FUHR, Mar 2023

1 'Throat Clearing'

The first 20-30 seconds is your chance to grab the audience. Don't waste it on 'throat clearing' like explaining what your talk is about, introducing yourself, saying how grateful you are to be there, and so on. Instead, use a strong opener, a hook, to get instant attention.

2 Using Jargon and Buzzwords to Make Yourself Sound Smart

Think you should not display emotion when presenting and replace all emotion with buzzwords and data? Wrong. Emotion is what makes presentations memorable and inspires people to act. Speaking naturally, with honest emotion, makes you sound confident and engages people.

3 Spicing Up Your Slides With Multiple Fonts, Colors, Clipart and Graphic Decoration

Simplicity fosters clarity! Less Is More! Many Google Slides and PowerPoint templates are awful, IMHO. Invest the time in finding or designing a decent template.

4 Cramming Your Slides With Text and Reading From Your Slides

Amateur presenters put bullet points and long text on the slides and read from their slides (turning their back to the audience!).

A presentation is a performance: An oral presentation accompanied by slides. Use slides to emphasize your spoken message. The audience should be focused on you, not on reading slides.

5 Speaking In Great Detail For a Long Time

Presentations are often too long, seldom too short. It generally takes more time to create a short presentation than a long one.

6 Failing to Rehearse

Some presenters are so terrified that they just don't want to rehearse. Others think that being rehearsed might make them less 'natural'. But every great presenter is heavily rehearsed. Practice Makes Perfect!

7 Never Making Eye Contact With the Audience

Very bad. Your audience — who came to hear you — will feel that you do not want to be there, with them.

8 Not Knowing Your Audience

Tell the wrong story to the wrong audience and you lose both their attention and respect.

9 The Non-ending Ending

'Uh, OK, looks like, uh, my time is up, so, eh, I guess I'll stop here... any questions?' End purposefully. And please, skip the ‘Thank You!’ slide and the ‘Questions?’ slide. Say it, that's more personal and therefore stronger.

Keep learning about creating and delivering presentations from TED, Duarte, and others