Test all equipment and software before presenting. Having a backup plan ensures seamless continuation in case of malfunctions.
Understand your audience’s background and expectations. Tailor your content to be relevant and at the appropriate complexity level.
Incorporate relevant visuals to reinforce points. They should complement, not overshadow, the verbal content.
Anticipate potential questions and prepare answers. Engage genuinely, without defensiveness, to foster a positive rapport.

With these strategies in hand, you’re equipped to deliver a presentation that’s both effective and error-free.

Final Thoughts

It’s undeniable that delivering a compelling presentation comes with challenges. Delving into the “10 common presentation mistakes” has unveiled areas where many presenters unknowingly falter.

The good news is that, with awareness, these pitfalls become easily avoidable. Adopting strategies to circumvent these blunders will elevate the quality of your presentations and boost your confidence as a speaker.

Remember, the essential lies in preparation, understanding your audience, and staying adaptable. With these insights and a commitment to continuous improvement, you’re well on your way to mastering the art of impactful presentations, free from common missteps.

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7 PowerPoint Mistakes to Avoid for Outstanding Presentation

Ramachandiran.

July 26, 2023

A business professional describing the top 7 results of a study to his clients. The professional is using graph charts.

Business professionals use PowerPoint in their everyday routines, making it an integral part of our professional lives.

Byway, it’s overcrowded slides, a lack of visual appeal, or a monotonous delivery, these mistakes can quickly turn your audience off and make them distracted.

This is why it’s crucial to be aware of these mistakes and take proactive steps to avoid them.

We’re here to help you to avoid these pitfalls and create presentations that captivate and impress. By doing so, you can ensure that your presentation stands out from the rest and leaves a lasting impression on your audience.

Let’s explore the seven most common PowerPoint mistakes and provide you with practical tips and strategies to overcome them. So, grab your notepad and get ready to take your presentation skills to the next level!

Before that, there is another option to avoid these mistakes: simply sign up and download free PowerPoint templates online. Here, we’ll explore common mistakes made when creating an investor pitch deck for your business upgrade.

Overwhelming Slides with Too Much Text

Magnifier glass red inscription power words cut out paper.

Presenters often make the mistake of overwhelming their audience with text on their slides. This can make it difficult for the audience to focus on the main points of the presentation. Slides should complement the presentation, not serve as a script.

To avoid this mistake, presenters should keep their text brief and use bullet points to highlight the key points. This will make it easier for the audience to scan the slides and identify the main ideas.

Presenters should also break down complex information into smaller, more manageable chunks. This will make it easier for the audience to understand and remember the information.

By following these tips, you can create slides that are clear, concise, and visually appealing. This will help your audience to focus on the key points of your presentation and retain the information.

Slide Design and Visual Elements

A clear and attractive slide design is essential in PowerPoint to capture and maintain audience attention.

Using too many colors, fonts, or complicated graphics can make your slides look cluttered and unprofessional.

To create an attractive slide, keep your design simple and consistent.

Stick to a limited color palette and use fonts that are easy to read. You can also incorporate relevant images, charts, or graphs to enhance understanding and engagement.

Always keep in mind that less is more in slide design, and simplicity often leads to better comprehension and retention.

Lack of Consistency in Your Style

Consistency is key when it comes to PowerPoint presentations.

Using different tools like fonts, colors, and styles on each slide can make your presentation look disjointed and unpolished. It’s important to establish a visual theme and stick to it throughout your presentation.

Choose your font and color scheme that aligns with your message and brand. Use the same fonts and colors consistently on each slide to create a harmonious and professional look.

According to some psychology-proven facts, Consistency in font, color, and style will not only make your presentation visually appealing but also help reinforce your message in the minds of your audience.

Additionally, pay attention to the size and spacing of your text to ensure readability.

Explore presentation design services to create impactful and effective slides that leave a lasting impression on your audience.

Importance of the Structure

Storytelling and structure are two essential elements of any good PowerPoint presentation. When used effectively, they can help you connect with your audience, make your message more memorable, and persuade them to take action.

However, many presenters make the mistake of ignoring the importance of storytelling and structure. They focus on simply presenting information, without taking the time to tell a story or create a clear structure. This can result in presentations that are boring, confusing, and ineffective.

Start with a strong introduction that captures your audience’s attention. Your introduction should set the tone for your presentation. Use clear and concise language that is easy to understand. Your audience should be able to follow your presentation without getting lost.

They help you to connect with your audience. When you tell a story, you are essentially creating a bond with your audience. They will be more likely to listen to you and understand your message if they can relate to it on a personal level!

By following these thoughts, you can create PowerPoint presentations that are clear, engaging, and memorable. And by using storytelling and structure to your advantage, you can increase the chances that your audience will connect with your message and take action.

Not Practicing Properly

Among the most common slip-ups by presenters is not practicing and rehearsing their presentations adequately.

Not practicing your presentation can lead to a number of problems, including stumbling over your words, losing track of your thoughts, or going off on tangents. This can damage your credibility and make your audience lose interest.

To avoid these problems, it is important to set aside dedicated time for practice and rehearsal.

First, familiarize yourself with the content and flow of your presentation. This means reading through your slides and notes several times so that you know the material inside and out.

You should also practice delivering your presentation aloud, paying attention to your tone, pace, and body language.

Second, rehearse in front of a mirror or record yourself. This will help you to identify any areas that need improvement, such as awkward pauses or repetitive phrases.

You can also use this time to experiment with different delivery techniques, such as using gestures or facial expressions.

The more you practice, the more confident and polished you will be during the actual presentation. This will make you appear more credible to your audience and help you to keep their attention throughout your talk.

Overusing Animations and Transitions

Add animations and transitions in your presentation to avoid distractions. Overusing them can also lead them away from your message. So try to be it enough you need and void presentation.

Here are some tips for using animations and transitions effectively:

Use them sparingly. Too many animations and transitions can be overwhelming and distracting.

Choose simple and subtle effects. Avoid flashy or gimmicky animations that will take away from your message.

Use animations and transitions to highlight key points. This will help your audience to focus on the most important information.

Use animations and transitions to guide your audience’s attention. This can be done by animating text or objects to move around the slide or by using transitions to move from one drop to the next.

Remember, the goal is to enhance your message, not overshadow it with unnecessary visual effects.

Neglecting the Audience’s Needs and Preferences

Presenters should also tailor their presentation to the audience’s needs and preferences.

Understanding your audience’s background, knowledge level, and expectations is essential for creating a presentation that resonates with them.

Research your audience beforehand and tailor your presentation accordingly. Consider their interests, industry-specific terminology, and learning preferences. Adapt your content and delivery style to meet their needs and engage them on a deeper level.

By doing so, you’ll be able to connect with your audience and deliver a presentation that is both informative and relevant.

After you give your presentation, ask your audience for feedback. This will help you to identify any areas where you can improve your presentation for future audiences.

PowerPoint presentations have the power to engage, inform, and inspire. However, common mistakes can hinder your ability to deliver a stellar presentation that leaves a lasting impact on your audience. By avoiding overcrowded slides, poor design choices, lack of consistency, and neglecting storytelling and audience needs, you can elevate your presentation skills and captivate your audience from start to finish.

Remember, a well-crafted PowerPoint presentation is a powerful tool that can help you communicate your message effectively and achieve your presentation goals. So, take the time to avoid these common mistakes, implement the tips and strategies mentioned in this blog, and watch as your presentations become truly stellar.

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6 Presentation Mistakes That Are Easy to Avoid

Dec 18, 2012

Do you know why your presentation is going to fall flat on its face? It’s not because you have horrible presentation skills… it’s actually because you don’t know how to present your ideas in an impactful way.

You can learn the basic presentation skills but if no one is interested in the content or you, there’s no point in getting on stage.

Some people will tell you that it’s easy to present when you have something worth talking about, and this is true to some extent, but in most cases it isn’t the reality.

You see, it’s easy to build a research paper filled with great information or develop a detailed plan filled with insights and strategies. But it is really hard to tell a story through presenting if you do not understand the art of presentations and basic social dynamics.

So how do you give an awesome presentation even if you have a boring topic? Well first off, make sure you have understand what goes into giving a great talk . Once you have that, just avoid these mistakes like the plague:

Over populating your slides with text

A lot of professors and bad presentors fill their slides from top to bottom with information. In many cases these presenters get so caught up with the text on their slide that they simply read right from it. In theory, if you have a lot of information, you should put it in front of your audience, but lets be honest. Anyone who is listening to you speak can probably read your slides in their head than you can out loud.

Instead of filling your slides with text, focus on the key message you’re trying to get across and use that on your slide. A good way to improve your slide to text ratio is to simply keep it like a Tweet; 240 characters or less.You can also take a look at Venngage’s presentation maker and choose a pre-designed template to help guide your design. These presentation templates have been designed with engagement in mind already.

Lack of Presentation Prep

Whether you are writing a short speech by hand or putting your deck together in keynote; practicing your presentation is important to the success of it. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people “wing-it” and completely bomb their presentations or ramble because they didn’t actually time how long their presentation would be.

Before you get on stage to present make sure you’ve put in at LEAST 5x the amount of time it will take to deliver the presentation into building it. When I’m not put into a last minute situation, I usually put at least 15 hours of work into my presentation prep. Not only do I use this time to rehearse my presentation but also to make ongoing adjustments until my story is tight and jokes (when I have them) are worth telling.

But if you’re running late and can’t find the time to prep, there’s a solution. You can use an online text-to-speech tool to complete the verbal part of your presentation for you. Just make sure you don’t use a voice that’s overly robotic or mundane, or you’ll bore your audience.

Tacky Animations & Creative

If I see another presentation with text flying in from the left and photos swirling in from the right; I’m going to start prepping for the apocalypse. When a presentation is delivered with all of these different animation it’s like watching a protein shake in a blender without the top on it. The slides are all over the place.

Slides don’t need fancy transitions to look awesome. Here is a great slide deck that doesn’t include any transitions but still displays professionalism, great creativity and a clear message:

Another reason that presentation is so compelling and captivating is the creators ability to use consistent fonts and colour scheme throughout. By using the same font and colour scheme the readers don’t feel as if the story is out of place or disjointed. It makes the flow consistent and it allows the audience to be captured by YOU and not YOUR SLIDES.

You’re the main character. The slides are simply supporting cast.

Lecturing instead of storytelling

I’m a big believer in storytelling. Whether it’s remarkable storytelling or reactive storytelling ; it’s the best way to connect with an audience and to get your points across. Too often do speakers get caught up in highlighting the bells and whistles of their presentation instead of telling an attention worthy story.

When told properly, stories are always more engaging and exciting then a boat load of facts and supporting stats. Now, storytelling isn’t easy. I’ll be the first to say, it’s tough. But that doesn’t give you the right to bore people to death with your presentation. Tell a story that has high-stakes, has a main character, a twist and a conclusion that someone couldn’t guess as soon as you start talking.

Leaving the emotion at the door

If I asked you to think about the most captivating and interesting presentations you’ve ever heard, who would you think of? Maybe Martin Luther King? Steve Jobs? Tom Peters or Seth Godin?

Either way, one thing that each of these great speakers have in common when in front of a crowd is passion. You can’t stand up in front of a crowd and look bored or you’ll bore them just the same. If you can’t get excited as the presenter, how can you expect the audience to be interested in your words?

Unless you’re a celebrity. You cant.

If you avoid the six presentation mistakes above, your presentations are more likely to captivate an audience and be worth talking about. Now when you decide to leverage the above tips, don’t just assume they are going to work for you, make sure you test them out and constantly strive to be better. The art of delivering a powerful and impactful presentation isn’t something that comes overnight. Luckily, you can learn from the many hours I’ve spent presentating and avoid these mistakes.

Remember, when you’re on that stage you have one moment. One opportunity.

What other presentation mistakes should people avoid?

What are Presentation Skills?

Before we dive into the common mistakes, let’s first understand what presentation skills entail. Presentation skills encompass a set of abilities that enable individuals to deliver information or ideas in a clear, concise, and engaging manner. These skills include verbal and non-verbal communication, organization, visual aids utilization, and audience engagement techniques. Developing these skills is essential for students as it enhances their ability to convey their thoughts effectively and secure the attention and understanding of their audience.

Best Way to Avoid Presentation Mistakes

The best way to avoid these common presentation mistakes is through practice, preparation, and utilizing effective techniques. Here are some key tips to help you deliver successful presentations:

Practice : Practice presentation multiple times to familiarize yourself with the content and ensure a smooth delivery. You can rehearse in front of a mirror, record your presentations for self-evaluation, or seek feedback from trusted individuals.
Preparation : Thoroughly research your topic, create a well-structured outline, and gather relevant supporting materials. A solid foundation of knowledge will boost your confidence and enable you to deliver a more engaging presentation.
Visual Aid Design : Keep your visual aids concise, visually appealing, and relevant to your content. Use bullet points, graphs, or images to support your main points and enhance understanding. Limit the amount of text on each slide to avoid overwhelming your audience.
Engagement Techniques : Engage your audience through eye contact, variation in tone, body language, and interactive elements. Incorporate audience participation, encourage questions, and foster a collaborative environment to maintain interest and attention.
Time Management : Practice your presentation with a timer to ensure you stay within the allocated time. Allocate time for each section and be mindful of pacing to create a cohesive and well-structured presentation.
Reflect and Improve : After each presentation, take the time to reflect on your performance. Identify areas of improvement and actively work on honing your skills. Seek feedback from others and implement constructive suggestions to enhance your future presentations.

Final Notes

Presentation skills are essential for students, and avoiding common mistakes can significantly enhance your ability to convey information effectively. By addressing the top 10 common presentation mistakes and following the best practices outlined, you can deliver impactful presentations that leave a lasting impression. Remember to practice, prepare, engage your audience, and continuously work on refining your skills. With dedication and effort, you can become a confident and influential presenter.

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Q: What are the mistakes in a presentation?

A: The most common mistakes in presentations include lack of preparation, overreliance on slides, reading from notes, lack of eye contact, speaking too fast or too slow, lack of enthusiasm, ignoring audience engagement, poor time management, inadequate use of visual aids, and neglecting post-presentation reflection. By being aware of these mistakes and implementing strategies to avoid them, students can improve their presentation skills and deliver engaging and effective presentations.

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8 common presentation mistakes to avoid

Presentation mistakes often ignored while designing.

What are the typical presentation mistakes to avoid? Identifying the common presentation mistakes and avoiding them can perfect your presentation design. Before we delve deep into this topic, let us first have a brief introduction of PowerPoint application and the basic features of this tool that can be used to one’s best advantage for designs.

Understanding PowerPoint and its features

Slide, commonly referred to as a presentation slide, is an essential element of any professional presentation. PPT slides, or PowerPoint presentation slides, are a popular form of presentation design tool. A PowerPoint slide structured neatly will look good for audience viewing. On the contrary if poorly done, PowerPoint design slides can make the content look boring to the audience.

Microsoft PowerPoint offers best features for PPT slide design or PowerPoint slide design. For effective PowerPoint design, one has to find the right balance of text and visual elements in each slide. Expert desingers improve the visual hierarchy in their PowerPoint presentation slides design.

30 Common Presentation Mistakes

Not practicing enough
Reading directly from slides
Using too much text on slides
Not engaging the audience
Speaking too fast or too slow
Fidgeting or pacing
Not making eye contact
Using filler words (um, uh, like)
Not having a clear message or purpose
Going over time limit
Not using visuals or multimedia
Using inappropriate humor
Not dressing appropriately
Not knowing the audience
Not rehearsing with equipment
Not having a backup plan for technical difficulties
Not using a microphone when necessary
Not using a clear and concise structure
Not using transitions between topics
Not using examples or anecdotes
Not using data or statistics to support points
Not using a clear and consistent font and color scheme
Not using proper grammar and pronunciation
Not using a clear and audible voice
Not using a clear and visible pointer
Not using a clear and concise title slide
Not using a clear and concise conclusion
Not using a clear and concise call to action
Not using a clear and concise introduction
Not using a clear and concise agenda slide.

Below, we present eight common presentation mistakes that often go unnoticed. Our recommendations are designed to effectively address these mistakes, facilitating increased audience engagement and leaving a positive impression for your next meeting.

1. Agenda Issues

Solution – Section Dividers, Slide Navigators – Improving accessibility

Common Presentation Mistakes To Avoid – Agenda Structure

Agenda: It represents the index of a book, guiding to the sections in a PowerPoint presentation deck.

Section dividers: They mark the segregation of each topic and allows the reader to identify in which section certain information gets placed in a ppt deck.

Slide navigator for slides: This helps to move from one section to another, to know whether to go forward or backward in the flow, to have quick access to the right information.

The combined use of these 3 elements helps to devise better navigation in a slide deck, ease of access that improves the retention rate of viewers. The users will enjoy your content without the need for your guidance.

2. Monotonous Lecture

Solution – Ask questions that aid better audience interaction

Questions help easy interaction with the audience, educating them about your information or idea. Each successful presentation has the power to influence the actions of its own audience, bring in a changed mindset, and convince them to do something they would not otherwise have done.

3. Feel Disconnected

Solution – Empathize with your audience

Find a common personal experience: It is quite common to hear people at social events bonding over a common struggle or goal. Why? Because these things connect us. The same reasons we connect with others in our daily life, we can apply to our presentations to connect with our audience. Empathizing with your audience means really listening and having the ability to make them experience the presentation by reflecting the attention that is given to them.

4. Reading through the Slides

Solution – Break the chain and facilitate open communication

Common Presentation Mistakes To Avoid – Presenting The Slides

PowerPoint can be a useful tool for creating engaging presentations. A well-designed slide show serves as a visual aid and helps keep an audience’s attention.

Content: Make sure that all content is relevant and points to the desired outcome, whether that is persuading, informing, or educating people.

Design: The visual design of a PowerPoint presentation is an important part of using it effectively, helps to make the presentation flow from one slide to another.

Preparation: Practice the entire presentation out loud using the slides. If possible, practice in front of another person and ask for feedback, especially the first time you plan to use PowerPoint. You should be able to navigate between slides easily.

Presentation: Only include important points and elaborate on them verbally. Timing is another factor. Do not speak too fast or too slowly, stay within the time limit, and be sure to switch slides at appropriate points so that it is not too distracting. If you designed according to what people see and learned to control people’s eyes, you could trigger a profitable dynamic of interaction between you and your slides designed on the screen.

5. Watching slides while the audience is present

Solution – Improve Non-Verbal communication

Making contact helps to maintain an audience’s interest and encourages them to believe that you are genuinely interested in talking to them. You can make contact with your audience in a number of ways, including:

Eye contact
Spoken contact
Use of language

Every time you turn around and look at what you have to say, you give your back to your audience and lose visual contact with people. You completely lose the perception of dialogue because through following the slides you are giving priority to what you have to say rather than to the people present. In addition, you would get people used to watching slides first and then following your comment and losing the leadership of your speech.

6. Lack of leadership

Solution – Be confident and open to suggestions

You could sell a product or service to a customer, your startup pitch to an investor, or a recommendation to top management. You are trying to convince them to accept your ideas and act, exercising your leadership over your audience. A presentation is intended to influence people to do something they would not otherwise have done.

You can captivate the attention of your audience with a bright start in a number of ways, including:

Use a powerful quote
Ask a rhetorical, thought-provoking question
State a shocking statistic or headline
Show a gripping photo
Tell a captivating story
Use a prop or creative visual aid
Play a short video

7. Using the laser pointer

Solution – Listen and interact with audience

Common Presentation Mistakes To Avoid – Using Laser Pointer

Speakers use laser pointers to draw attention to a specific part of the presentation slide. This implies that the speaker turns around, loses visual contact with people, identifies the message on the PowerPoint slide, and tries to draw attention with a microscopic red dot. Your ppt slides must already be designed to draw people’s attention to a specific point. The slides must show exactly what you want to show when you click.

8. Slides stop working for some time

Solution – Prepare yourself for interactive group activities

Suddenly, if the power is cut off and the laptop with the presentation is turned off, be prepared with alternative activities. For e.g. involving the audience in an interactive activity, till such time the presentation is restored by the technician in charge. Be prepared in case something goes wrong due to technical failure. Technology is a powerful tool, but we cannot risk causing everything to fail if the technology fails. Use presentation handouts to support and enhance your presentation experience. A handout allows your audience to understand your points better and remember them afterward.

Key to success – Compelling presentation topic and elegant designs

Compelling presentation topics can capture the attention of the audience and keep them engaged throughout. To make PPT effectively, one has to strike the right balance of text and visuals in each slide. PowerPoint topics include business proposals, project updates, and educational lectures. For those looking for inspiration, there are numerous PowerPoint examples available online to spark creativity. PowerPoint presentation topics are crucial as they ignite the first spark in the audience mind.

Care should be taken to choose right topic of PPT presentation that can be highlighted for its usefulness and unique approach. The topic in PowerPoint presentation is the first thing that goes into the audience mind and keep them intrigued. Creating a PowerPoint presentation or ppt presentation that resonates to your audience will be remembered for a long time.

For various business needs, one can search for PowerPoint samples for presentation that gives design layouts neatly presented on a chosen topic. When you search online, you can find examples of PPT presentation on your industry highlighting key slides that can be included in your presentation. PowerPoint examples of presentations often comes with features explaining color, font, design theme and visual elements.

Online templates and PPT download are offered by various design agencies. They also share design tips and PowerPoint how to make them as top-notch matching industry standards. These agencies design PowerPoint aligned to your custom branding and come up with best designs for slide show. Choosing a right theme for PPT presentation can save time and bring in uniformity. Many design agencies offer theme PowerPoint presentation and deliver slides matching your unique business needs.

If you are searching for unique designs for your next PowerPoint presentation, reach us and you will be amazed by our stunning designs.

Conclusions

Each presentation is the opportunity of the time you are given by your audience. If not utilized properly, might have a serious impact on your business or your work and possibly because of not inspiring your audience. We have listed some of the commonly occurring pitfalls that affect your presentation meeting. Take this as a starting point and explore other possibilities to improve and create a ‘wow’ effect in your next presentation meeting.

Seek professional support to enhance your slides to take them to the next level of creativity. Our design team eagerly looks forward to your design projects.

Reach us: https://visualsculptors.com/contact-us

What is the 10 rule of a presentation?

The 10 rule of a presentation is also known as the 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint. It suggests that a presentation should have no more than 10 slides, last no longer than 20 minutes, and use a font size of at least 30 points. This rule is meant to keep presentations concise, engaging, and easy to follow.

2. What is common mistakes in ppt?

Some common mistakes in PowerPoint presentations include using too much text on slides, using low-quality images, using too many animations or transitions, not practicing the presentation beforehand, and not considering the audience’s needs or interests. Other mistakes include using inconsistent fonts or colors, using too many bullet points, and not using visuals to support the message.

3. What should you avoid during presentation?

Some things to avoid during a presentation include reading directly from slides, using too much jargon or technical language, speaking too fast or too slow, and not making eye contact with the audience. It’s also important to avoid being too monotone or robotic in your delivery, and to not go over your allotted time.

4. What are the 4 C’s of a good presentation?

The 4 C’s of a good presentation are: clarity, confidence, creativity, and connection. Clarity refers to the clear and concise delivery of your message, while confidence is the ability to present with poise and conviction. Creativity involves using visual aids and other techniques to engage your audience, and connection is the ability to establish a rapport with your listeners and make them feel invested in your message.

5. What are 6 presentation mistakes that you should avoid?

One of the most common mistakes is failing to adequately prepare, which can make you come across as unprofessional and unprepared. Another common mistake is using too many visuals or too much text, which can make it difficult for your audience to stay focused on your message.

Additional mistakes include failing to engage your audience, using inappropriate humor, and not being able to adapt your presentation to your audience’s needs.

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9 presentation mistakes to avoid

We all need to present frequently and the more you progress with your career the more important the presentations become. Messing these presentations up – especially in front of those responsible for your next promotion – will lead to bad career outcomes.

In today’s episode, Benjamin and I review 9 mistakes we often see during presentations. We’ll talk about:

Start with an introduction of yourself
Wordy slides
Monotonous
Not speaking to the audience
Hiding on stage
Reading from the slides
Not creating emotions
Too much content
Bad ending

If you want to learn more about how to strengthen your presentation skills, enrol into the presentation course of The Effective Statistician:

Winning with Words and Graphs: The Effective Statistician presentation and data visualization masterclass

In this online, on-demand program, you will:

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Learn the fundamentals of preparing and delivering an engaging, impactful presentation, including the five questions you need to answer for ANY presentation (and the one you should avoid)
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Hear real industry examples and experiences that demonstrate and reinforce key presentation and visualization concepts
Improve one of your own presentations (past or current) that will serve as an application of these tools and concepts

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Transcript:

Alexander: You’re listening to The Effective Statistician podcasts, a weekly podcast with Alexander Schacht and Benjamin Piske, designed to help you reach your potential, lead great sciences and serve patients without becoming overwhelmed by work. Today, we are talking about presentation tips, presentation tips to engage your audience because we have this PSI conference upcoming , there will be lots of presentations there but of course, you will probably do a lot of presentations yourself. So use these to really engage with your audience. Presentations are so important they can help you to boost your career. If you’re giving a presentation to senior management and you impress them, that will help you to build your brand as a really, really good communicator. You will stand out from the crowd because most presenters are actually, at least average, if not worse. So if you are a really good presenter, that makes a huge difference. So stay tuned for this episode, which is my goal for the other episodes sponsored by PSI. Join PSI today to further develop your statistical capabilities with access to the video on demand content library, free registration to all PSI webinars and much much more. The reduced rate is only 20 pounds for non high-income countries and 95 pounds for high-income countries. Head over to psiweb.org to learn more about PSI activities and become a PSI member today.

Welcome to another episode of The Effective Statistician. Hi Benjamin, how are you doing?

Benjamin: Hi Alex, very well, thanks. It’s slowly getting warmer even though it’s a nice time in the year. I really enjoy it. And how about you?

Alexander: It’s really nice. It’s great to see the garden flourishing and all the flowers. I love the time working in the garden. It’s really one of my favorite things to calm down.

Benjamin: It’s nice. It’s somehow different birds, if you hear the birds outside and just sun is shining and that’s really some nice counter program to the day-to-day work in the office.

Alexander: Yep. Especially if you have been tortured by bad presentations all day.

Benjamin: For you and Debbie know more about it.

Alexander: I don’t who says that there are so many presentation courses. There’s so many books about presentations. There’s so many great examples in terms of how to do great presentations yet the vast majority of business presentations are really, really poor. It’s like bad habits become best practices. It’s weird.

Benjamin: And I know exactly what you mean, and even, you know, if you put aside that there are books and training and whatsoever, I mean everyone who’s actually listening to a presentation or watching a presentation. I mean, if you, if you watch it, you feel, there’s something going wrong. So there, you know, you feel that there’s some I don’t like, it’s like boring or if you’re just reading out loud your slides whatsoever but still as I said people just copy it and do it exactly the same despite they should know better even without reading a book about.

Alexander: Yeah. So let’s talk through a couple of common mistakes that we see. So, the first one that I especially see at conferences is that people have a really bad start. Say, for example, start by introducing themselves, which usually is anyway done by the moderator or the chair. So there is really no need to introduce yourself. If you really want to introduce yourself, do that little bit later because that’s just not a good start. ‘Hi. My name is Alexander Schacht. I studied Statistics at the University of Gottingen. Thereafter, I spent two years throwing out your life. And blah, blah, blah.

Benjamin: I think it’s more the type of introduction. I mean that is exactly the standard slide that you pull out the kind of your CV and then you just go there. But sometimes there’s a good, you know, like a start, which is eye-catching.So for example, start with the picture, you know, if you just like everyone’s having a pulling out their dogs pictures, right? So put in something which is related and in whatever way you can kind of get a bridge to the topic that you’re talking about. But something that is personal and not side what you’ve already been introduced to. So like if everyone knows your name and where you’re from and the company and where you’re working or the University where you’re working is already on the presentation at the first light. So do something eye-catching. Do something which is outside the things that have been done but build a bridge to where you start off from.

Alexander: Completely agree. Let’s get to the second one. Where do the slides or crowds the slides. I think, you know, I am very often done here. But I want to have these slides as, you know, read out all those people kind of later can read the slides. Well, I think like, ‘yeah, that’s fine’. Then create two versions of your slides. First, create a version where you have all the complete sentences or whatsoever. And then, you can just save that and that out as a pre read, later on. And then you fine tune it. Streamline it, get rid of all the filler words and only keep the most important words.

Benjamin: It’s kind of the most common mistake that people who are the presenter try to take the sentences and read them out. Actually having a sentence on the slide is already a mistake. Or something which is close to a sentence, it’s really about bullets. I know it’s usually easier if you have it because it saves or it gives you more security when you present. Nevertheless for the turn around just try to take the side of the listener. And for them, it’s difficult to understand or to take the sentences directly. So if you do a presentation, keywords may be half a sentence and not more than two, maybe three bullet types of things on one slide.

Alexander: Yeah. If you need more structures and split them up.

Benjamin: Use the second slide.

Alexander: Yeah. The third thing is about how you present. And that is especially bad in virtual situations where you people sit at their desks, don’t see the audience and just kind of mumble to themselves in a very monotonic way. ‘I’m going to show you that this is certain, this is that and then we’ll go into these new features and by the way it also the storylines and’, you know, nobody can listen to that.

Benjamin: Yeah. They’re obviously like one big mistake that people who actually prepare for a presentation, print them out, and then put this on the desk and read it like, take the slide. So actually it’s about the way of presenting even if you’re not seen. Meaning that if you sit at your desk and bend towards the slides on your desk, you present, as if you don’t look at the audience and you hear the sound of it. And that’s why it’s at most important to not put it down and read but maybe to stand up and present or to sit upright and present anything.

Alexander: Just stand up, you never sit on a stage.

Benjamin: Yeah, exactly. And that already hurts to get away from this monotonous speech that other people are presenting with. Don’t print it out or maybe hold it in your head and stand while you talk. And everyone has bluetooth headsets and whatsoever so you can easily stand up, walk around and that is exactly prepare and train it but do it as if you were on stage because that enormously for the audience, to actually listen to what you’re saying.

Alexander: Yeah, that goes to the next point, when you are presenting on stage always talk to the audience. Never, never turn your back to the audience because you need to read the slides. Arrange it in such a way that if you need to have a look at the slides that you have some in front of you, that you have a screen in front of you.

Benjamin: You print them out in small pieces of paper like cards or something and do the keywords and then have it in your hands and just open it and look into these slides. But yes, don’t turn around.

Alexander: And if you’re presenting virtually, make sure that your camera setup is correct and that you look into the camera and not that you kind of look sideways or something like this cause that’s where your computer screen is and that’s not where your kind of laptop cameras and things like that. After two years of the pandemic, everybody should have a decent camera setup, it’s just basics I would say.

Benjamin: Yeah, it should be but usually people tend to have a second screen or three or more but make sure of the presentation they are doing and the audience. So for example, when I present, I sometimes, when I’m in a video conference not and that is about the presentation, I tend to look into my picture because this is always moving because I see myself. So make sure that whatever you’re focusing on, you learn to focus is actually close to the camera.

Alexander: Move the window directly below the camera

Benjamin: Exactly. That goes for everything not only for a proper presentation but also for any video conference because otherwise people tend to look around to the left side to the second screen because this is where the presentation or the video is actually showing while the cameras on the other screen.

Alexander: Yeah. It gets even worse sometimes and that’s the next mistake when people nearly hide on stage. So of course they don’t even turn on the camera but you know, when they very often there are these kinds of desks or something like this, where you can kind of stand behind, don’t stand behind this. Stand at least next to it. Own the stage.

Benjamin: No, I agree but still sometimes it’s helpful because of the screen behind it and for people, I understand that they like to maybe hold on to something, right? So that’s why, you know, and I agree that being on the stage is definitely something to prefer. However, if this is at the beginning of the time of presentation, so for yourself or within your career, then just make sure that you are standing high above it so that you’re not hiding behind it. So that your, you know, the most of the body or your upper body is shown above the table. So, that’s you’re not hiding but still be present and have something to, you know, that people see you.

Alexander: Yeah. Next mistake is not creating emotions. I think this is maybe a weird one when we think about the kind of you know we are technical people and we present facts and things like that. But still you can create emotions, you can tell the story, you can kind of speak about the impact to the patients, you can, if you’re good at it, even use humor. Always great even when something goes wrong to make a laugh about yourself. We only remember things when there’s a connected emotion. And so you will help the audience to retain what you’re talking about if you create some emotions in them. This can be everything from being sad to being happy, from being thrilled, not being bored, that’s not bored, all the others.

Benjamin: Yeah. But that shouldn’t be so difficult to be honest because usually, when you present, this is not like, it’s just a pure collection of facts but still there is some enthusiasm about that you should make sure that it comes across. So for example, if this is like a work that you did, because of study results or ever, you know, you’ve been working on this for years, months, whatsoever. So you spend a lot of time, so you put a lot of power, effort into this. And then at the end, you know, for example, there’s the unblinding and, you know, there’s some, I know everyone is busy, so there’s not a lot of room for emotions. Nevertheless, there’s some thrilling excitement about getting the results. I mean, the first time you look into the table and you realize it’s good results, bad results, whatever. So there’s something about it and just try to remember the, you know, when you do a presentation, try to remember your personal development through the face of getting to the results in this example. And when you prepare for this, keep it in mind and that already helps a lot to get it across. So when you present the results, it’s kind of a relief. There’s something and mention it and show it, what you remembered when you present. So the moment when you see it first go there. That’s it.

Alexander: Yeah. That’s a very, very good tip. When we have worked on quite a lot of things. We tend to want to show everything, all the stuff that we have done and all the details. Lots of us are very, very detail focused. I completely get that. But that is not helping the audience and that’s the next mistake, too much content.

Benjamin: Yeah. I remember formulas and hated slides, people can be maniac about la tech there in the creation of formulas for slides and really nobody is gonna get the you know, any any of what you’re saying if this is overloaded in contents and details and everything. So bring it to the audience, bring it to the key results or whatever it is.

Alexander: Or if you have 90 slides for a 15 minute presentation, it’s just set up for failure. You need to be able to anticipate how much time you will spend per slide, approximately. And then really cut down what’s really really important. Cut down, cut down, cut down and you can move everything to backup slides if you know, it’s just a Q&A session thereafter and things like that. But there’s nothing worse than having a 15-minute presentation and at minute 13 you’re just halfway through your presentation, it’s you kind of ‘I can skip over this and this and this and you know that just unprofessional.

Benjamin: Yeah, no, I agree but what also helps me is that when I prepare I usually tend to do a lot like a long story because there’s a story and there’s been an effort and time that you spend and there’s a lot of things to do that. You can start with that and it helps me personally to actually create the slides and make it like a nice flow and for a long time, storing. And they’re especially good to keep these slides as backup slides if it gets to the discussion. So depending on where you present there might be questions on, ‘I didn’t understand this step’, or there’s something ‘how did you get from there to there’, and you know it kind of whatever it is, keep it in the back, and just pull it up in case it’s needed for discussion later on. So, when we really deep dive into details, however, cut them down. So when you got the story, when you get the whole 50 slides on line whatsoever, then bring them to, I don’t know, one slide for every minute and I don’t know, there’s some that usually even say less than it so two minutes for one slide or something, right?

Alexander: What I usually have is a slide per minute, something like that. For online presentations actually, you can have even more slides per minute, but of course then these slides need to be, you know, trimmed and not full of stuff. Remember, the presentation is about the audience, it’s not about you showing what you all know, it’s about the audience. And its service to the audience to edit everything out. Editing is a kind of a cruel process but like Stephen King said you need to kill your babies. The things that you really love, that you put a lot of things in and just need to kind of get rid of some.

Benjamin: That’s a cruel one.

Alexander: Yeah. It just leads to the last mistake. If you have too much content you usually have a bad ending. And endings like starts are so important. The Q and A slide or something like this or thank you slide. Come on, really? That is this last slide that people see and you want to have it a question mark? No. It should be your key takeaway, these are the things that stay on the slide. The call to action. The things that you want the audience to remember. That should be the last thing.

Benjamin: I agree. It shouldn’t be question marks.

Alexander: But it’s so common. It is so common.

Benjamin: Yeah. That’s interesting because usually that’s absolutely common is, ‘so for any questions, please contact me or any questions left?’ Anything to the audience but it’s not about the summary, it’s not about the takeaways, it’s not about the key messages and that is what it should be about.

Alexander: Yeah. Second, the goal that you have with this presentation. And your last slide, your last part of the presentation should reinforce this goal.

Benjamin: Something eye-catching is important too.

Alexander: Yeah. So that people, when they go off into the brakes thereafter that’s , ‘I remember that’.

Benjamin: Yeah. Could also be that there’s a like loop back to the beginning. So when you have a start maybe something with you know where, like a question or something where you say something unbelievable, anything that comes up, and at the end you can go, bring back the answer like loop it in what you had in the beginning so that there’s an overall storyline towards the end.

Alexander: Yeah. Closing a loop is a really, really good thing, that you open there’s a beginning. Maybe you started with a story at the beginning and didn’t end it and then kind of you end at the end. That’s a nice technique to kind of have a little bit of tension for the presentation. Okay. Very good. We talked about lots of different mistakes that you can make. Bad start, where these slides, monotonous speaking, not speaking to the audience, hiding on stage, creating too much content, not having enough emotions and pretty bad ending. Embrace these. And if you want to do more, you can also sign up for the presentation data and visualization course that The Effective Statistician offers. So if you’re interested in that, just head over to the homepage and you will find more information there. So, thanks again Benjamin, great to talk to you again.

Benjamin: Bye.

Alexander: Bye. Did you like this episode? If yes then maybe head over to theffectivestatistician.com, we have actually a course designed for statisticians, for data scientists to help with their presentations, with presentations and also with data visualization techniques. So very often both come together because we want to present scenarios, we want to present data and then having good data visualization techniques, really makes you stand out from the crowd, don’t just copy and paste over tables, that doesn’t really look good. So head over to The Effective Statistician and learn more about the data visualization and presentation course that we have there. This show was created in association with PSI. Thanks to Reine who works on the show in the background and thank you for listening. Reach your potential, lead great sciences and serve patients. Just be an effective statistician.

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10 Common Presentation Mistakes

Mistake 1: Not Preparing Enough

Mistake 2: Not Familiarizing Yourself With the Venue and Equipment

Mistake 3: Ignoring Your Audience

Mistake 4: Using Inappropriate Content

Mistake 5: Being Too Verbose

Mistake 6: Using Ineffective Visuals

Mistake 7: Overcrowding Text

Mistake 8: Speaking Incoherently

Mistake 9: Showing a Lack of Dynamism

Mistake 10: Avoiding Eye Contact

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28 Common Presentation Mistakes. Which are you making?

1. Starting poorly

2. Failing to address the audience’s concerns

3. Boring your audience

4. Failing to engage emotionally

5. Using too much jargon

6. Being too wordy or rambling

7. Going over your allotted time

8. Lack of focus

9. Reading slides verbatim

10. Poor slide design

11. Cramming in too much information

12. Incorporating too much data

13. Relying on PowerPoint as your only presentation tool

14. Making it about you

15. Being a Diva

16. Not practicing enough (or at all!)

17. Apologizing or drawing attention to your fears or shortcomings

18. Technical difficulties

19. Overusing animations and transitions

20. Not using enough relevant stories

21. Making your stories too long

22. Lack of eye contact

23. Failing to pause

24. Poor use of humour

25. Ending with Q&A

26. Summarizing the entire presentation

27. Not including a call to action

28. Not asking for (anonymous) feedback from the audience

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The 10 Most Common Presentation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Top ten ways to avoid common presentation mistakes

Presentation Mistakes #1 – Do you waste time with PowerPoint?

Avoid Presentation Mistakes – Top Tips

Presentation Mistakes #2 – Do you make yourself or your idea the focus of your presentation?

What has changed?

Presentation Mistakes #3 – Is your presentation a data dump?

Presentation Mistakes #4 – Do you use written language in your talk?

Presentation Mistakes #5 – Are you trying to say too much?

Presentation Mistakes #6 – Are you guilty of Death by PowerPoint?

Presentation Mistakes #7 – Do you use meta-speak?

Presenting Mistakes #8 – Do you gabble or speak too fast?

Presentation Mistakes #9 – Are you too serious?

Presenting Mistakes #10 – Do you avoid practising?

Summary – key presentation mistakes to avoid

Reminder: Top ten ways to avoid common presentation mistakes

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