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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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Creating Effective Presentation Visuals

Connecting People With Your Message

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18 presentation mistakes you probably make (and how to avoid them)

July 11, 2017

Almost exactly one year ago I was in Paris with a colleague and his team of presentation coaches. We were gonna hold a presentation workshop for an international company and their senior managers. What unfolded in that workshop was eye-opening. We asked the attendees to reflect on what makes a presentation great versus awful, and the consensus was clear - bad slides can ruin even the most brilliant presenter's performance.

As we delved into the workshop, it became evident that the common pitfalls were "bad slides," "too much text on slides," and "ugly PowerPoint slides." Aha! The attendees understood the significance of clean design in business presentations. This was great news for me who was growing my presentation design agency.

Bad slides can make the greatest presenter fail

One might argue that as long as you're a captivating speaker, the slides are secondary. However, reality struck us during a 5-minute presentation exercise. One of the senior managers, let’s call him John, had great stage presence and his outgoing and fun personality caught my attention straight away. John was not talking about a super exciting topic, but his impressive way of presenting it made me actually want to listen and see if I could learn anything.

The issue was that John's slides kept pulling my attention away from him and what he was saying, and my focus was instead on reading his bullet points. And it didn't take long before I had lost him and what he was talking about. This happened over and over again with several of the other managers. It became clear that the details crammed into his slides were working against him, not for him.

Most of the senior managers were good at communicating their ideas but they didn't need all the content that they had stuffed in their slides. The details in their presentation slides worked against the speaker rather than supporting them. And this is a fact that most speakers neglect: do my slides enhance or detract from my message?

When you are preparing a presentation, try asking yourself these three questions:

Do I really need all these points on my slide? Embrace simplicity and let your speech fill in the gaps.

What can I delete from my slides and convey through my words? Less is often more when it comes to impactful presentations.

Do my slides support me, or are they stealing the spotlight? Ensure your slides complement your narrative, not compete with it.

The 18 most common presentation mistakes people do, and how to avoid them

On the second day of the workshop we worked together with the participants, did some role plays, critiqued their slides and how they gave their presentations. From these exercises we developed a big list of the most common mistakes people make when giving presentations. We also gave suggestions on how to stop making those mistakes. Here are the top 18 from that list.

1. Ignoring the Power of Design

Mistake : Underestimating the impact of presentation design.

Solution : Embrace clean, visually appealing slides that complement your message. Consider color psychology, visual hierarchy, and maintain consistency throughout. It's hard to tell stories with bullet points.

2. Overlooking the Psychology of Colors

Mistake : Neglecting the influence of colors on audience perception.

Solution : Choose colors wisely to evoke the right emotions. Warm tones for passion, cool tones for trust. Align your color palette with the mood and message of your presentation.

3. Neglecting Visual Hierarchy

Mistake : Failing to guide the audience's attention through visual hierarchy.

Solution : Use larger fonts, bold colors, and strategic layouts to highlight key points. Guide your audiences' attention with visual hierarchy.

4. Inconsistency in Design

Mistake : Not maintaining a consistent design throughout the presentation.

Solution : From fonts to color schemes, consistency breeds professionalism. Create a cohesive narrative by ensuring all design elements align with your brand.

5. Underestimating the Power of Storytelling

Mistake : Overlooking the impact of a compelling narrative.

Solution : Tailor your story to resonate with your audience. Craft a narrative arc with a captivating introduction, core content, and a memorable takeaway. Humanize your presentation with real-life anecdotes.

6. Not Knowing Your Audience

Mistake : Failing to tailor your presentation to your audience.

Solution : Understand their needs, challenges, and aspirations. Make your message more relatable by addressing their specific interests.

7. Neglecting Virtual Presentation Skills

Mistake : Ignoring the nuances of virtual presentations.

Solution : Master the art of virtual communication. Leverage tools, optimize visuals for screens, and maintain an engaging tone to keep your audience actively participating.

8. Avoiding Interaction in Presentations

Mistake : Sticking to a one-way communication approach.

Solution : Break away from monotone presentations with interactive elements. Incorporate polls, Q&A sessions, and multimedia to keep your audience engaged and participating actively.

9. Underestimating the Impact of Presentation Design Agencies

Mistake : Overlooking the expertise of presentation design agencies.

Solution : Collaborate with specialized presentation and/or PowerPoint agencies for visually stunning presentations. They understand the nuances of effective design and can transform your ideas into captivating visuals.

10. DIY Design Mistakes

Mistake : Thinking effective design requires a hefty budget.

Solution : Explore user-friendly design tools like Canva. Invest in online courses to enhance your skills and gather feedback from peers to uncover areas for improvement.

11. Ignoring Rehearsals

Mistake : Neglecting the importance of rehearsing your presentation.

Solution : Practice your delivery to enhance confidence and identify areas for improvement. Record yourself and watch it back. Seek feedback from a colleague.

12. Overloading Slides with Information

Mistake : Cramming too much information onto slides.

Solution : Embrace simplicity. Focus on key points and let your speech fill in the details. A clutter-free slide enhances audience understanding.

13. Disregarding Body Language

Mistake : Ignoring the impact of body language during presentations.

Solution : Be mindful of your gestures, posture, and facial expressions. Positive body language enhances your credibility and engages the audience.

14. Neglecting the Opening Hook

Mistake : Starting your presentation with a weak or generic opening.

Solution : Capture your audience's attention from the start. Begin with a compelling question, quote, or anecdote to hook your audience and set the tone.

15. Poor Time Management

Mistake : Overrunning or rushing through your presentation.

Solution : Practice pacing to ensure your presentation fits the allotted time. Be mindful of your audience's attention span and adjust your content accordingly.

16. Ignoring Feedback Loops

Mistake : Disregarding the importance of feedback.

Solution : Seek feedback from peers, mentors, or the audience. Constructive criticism helps refine your presentation skills and address blind spots.

17. Using Overly Complex Jargon

Mistake : Assuming your audience understands complex industry jargon.

Solution : Simplify your language to ensure universal understanding. Clear communication enhances engagement and relatability.

18. Lack of Adaptability

Mistake : Failing to adapt your presentation style to different audiences or settings.

Solution : Understand the context and preferences of your audience. Tailor your delivery to resonate with diverse groups, whether in a boardroom or a virtual setting.

Mastering the art of presentation goes beyond being a captivating speaker. It involves understanding the marriage of design and storytelling, navigating the technological landscape, and adapting to evolving presentation styles. Whether you collaborate with a presentation design agency or take the DIY route, the goal remains the same - to captivate your audience and leave a lasting impression. Embrace the power of design, craft compelling narratives, and watch as your presentations become not just informative sessions but memorable experiences.

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• Effective Presentation Skills Tutorial
• Common Reasons for Ineffective Presentations
• Not engaging the audience in the beginning of the presentation
• Poorly organized information (no order or logic) or lack of clear purpose
• Poorly designed presentation materials (poor color contrast, background design, font size or type, etc.)
• Incorrect or misleading graphs, charts and visuals
• Too many bullets per slide, or too many lines for each bullet
• Lack of preparation and rehearsal
• Lack of confidence and enthusiasm about the topic
• Inconsistent pace (too much time spent on one part and too little time left for the rest)
• Lack of eye contact with the audience, poor body language and looking at or talking towards the screen
• Inaudible or monotone delivery, mispronunciation of words and reading the slides verbatim
• Not knowing how to use delivery technologies or not being prepared for the technology available
• Poor or incorrect use of technology tools or spending too much to get the technology working
• Not following time limits (too much material) and lack of consideration for other presenters
• Mistakes in the content, and glaring spelling and grammatical errors in the slides
• Ending the presentation abruptly, not leaving enough time for questions and answers and not handling questions and answers well
• Preparing for the Presentation
• Organizing the Presentation
• Designing Effective Presentation Materials
• Rehearsing the Presentation
• Delivering the Presentation
• Handling Questions and Answers
• Presentation Skills Quiz
• Presentation Preparation Checklist

• Tips & news
• Infographics

The Do’s and Don’ts When Giving a Presentation

Average: 5 ( 1 vote)

Making a presentation is simply expressing your thoughts or ideas in front of an audience. But, sometimes it doesn’t feel that simple, does it?

Whether you’re a student, board member, or key employee of an MNC; you will probably be asked to give a presentation at some point in your career.

Some people are comfortable with their skills in presenting and can deliver with ease, but there are many who find it difficult to sustain a good performance.

Presenting isn’t easy, but these tips will help you connect with your audience when you are presenting.

Here are some tips to practice for your next presentation:

Confident body language

Stand tall with your head high, pull your shoulders back, and put your feet shoulder-length apart.

Keep your arms relaxed and free to gesture naturally as you speak.

Positive expressions

Lively eyes that gaze around the room will make the audience feel connected to you.

Smile when it is appropriate for your content.

The more the audience feels you are engaged with them, the more they will be invested in what you say.

Goal shaping

Surely, you have an idea of what you would like to say in your presentation.

But, what is just as important is how you say it.

Consider what the goal of your presentation is: to inform, to evoke emotion, or to persuade.

Shape your phrasing, and choose the appropriate words, to accomplish this goal.

Audience engagement

Engaging the audience is key.

According to a study by Microsoft, the average attention span for a human being was eight seconds in 2016.

In 2000, it was twelve seconds.

Now, even more, a presenter must be captivating to keep the attention of its audience.

So, when you are ready to give a presentation, consider the infographic created by Walkerstone called Do’s and Don’ts of presenting .

About the Author: Sarah Brown  is good at marketing and communications and likes to think that most people leave inspired if they hear her speak.

See the original posting  here.

What are some of the crucial lessons you’ve learned about being a speaker? We'd love to hear your stories (and maybe feature you in an upcoming article!) Contact us here.

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Nervous During Presentations? Reframe How You Think of Them

When you get anxious during a presentation, focusing on your feelings will only make things worse. Research shows that being kind and generous reduces our stress levels, so fight your nerves by thinking of your talk as an act of kindness: You’re sharing something valuable with other people. Use this framing when you’re preparing the […]

When you get anxious during a presentation, focusing on your feelings will only make things worse. Research shows that being kind and generous reduces our stress levels, so fight your nerves by thinking of your talk as an act of kindness: You’re sharing something valuable with other people. Use this framing when you’re preparing the presentation. Rather than starting with your topic, start with some reflection. Ask yourself, Who will be in the room? What do they need from me? Then craft a presentation that directly addresses those needs. On the day of your talk, when you’re extra nervous, take slow, deep breaths and remind yourself that you are here to help your listeners. And then during the presentation, connect with your audience by making eye contact — even if you’d rather do anything else. Pretend you’re having a series of one-on-one conversations, providing each person with the information they need. This generosity mindset can turn a painful experience into one of giving.

Source: This tip is adapted from “To Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking, Stop Thinking About Yourself,” by Sarah Gershman

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How to not be nervous for a presentation — 13 tips that work (really!)

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Why do I get nervous before presenting?

How not to be nervous when presenting, 5 techniques to control your nerves, quotes for inspiration, speak with confidence.

If you feel nervous or scared about talking to someone new, giving a speech, or being on stage, rest assured: you’re not alone. 

Experiencing symptoms of performance anxiety like an increased heart rate, trembling hands, or excessive sweating is perfectly normal. In fact, people often fear public speaking . But the more you’re immersed in these types of situations, the more comfortable you’ll become . 

We’ll explore how to not be nervous for a presentation and offer inspirational quotes to help you step out of your comfort zone.

Based on data from the National Social Anxiety Center, fear of public speaking is the most common phobia . The official term for this fear is glossophobia, colloquially termed stage fright.

Stage fright typically arises from the perception that when you're in front of a group of people, they'll judge you. The brain’s frontal lobe aids in memory, and when we’re stressed, increased stress hormones temporarily shut that region down . This is what causes us to freeze up and stop talking. 

There’s nothing wrong with being nervous. We all have different social comfort zones, communication styles, and presentation skills. But we can expand and improve our skills if we’re cognitively flexible .

Cognitive flexibility plays a big role in our behavior and attitudes and impacts our performance. You can use your fears as a catalyst for growth and learning — including giving a great presentation.

The following techniques will help you shift your thinking from reactive to proactive to combat nerves throughout the presentation experience:

Before the presentation:

1. Know your topic

Don’t wing it when it comes to presenting any topic. The better you understand your subject matter, the more confident you’ll feel. You can answer questions right away and won’t have to rely on your notes.

If there are a few points or any information you think might arise during the presentation or Q&A, research it and become comfortable speaking to the subject.

Here are a few ways to study: 

• Break down concepts onto notecards
• Practice answering questions  (especially the hard ones you hope no one asks)
• Explain complex information to peers and colleagues

2. Be organized

Take time to thoroughly plan each aspect of the presentation. Often, that means designing PowerPoint slides or other visual aids like videos. Clarify with the organizer what format and technology you’ll be using.

If it’ll be virtual, get your background and room organized, too. This ensures the presentation will go smoothly, in turn reducing stress.  Consider the following preparations:

• Invite your support network to the event
• Arrive early to set up tech and get comfortable in the space
• Practice timing your presentation with the time tracker you’ll use day-of
• Bring a water bottle and a snack
• Contact your manager or venue staff to discuss any accessibility or tech concerns

3. Practice, practice, practice

Whether you’re rehearsing in front of a mirror, family member, or pet, you can never practice enough. Ask for feedback about your body language , eye contact , and how loudly you project your voice.

If you’ll be giving the presentation on a video conference, record it on the platform to see how you look and sound.

4. Visualize your success

Thinking through possible outcomes is a great way to prepare — but it can also backfire on you. If you obsess over negative what-ifs, this failing mentality might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

The more often you fill your mind with positive thoughts and visualize your success, the more automatic they’ll be. Positive self-talk can make a big difference to your confidence. Run through the presentation — successfully — in your head.

During the presentation:

5. Focus on your material, not the audience

Your audience is there for your presentation — not to assess you. They’ll be looking at your colorful slides and listening to what you’re saying. Don’t let your mind fill with insecurities . 

6 . Don't fear silence

If your mind suddenly goes blank, that’s okay. It may seem like an eternity to you as you try to figure out what to say next, but it’s only a few seconds at most. 

Pausing isn’t a bad thing, anyway. You can use dramatic breaks advantageously to draw attention before the most important bits. 

7 . Speak slowly

Presentation anxiety often causes nervous energy, so we speak faster than normal. This might make you fumble your words or forget important details.

Slow down. Audience members will be thankful since they can understand you , and drawing out your speech will give you time to calm down, ground yourself , and stay organized.

8 . Take deep breaths and drink water

Breathing delivers oxygen to your brain, allowing you to think more clearly. Drinking water ups your energy, and also gives you a moment to pause. 

Smiling is a simple yet effective way to soothe your nerves. Doing so releases endorphins, helping you physically feel more confident. And a friendly face will make the audience more open to what you’re saying. 

10 . Remember the three "audience truths"

These include: 1) for the duration of the presentation, the audience believes you’re the expert, 2) they’re on your side, and 3) they don’t know when you make a mistake. 

After the presentation:

11. Recognize your success

Giving a presentation is something worth being proud of — celebrate it! In addition to family, friends, and coworkers, you deserve a high five from yourself, too.

1 2. Collect feedback

Feedback is a wonderful gift if you use it as a tool to help you do even better next time. Ask some of your audience members what they liked and what they didn’t. Remember, you can learn a lot from your mistakes . 

1 3. Don't beat yourself up

You did the best you could, and that’s all anyone — including you — can ask for. 

Nervousness is perfectly normal, but sometimes our symptoms hold us back from doing — and enjoying — scarier tasks. Here are five tips for overcoming nerves:

1. Practice impression management

Impression management requires projecting an image that contradicts how you actually feel. It’s essentially a “fake it ‘til you make it” strategy.  Let’s say you’re about to make a corporate-wide presentation and feel worried you’ll forget important information. You’ll counteract this worry by imagining yourself remembering every detail and delivering it entertainingly.

Learn from this practice by noting the information chosen in your hypothetical and how you expressed it effectively. 

2. Talk to someone

Emotions are contagious. We absorb others’ positive vibes . Chatting with people who are excited about and confident in our presentation abilities rubs off on us. 

Before a presentation, call a cheerleader in your life — someone who’s on your side and understands your nerves. Be specific, discussing which parts of presenting are nerve-wracking and what you need from them.

3. Do breathing exercises

Mindful breathing is when you pay attention to the sensation of inhaling and exhaling while controlling and deepening breath length. Breathwork has several health benefits, including reducing stress and anxiety and improving memory, attention, and focus. 

Before the presentation, find a quiet and solitary space. Breathe deeply for at least a minute, focusing on sensation and depth. This practice brings you into your body and out of your mind (away from nerve-wracking thoughts).

4. Practice reframing 

Reframing is a technique used in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) to improve negative automatic thought patterns over time. One such pattern is viewing certain emotions as bad, and others as good. Nervousness feels the same in the body as excitement. Instead of panicking even more when realizing you’re nervous, reframe your impression of nerves as excitement for what you’re about to do.

This excitement will propel you forward with confidence and pride for stepping out of your comfort zone and doing something scary.

Here are seven inspirational quotes to help you feel confident and excited when doing something you’re nervous about:

“You can speak well if your tongue can deliver the message of your heart.” John Ford

“ When speaking in public, your message — no matter how important — will not be effective or memorable if you don't have a clear structure. ” Patricia Fripp

“The most precious things in speech are the pauses.”  Sir Ralph Richardson

“The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.” Lady Bird Johnson

“It’s what you practice in private that you will be rewarded for in public.” Tony Robbins

“The worst speech you’ll ever give will be far better than the one you never give.” Fred Miller

Like any other skill, learning how to not be nervous for a presentation takes time and practice. Acknowledging this hurdle is the first step to making a change in the right direction.  Facing your fears will empower you to take on scarier — and more fulfilling — goals and enjoy the experience along the way. You don’t have to start with a TED Talk. Tackle small challenges like presenting an idea to your manager or practicing a short speech with a friend.  We won’t sugarcoat it — it’s hard to change our minds and habits. But if you’re willing to put in the effort, you’ll be rewarded with increased confidence and new experiences.

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Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

30 presentation feedback examples

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What Not to do During a Presentation-10 Biggest Public Speaking Mistakes

10 Public Speaking Mistakes: What Not to Do in a Presentation

1. data-dumping. too much information or too many slides and/or bullet points.

The biggest (worst) thing that a speaker can do is to Data Dump. This is where the speaker gives endless bullet points and endless slides with way too much data for a single sitting. As speakers, we often feel like, if we don’t tell the audience everything, we have failed as a presenter. In reality, though, that is really unrealistic. For instance, I have been teaching presentation skills classes for over 20 years. If I tried to explain to the audience EVERYTHING that I know about the topic in a single one-hour presentation, it would be disastrous. Instead, I would do much better to focus on just a few data points that will be most helpful to that audience, right now.

Great speakers know that a few items covered really well is always better than a lot of items covered in a cursory way.

2. Reading a long series of bullet points to the audience with little additional information

This mistake often occurs when the presenter is nervous about forgetting important parts of the presentation. They think that a lack of preparation is their problem. So, to reduce the nervousness, he/she will often add a bullet for every single data point covered in the presentation. This causes the “Read… Click… Read… Click…” method of presenting. Here is a reality check for you if you have ever used this technique…

IT DOESN’T WORK

Most speakers who do this will sound really boring. The technique also forces the presenter to cover EVERY SINGLE BULLET, no matter what. So when the speaker looks out at the audience’s reactions and sees them getting droopy and drowsy, he/she will often panic. The speaker will rush through the remaining points and seem very unprofessional in the process. This is one of the most common public speaking mistakes I see.

Instead, limit your main bullet points to just a few, most important items. Then use attention-getting pieces of evidence like stories, examples, analogies, quotes, audience participation, props, and the like. (We cover how to add each of these in the  Fearless Presentations  ® class by the way!)

3. Speaking while audience tries to read the slide

Coming in at #3 (and my personal pet peeve) is when a speaker provides complicated visual aids, but then doesn’t refer to it. I remember sitting through a company meeting once, where the speaker put up a slide with 10 bullets. Then, he just started talking. I kept looking at the slide as he spoke. I assumed that he was on bullet number four, but then he clicked to the next slide. Since he never referred to the slide, it didn’t really help us understand the content. By the end of the presentation, everyone was confused.

Remember that your powerpoint slides are there to help you explain your content. When you think of it that way, you’ll realize this is one of those public speaking mistakes that’s actually easier to do correctly in the first place!

4. Poor eye contact

This item always comes up high in survey results. However, we actually don’t see it occur much in our classes. The reason why is that if you design a great presentation, this typically fixes itself. For instance, if you are violating the top two or three of these tips, your going to be looking at your slides and your bullets (not your audience members). If you focus on just a few items and use examples, stories, and analogies to reinforce each point, you will naturally make good eye contact with your audience. (This one is the easiest one to fix!)

5. Repetitious or predictable gestures

I had a Business Law professor in college who I absolutely loved. He had phenomenal stories that kept us all entertained. However, he had one very noticeable habit that was actually pretty funny. Whenever he got a question from the audience that made him have to think a little, he would walk to the left part of the stage, pull Chapstick out of his pocket, and lather on the lip balm as he answered the question. It became so predictable, that, as the semester progressed, a few of the students were constantly asking him questions just to see how many times he would apply the balm in a single class.

My professor had gestures and movements that were predicable. As a result, these actions became a distraction.

Although we don’t do a tremendous amount of video recording in our presentation classes, we do a little. These short video sessions are essential to determine what our distracting mannerisms and habits are. Once we know about them, we can work on eliminating them.

6. Low energy delivery

Although this isn’t #1 on our list, in my opinion, I believe it is the most destructive to a presenter. High energy level and enthusiasm are the absolute, most sought after traits in a speaker. If you have low energy, your audience will see you as being boring. You will constantly see people on their phones or glancing down at their notes. Most often, people do this to hide their drowsiness.

A church I used to attend was led by a fantastic pastor who led very detailed studies. His style, however, was very low energy and lots of detail. Anytime I felt my eyes getting heavy, I’d quickly look down at my Bible. I was afraid that if I kept looking at the pastor, I’d fall dead asleep.

Please don’t put your audience through this! Your audience will never have any more enthusiastic about your own speech than you do. Kick up the energy a little, and your audience will love you. (For more details, view  Enthusiasm: The Secret to Great Presentations .)

7. Shop-talk and industry-specific terms or complicated verbiage when simple will do

We all have internal acronyms that will make absolutely no sense to people outside our organizations. Be careful not to insert these into your oral presentation. Even in my company, internally, we get tired of saying Fearless Presentations class over and over. So, when we are talking to each other, we just say, the FP class. If I’m giving a presentation, though, and I use this acronym, I will confuse a lot of people. So, be careful about your industry semantics.

The biggest challenge with this, however, happens because of insecurity. When a speaker is going to be delivering a presentation to an audience who he/she sees as being highly educated or more successful, the speaker will often fill the presentation with, what I call, “Harvard Words.” They will start to say things like…

“Diminishing Social Anxiety of Making Public Speaking Mistakes while Disseminating Knowledge to Vast Audiences of Information Gatherers”

They this complicated verbiage, because they want to appear educated in front of the group. In reality, though, they sound confusing. Instead, just use plain, everyday language. (By the way, if you haven’t figured it out yet, the phrase above is just a complicated way to say Fearless Presentations.

8. Monotone voice, or a narrowly ranged voice shows lack of emotional interest in the subject

The monotone voice is just an offset of the low energy speaker above. This version, however, often occurs when the speaker is reading a speech or delivering a memorized speech. Avoid doing these things and kick your energy up, and you will stop this symptom very easily.

9. Useless words—too many filler words or sounds that make the speaker sound unsure of his/her content

Fillers occur when we get nervous. The more nervous the speaker, the more fillers. We have found that people who attend our classes reduce their fillers pretty dramatically automatically because we help them increase their confidence. So, if you find that you are using a high concentration of ers, um, and you know, come to one of our classes, and we will help you eliminate this challenge very quickly. (For more details, visit How to Eliminate Ers, Uhms, and Other Fillers in Your Speeches .)

10. Going overtime without consent

There are very few things more disrespectful to an audience than going overtime. For instance, let’s say that you are at a conference and the schedule says that lunch will be at Noon. The speaker, right before lunch, though, is a little long-winded. At exactly 11:50 AM, people are going to start looking at their watches. At 11:58 AM, they will start to squirm. By 12:01 PM, the speaker will start to get dirty looks. At 12:05 PM, the entire group will be lost.

One of the great things about the presentation outline that we teach in Fearless Presentations ® is that it helps speakers create presentations that hit time frames EXACTLY. In fact, if the organizer came up to one of the graduates a few minutes before the speech and said, “I know we gave you 30 minutes on the agenda, but a few speakers ahead of you have gone over. Can you do your speech in 20 minutes instead?” Our graduates would look back at the organizer, smile, and say, “Piece of cake.” The process allows you to adjust your content on-the-fly without reducing the retention or understanding from the audience. For details, you can view the class syllabus at Public Speaking Class .

Need Help with Any of These Public Speaking Mistakes (What Not to do During a Presentation)?

Obviously, we are biased, but the Fearless Presentations ® class can really help people who have nervousness when they present, and as a result, they use a lot of filler words. The link to the class will show you the curriculum as well as a schedule of upcoming classes. Whether you go to our class or not, if you struggle giving presentations, a good class can really help!

For more information, call us toll-free at 1-800-975-6151 or complete the form below.

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10 Ways to Avoid Presentation Failure

April 28, 2023

We’ve all sat through bad presentations – the kind that make you want to check your email or scroll through your social media. Maybe you’ve even had a presentation failure at work.  

But why do some presentations fail to engage and inspire, while others leave a lasting impression  , preparing a business presentation is a real skill; a core business skills.  and it’s a skill you can learn.  over the last 15 years we’ve coached thousands of people to be brilliant business presenters. , do please call us and we’ll tell you about our business presentation coaching – it’s fast and good value., in the meantime, we share the top reasons for bad presentations, with tips on how to avoid the fails., here are 10 reasons for presentation failure.

Let’s review each of these reasons in more detail:

1. You don’t prepare enough

If you haven’t put in the time to research and rehearse your presentation, it will show. You’ll deliver a bad presentation. You may fail to land your message, stumble over unfamiliar words, or struggle to answer questions from the audience. Make sure you give yourself enough time to prepare and practice to avoid presentation failure.

2. You have a poor structure

A poorly structured presentation can leave your audience floundering, unable to follow your train of thought, leaving them bored and disengaged.  Take time to plan.  What’s the overarching message or purpose?  What are your key points and are you providing clear evidence for each one?  Does your presentation have a logical flow? And, most importantly, do you start with a powerful opening and close strongly?

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3. Over-reliance on slides

Slides can be powerful visual aids, but if you rely on them too heavily, you are on track for a presentation fail.  Slides should support your presentation, not drive it. You should be the focus of the audience’s attention, not your PowerPoint deck. 

Perhaps you don’t even need slides at all – many business leaders never use them.  Or think about what other visual aids you could use instead – powerful pictures, physical products, films or flip charts.

4. Lack of energy and enthusiasm

If you’re not excited about your presentation, your audience won’t be either.  If you look bored, they’ll feel bored.  Make sure you bring energy and enthusiasm to your talk.  Smile, make eye contact, use a strong and confident voice. 

Show that you’re passionate about your topic, that it’s important to you, that you believe what you’re saying.  Your enthusiasm will be contagious – and it will help you carry your audience with you. 

5. Ignorance of your audienc e

Have you thought about what your audience really wants and expects from your presentation?  What’s in it for them?  If you don’t take the time to understand their needs and interests, you’ll lose them.  If you lose your audience you’ll have a presentation failure.

Instead, carefully consider what matters to them, show you care about them.  Use language and examples that resonate with them.

6. Too much jargon

Jargon and technical language can be confusing and off-putting for your audience, especially if they’re unfamiliar with your business.  A typical bad presentation includes too much industry-specific jargon, acronyms and technical terms.  

The best presentations use simple, clear language.   Sometimes it helps to imagine that you’re a teacher, explaining difficult concepts to a teenager.  If your 15-year-old niece or nephew grasps your story, so will everyone else.

7. Lack of engagement

Making an emotional connection with your audience can often make the difference between a successful presentation and a failed presentation.  

Try asking questions, soliciting feedback and encouraging participation.  Get your audience involved.  Make them feel engaged.

8 . You are too formal in your presentation

Your presentation should reflect your personality and individual style.  If you’re too formal or stiff, it will feel as if you’re holding your audience at arms’ length, lecturing rather than informing them.  Be authentic and let your personality shine through.

9 . Irrelevance

There’s no point giving a technically brilliant presentation if it’s out of date or simply not appropriate for your audience. Your material should be relevant and timely. Keep it as topical as possible.  Use up-to-date data, anecdotes and examples. 

Avoid talking about things that may be interesting in their own right, but have no relevance to the subject of your presentation – or your audience may simply tune out.

10. No clear call-to-action

It’s important you’re clear about what you want your audience to do, think or feel at the end of your presentation.  A clear call-to-action is always the best way to close.   It may be that you want them to buy into a big change in your business, or take part in a survey.  Or you may just want to challenge them to think differently about something, or make a change in their behaviour.  To avoid bad presentations make sure your audience knows what you want them to do – and make it easy for them to do it.

How to be sure your presentation does not flop

Discover why presentations fails and avoid failed presentations.

How to Make Sure Your Presentations Don’t Flop

Great presentations take careful planning and preparation. By avoiding these 10 common pitfalls, you can create something that engages, informs, and inspires your audience.  You’ll avoid a failing presentation at work.

Remember to focus on their needs, inject energy and enthusiasm. Start strong and end with a clear call-to-action. With these simple tips, you can ensure your presentation doesn’t flop, but leaves a lasting impression.

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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.

Speak to Louise on +44 20 7018 0922 or email [email protected] to find out more and discuss transforming your speeches, pitches and presentations.

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Home Blog Presentation Ideas 8 Top Reasons Your Presentation Isn’t Resonating and How to Fix It

8 Top Reasons Your Presentation Isn’t Resonating and How to Fix It

Presentations have become essential for sharing information, pitching ideas, and inspiring audiences. We’ve all sat through our fair share of presentations from boardrooms to classrooms. Yet, how many times have we found ourselves glancing at our phones, feeling sleepy, or simply disengaged from what the presenter is saying? 

Our expertise tells us that many presentations fall short of their intended impact. Such a situation can be linked to eight clearly identifiable factors we’ll address in this article to boost our performance.

Table of Contents

The Importance of Crafting and Delivering High-Quality Presentations

Overcrowded slides, inconsistent fonts and colors, lack of visual aids, importance of a defined goal, consequences of a rambling presentation, importance of public speaking skills, common public speaking pitfalls, importance of understanding the audience, examples of audience-specific adjustments, how presenter’s interest affects audience engagement, role of non-verbal communication in presentations, common body language mistakes, benefits of incorporating stories, common technical problems during presentations, importance of a backup plan, inadequate time management, failure to engage the audience, not addressing the audience’s needs and questions.

Working our way to create compelling presentations and taking extra care in their delivery are among the core responsibilities speakers face these days. How people consume mass media has changed the game in terms of attention span rate and how speakers and their audience interact. Therefore, we summarize here the six main reasons why we consider it vital to aim for high-quality presentations.

Establishing Credibility

A well-crafted presentation showcases your knowledge and expertise, establishing you as a credible and reliable source of information and boosting the exposure of either your brand or organization.

Engaging the Audience

High-quality presentations capture the audience’s attention and connect them, making the message more impactful and memorable.

Clear Communication

A well-structured presentation ensures your message is communicated clearly and effectively, preventing misunderstandings and confusion. Depending on the niche of your presentation, this point is critical to building trust, securing deals, or making an impact in the local or international community. Hence, the importance of mastering the concepts behind visual communication .

Taking Action Through Persuasion

A persuasive presentation, where the speaker gathers knowledge about their viewers’ interests and pain points beforehand, can influence the audience’s perceptions and encourage them to take the desired action or adopt a particular viewpoint.

Enhancing Professional Image

Delivering a top-notch presentation enhances your professional image and can contribute to your success in the business world. Remember, presentations are often repurposed to other media outlets, like YouTube videos, so your image can reach audiences far beyond your original goal.

Promotes Learning and Understanding

High-quality presentations often include visual aids, examples, and stories that can help facilitate learning and deepen the audience’s understanding of the topic. This is particularly important in the academic world, where teachers and professors should connect with their students so the imparted knowledge can sink in. 

Let’s say you’re a person who “never understood maths” – perhaps what happened was that the teachers and professors you had didn’t resonate with your learning method (which can be kinesthetic, technology-based, group learning, or several other options). Learning methods are affected by the way presenters articulate their speech, how they interact with the audience’s questions, and the usage of visual aids and examples. This was thoroughly studied due to new learning modalities induced by the COVID-19 pandemic .

Reason #1 – Poor Slide Design

One of the most common mistakes in presentation design is overcrowding slides with too much information. This often stems from a presenter’s desire to share as much knowledge as possible, fearing that leaving out details might dilute the message. However, this approach usually has the opposite effect. 

Overcrowded slides can overwhelm the audience, making it difficult for them to focus on the key message. When a slide is filled with dense paragraphs, multiple graphs, and numerous bullet points, the audience’s attention is divided, and the main point gets lost in the clutter. As a side effect, overcrowded slides affect the performance of the speech since the presenter may feel tempted to jump between points as everything is placed under the same slide.

Experience tells us it’s best to stick to simpler models, for example, the “one concept per slide,” or even use well-accepted presentation frameworks such as the 10-20-30 Rule of PowerPoint Presentations .

Have you ever looked at a banner and wondered what was happening in the “designer” mind? That kind of feeling can be elicited when graphic mediums like banners, posters, and slides are created by using a sort of mix-and-match with any typeface + color you can imagine. And yes, by that, we mean pairing Comic Sans with a script typeface in neon colors.

Consistency in design helps to create a cohesive and professional look, whereas opting for inconsistent font/color combinations speaks of amateurish skills and disjointed work to craft the presentation. Although fonts can vary from slide to slide, the golden rule of working with fonts in presentations is to stick to a maximum of 3 typeface families, and if working with only one, apply font variations (meaning altering the font weight or style, i.e., using italics).

Regarding color usage, you can apply multiple professional color combinations depending on the mood you wish to convey in your presentation. We invite you to check our guide on color theory for presentations to get the most out of color for your work.

Visual aids are a crucial component of effective presentations, as they can help to clarify complex ideas, emphasize key points, and engage the audience’s attention. A lack of visual aids can result in a presentation that is dry, monotonous, and difficult for the audience to follow. Without visuals, the audience is left to rely solely on the presenter’s words, which can be challenging, especially for complex or abstract topics (i.e., discussing KPI data without a graph). 

Working with graphic resources can be a powerful tool for emphasizing key points, making them more memorable for the audience. When used effectively, visual aids can enhance the presenter’s message, making it more impactful and easier for the audience to understand and remember. 

To incorporate visual aids effectively, presenters should consider the message they are trying to convey and select visuals that complement and enhance that message. Among the options, we include graphs, charts, images, or videos, depending on the topic and audience. As always, we should stick to a cohesive message, meaning that the visual tools used should boast the same color palette and fonts used in the presentation – unless it’s an external resource and should be specified. 

Reason #2 – Lack of a Clear Objective

Every action we take should be backed up by a well-defined goal to pursue, and presentations are no strangers to this statement. Clear goals serve as the guiding star that shapes the presentation’s content, structure, and delivery. A clear objective helps the presenter stay focused and ensures that every presentation element is aligned with the intended outcome. It also provides a framework for the audience to understand the purpose of the presentation and what they can expect to gain from it. 

Since we aim to share a sense of direction and purpose through our presentations, we are also building credibility in the same step, which helps build trust with the audience. It’s a sort of ongoing cycle showcasing the effort and dedication put into your work, as a presenter who counts with a defined goal and carefully plans to structure the presentation. A quick application of goal setting for presenters would be implementing the SMART goal criteria to elevate the quality of your presentations.

A presentation without a clear objective often results in a meandering and unfocused delivery that can leave the audience confused and disengaged. When a presentation lacks direction, it can seem like the presenter is simply rambling, jumping from one point to another without any clear connection or purpose. This lack of focus can make it difficult for the audience to follow the presentation and understand the key message. It can also lead to losing interest as the audience struggles to see the information’s relevance. 

A second consequence of a rambling presentation is linked to undermining the presenter’s credibility, as it can give the impression that the presenter is unprepared or lacks a deep understanding of the topic. This situation can damage the presenter’s reputation and make it difficult to build trust with the audience. 

Finally, a presentation that doesn’t have a well-defined goal will experience a hard time determining the time required to deliver it. Since the presenter isn’t in touch with what to achieve out of the presentation, the speech can be too long, too short, or unclear to the audience.

Reason #3 – Lack of Presentation Skills

Public speaking skills encompass a range of abilities, from clear and articulate speech to engaging storytelling and effective non-verbal communication. These skills are crucial in capturing and maintaining the audience’s attention, conveying the message clearly, and creating a lasting impact. 

Good public speaking skills also enhance the presenter’s credibility and authority on the subject matter, building trust with the audience. Furthermore, strong public speaking abilities allow the presenter to adapt to the audience’s reactions and adjust the presentation accordingly. This flexibility is essential in creating a dynamic, interactive presentation that resonates with the audience. 

Additionally, public speaking skills are vital in managing presentation nerves and delivering a confident and poised performance. This confidence can be contagious, inspiring the audience and leaving a positive impression.

One of the most common pitfalls is speaking too fast, making it difficult for the audience to follow along and absorb the information, especially if there are non-native speakers present in the audience. Using jargon or complex language that is not easily understood by the audience falls in this same category. This can create confusion and make the presentation less accessible.

Relying too heavily on notes or slides can make the presentation feel scripted and impersonal, as if reading a teleprompter rather than trying to deliver the presentation. 

Many presenters fail to make eye contact with the audience, which can create a barrier between the presenter and the audience and make the presentation feel disconnected. We will talk more in detail about the impact of body language in a section below.

Reason #4 – Not Tailoring the Presentation to the Audience

The audience’s needs, interests, and background should shape the presentation’s content, tone, and structure. A deep understanding of the audience allows the presenter to connect with them more personally, making a lasting impression and ensuring action from the audience (acquiring a product, securing a business deal, signing up for a mentorship, etc.). It also enables the presenter to anticipate and address any questions or concerns the audience may have, enhancing the presentation’s effectiveness. 

Understanding the audience helps the presenter tailor the language and examples used in the presentation, ensuring that they are relevant and relatable. Gaining a deep knowledge of the target audience helps to adjust the presentation’s content to the audience’s education level, not underestimating their capacity or not going beyond what’s advisable for the presentation’s objective. 

Returning to our previous example of learning maths, a teacher can tailor the contents of presenting a new topic if the students lack the foundational knowledge required to understand the new topic. How so? By using visual aids, going over those required concepts and explaining them followed by the new topic, or simply by taking time to address questions.

In industrial-based presentations, the usage of jargon is a commonality, as presenters assume their target audience is knowledgeable about the language used and the concepts associated with it.

Storytelling may have a word about adjusting the speech, as the fables crafted won’t be the same for an audience in their 50s to a group of teenagers. The language will differ, the cultural references won’t be equal, and so on.

Reason #5 – Lack of Interest in the Topic

When a presenter is genuinely interested in the subject matter, it is evident in their delivery, body language, and overall demeanor. This enthusiasm can be contagious, capturing the audience’s attention and making the presentation more enjoyable and memorable. Fine examples of this are TED talks, Mindvalley talks, Apple’s product releases, etc.

On the other hand, if the presenter lacks interest in the topic, it can result in a lackluster and uninspiring presentation. The lack of enthusiasm can be evident in the presenter’s voice, body language, and overall delivery, making the presentation feel flat and unengaging. If you wish to associate this situation with an experience, remember the last time you attended a presentation where the tone sounded dull, the presenter only read slides, and you were glancing at your watch, begging for the presentation to end ASAP.

Reason #6 – Neglecting Body Language

Non-verbal communication, or body language, covers a broad range of elements, including facial expressions, gestures, posture, and eye contact, all contributing to the overall impact of the message being delivered. Body language can reinforce the spoken message, emphasizing and clarifying the presenter’s words. It can also convey the presenter’s confidence, enthusiasm, and credibility, building a stronger connection with the audience. 

Body language can be used to gauge the audience’s reaction and adjust the presentation accordingly. For example, if the audience appears disengaged, the presenter can use more dynamic gestures and facial expressions to recapture their attention. If, in turn, the audience appears confused, the presenter can use more deliberate and clear gestures to emphasize key points.

Presentation nerves can affect body language; without us considering it, the feeling of not considering ourselves adequate for a presentation is so easily transmitted through our body language. 

Poor posture is the number 1 mistake in body language, as it can convey a lack of confidence and professionalism. This is closely followed by a lack of eye contact, which can create a barrier between the presenter and the audience, making the presentation feel impersonal and disconnected. We understand some shy people may experience symptoms similar to social anxiety when asked to deliver a presentation. A good measure to counteract that habit is to focus on a blank point in the audience, not particularly looking at anyone during the presentation’s first 3-4 minutes. That simple practice can help you build momentum and continue with the course of the presentation without fear of failure.

Using excessive or inappropriate gestures can distract the audience from the message. Conversely, some presenters use too few gestures, resulting in a stiff and robotic presentation. 

Another common mistake is using filler words and nervous habits, such as fidgeting, pacing, or playing with hair, which can project nervousness and debunk the presenter’s credibility. Finally, take a good look at your facial gestures, as delivering a speech with a poker face is not considered among the best practices in presentation skills .

Reason #7 – Ignoring the Power of Storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful tool in presentations, as it can captivate the audience’s attention, make complex ideas more relatable, and create a memorable experience. One of the primary benefits of incorporating stories is that they can help to humanize the presenter, making them more relatable and building a stronger connection with the audience. They can also evoke emotions, helping to increase the retention rate of the content you share and even building a need from the audience to get more information about your work (that being a product or a service).

We’ve created a detailed guide on the concepts every speaker should master to successfully use storytelling in presentations . Another valuable asset we invite you to discover is our metaphor PPT templates , which are ideal for expressing complex ideas in simpler terms or building your narrative with powerful graphics.

Reason #8 – Technical Issues

Technical problems are common during presentations and can significantly disrupt the flow and impact of the presentation. Some of the most common technical problems include:

• Projector or Screen Issues: The projector may not connect properly to the computer, or the screen may not display the presentation correctly. This can result in delays and disrupt the flow of the presentation. In most complex cases, the driver of the computer’s graphics card may crash or enter into conflict, not allowing us to stream the presentation.
• Audio Problems: The microphone may not work properly, or the speakers may not be loud enough for the audience to hear the presenter. Interference is another factor to consider, and that’s usually due to low-quality microphones.
• Software Glitches: The presentation software may crash or freeze, causing delays and disrupting the presentation flow.
• Video or Animation Issues: Videos or animations may not play correctly, detracting from the presentation’s impact. This usually happens when presenters work with the latest releases of PowerPoint to craft their presentations, and then ought to use legacy versions or Google Slides to deliver the presentation at the location venue.
• Remote Control Problems: The remote control may not work properly, making it difficult for the presenter to navigate through the slides.

These technical problems can be frustrating for both the presenter and the audience and can detract from the presentation’s overall impact. They can also make the presenter appear unprepared or unprofessional. To avoid these problems, presenters should thoroughly test all equipment and software before the presentation and have a backup plan in case of technical difficulties.

A relaxed presenter is one who covers all bases with a good backup plan. These are some suggestions we have to prevent common technical inconveniences: 

• Having a Printed Copy: In case of projector or screen issues, having a printed copy of the presentation can allow the presenter to continue without relying on visual aids. If your presentation relies heavily on graphs, ask the organization if they count with a whiteboard you can use to manually recreate the graph from your notes.
• Testing Equipment: Thoroughly testing all equipment and software before the presentation can help to identify and fix any potential problems before they occur. This should be done 10-15 minutes before the presentation.
• Bringing Spare Equipment: Bringing spare equipment, such as a backup laptop or remote control, can provide a quick solution in case of equipment failure.
• Preparing for Audio Problems: Having a backup plan for audio problems, such as bringing a portable speaker or having a printed copy of the presentation, can help to ensure that the audience can still engage with the presentation. If the microphone isn’t working as required, you may be forced to raise your voice – so keep a jar with water nearby to avoid extra strain on your throat.
• Practicing Without Visual Aids: Practicing the presentation without relying on visual aids can help the presenter to continue confidently in case of technical problems.

Additional Reasons that May Affect Your Presentation’s Performance

Nothing says more about disrespect than exceeding your allocated time during an event. Organizers often cut presentations that go beyond the time limit, leaving some points up in the air as your presentation abruptly ends. 

Inadequate time management can significantly undermine the effectiveness of a presentation. When a presenter fails to allocate time properly, they may rush through important points or, conversely, dwell too long on less significant details. This can result in an amateurish presentation that will destroy all your hard work done during the previous minutes.

To avoid this common pitfall, consider the total time allowed for the presentation and create your speech with a time limit of 3-5 minutes before that time mark. Not only does this give you room for a Q&A session, but it also speaks about your respect for fellow presenters.

A presenter’s failure to engage the audience can significantly detract from the presentation’s expected impact. Engagement can be achieved by asking questions, encouraging audience participation, or using interactive elements like polls or quizzes. Additionally, the presenter can use storytelling, humor, or relatable anecdotes to connect with the audience and make the presentation more enjoyable. 

The presenter should be mindful of their body language, tone of voice, and overall demeanor, as these non-verbal cues can significantly affect the audience’s engagement.

Linked to a previously-mentioned topic, ignoring the fact the audience may have questions about your presentation is a common mistake. This leaves a sour taste in the audience, as they feel a secondary asset to the presentation like their opinion isn’t valuable. 

Conduct well-done research about the topics that drive interest out of your audience, and predict potential questions that can arise after your speech. Then, allocate the required time to answer them or offer a contact medium (email, LinkedIn) when debating how to end a presentation . Staying some minutes after your presentation concludes to answer questions in coffee breaks is a sign of respect for your audience.

Multiple factors can affect the overall performance of our presentation, and we can be totally oblivious to them due to focusing so much on the content rather than the delivery. The time to act is now. Assess your presentation skills and identify the areas that need improvement. 

Embrace the power of visual aids, storytelling, and effective body language to elevate your presentation. Be proactive in addressing technical issues and always have a backup plan in place. Remember, the goal is to deliver a presentation that not only informs but also engages and resonates with your audience. Take the necessary steps to hone your skills, and you will undoubtedly see a marked improvement in your future presentations. The path to delivering an impactful and memorable presentation is in your hands. Seize the opportunity and make your next presentation your best one yet.

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.css-1qrtm5m{display:block;margin-bottom:8px;text-transform:uppercase;font-size:14px;line-height:1.5714285714285714;-webkit-letter-spacing:-0.35px;-moz-letter-spacing:-0.35px;-ms-letter-spacing:-0.35px;letter-spacing:-0.35px;font-weight:300;color:#606F7B;}@media (min-width:600px){.css-1qrtm5m{font-size:16px;line-height:1.625;-webkit-letter-spacing:-0.5px;-moz-letter-spacing:-0.5px;-ms-letter-spacing:-0.5px;letter-spacing:-0.5px;}} Best Practices The #1 rule for improving your presentation slides

by Tom Rielly • May 12, 2020

When giving presentations, either on a video conference call or in person, your slides, videos and graphics (or lack of them) can be an important element in helping you tell your story or express your idea. This is the first of a series of blog posts that will give you tips and tricks on how to perfect your visual presentations.

Your job as a presenter is to build your idea -- step-by-step -- in the minds of your audience members. One tool to do that is presentation graphics, such as slides and videos.

Why graphics for your presentation?

A common mistake is using slides or videos as a crutch, even if they don’t actually add anything to your presentation. Not all presentations need graphics. Lots of presentations work wonderfully with just one person standing on a stage telling a story, as demonstrated by many TED Talks.

You should only use slides if they serve a purpose: conveying scientific information, art, and things that are hard to explain without pictures. Once you have decided on using slides, you will have a number of decisions to make. We’ll help you with the basics of making a presentation that is, above all, clear and easy to understand. The most important thing to remember here is: less is more.

Less is so much more

You want to aim for the fewest number of slides, the fewest number of photos, the fewest words per slide, the least cluttered slides and the most white space on your slides. This is the most violated slide rule, but it is the secret to success. Take a look at these examples.

As you can see in the above example, you don’t need fancy backgrounds or extra words to convey a simple concept. If you take “Everything you need to know about Turtles”, and delete “everything you need to know about” leaving just “turtles”, the slide has become much easier for your audience to read, and tells the story with economy.

The above example demonstrates that a single image that fills the entire screen is far more powerful than a slide cluttered with images. A slide with too many images may be detrimental to your presentation. The audience will spend more mental energy trying to sort through the clutter than listening to your presentation. If you need multiple images, then put each one on its own slide. Make each image high-resolution and have it fill the entire screen. If the photos are not the same dimensions as the screen, put them on a black background. Don’t use other colors, especially white.

Your slides will be much more effective if you use the fewest words, characters, and pictures needed to tell your story. Long paragraphs make the audience strain to read them, which means they are not paying attention to you. Your audience may even get stressed if you move on to your next slide before they’ve finished reading your paragraph. The best way to make sure the attention stays on you is to limit word count to no more than 10 words per slide. As presentation expert Nancy Duarte says “any slide with more than 10 words is a document.” If you really do need a longer explanation of something, handouts or follow-up emails are the way to go.

Following a “less is more” approach is one of the simplest things you can do to improve your presentation visuals and the impact of your presentation overall. Make sure your visuals add to your presentation rather than distract from it and get your message across.

Ready to learn more about how to make your presentation even better? Get TED Masterclass and develop your ideas into TED-style talks.

© 2024 TED Conferences, LLC. All rights reserved. Please note that the TED Talks Usage policy does not apply to this content and is not subject to our creative commons license.

9 Clever Ways to get out of a Presentation

Hrideep barot.

• Body Language & Delivery , Presentation , Public Speaking , Workplace Communication

Ever attended a boring presentation and thought to yourself why am I even here; or worse thought you were going to give a boring presentation and had the same thought as mentioned above? Having to wait before your turn in presentation is the scariest feeling of all; contrastingly, going through with it and delivering a successful presentation puts you on cloud nine. 

A presentation is the procedure of presenting an idea, topic or thought to an audience using creative and effective tools. Presentations have many purposes, that is to inform, persuade, entertain, instruct etc. It may be addressed to a single entity, to a group or to a crowd. It is also being used in all types of fields be it education, work, sales; or even casual like giving a presentation to your friend about how your favorite movie actor is the best.  

Why are presentations necessary?  

Presentations are important to polish your skills and get you ready to face and interact with the real world. Some of the reasons highlighting the necessity of a presentation include engaging your audience. Engagement with your audience is important especially if your presentation is persuasive; it pushes you to face the audience and put your voice out there to grab the attention of the audience. Additionally, it helps you to see whether the audience is bored or interested. Also, if they are bored you could always use diversion to steam off the boredom. 

Moreover, there is much flexibility when it comes to presentations. You can easily modify points or change the topic in the presentation when and if needed to go in line with your client’s needs. Although it is not possible in the case of a printed. Subsequently, presentations make you do extra research and reference slides; in turn increasing your knowledge of your topic making it easier to even refer in future 

The main of the presentation is to deliver an important message or explain a topic in a brief or concise manner so that the audience don’t lose much of their time and use much of their brain power. 

Why do people avoid giving presentations?  

There are many reasons for people to duck down when given the opportunity to give a presentation. Being lazy, not taking up extra work, not good at making a presentation or having the presentation skills etc. However, the most common reasons for avoiding presentations are getting that uncomfortable feeling before presentation, fear of public speaking or the fear of boring out the audience or messing up. 

Infact, according to the website verywellmind.com around 77% of the population have glossophobia or the fear of public speaking (fear of giving presentations in front of people). This problem also arises because of people thinking that they are being constantly judged by their audience or people around them for every move they make. 

How to get out of Presentations?  

1) confrontation .

Confront your teacher or superior, talk to them and explain in detail how uncomfortable you are to present in front of everyone else and ask if there is an alternative solution or work you could do to earn the credits or ask for permission to give one on one presentation. Chances are that they might agree to your requests. 

2) Video presentation  

Ask the person in charge if you could have a video presentation instead of a live one, this way they could have you perform it in the form of a presentation and you would also be comfortable doing it in the absence of a live audience. 

3) Sick Trip  

One clever but unethical way to get out of a presentation is to call in sick or plan a trip for 2-3 days around that time. In the workplace this might spare you from presenting, as the presentation might continue without you. However, in school or college this may just simply postpone your chance to present or if you are lucky enough it will get you to present only in front of the teacher. 

3) Family Emergency  

Another unethical excuse to get out of a presentation is fake a family emergency call and get out of a presentation, same as before if you wish you to postpone your presentation, this might be of help. 

4) Less talk, more work  

If it’s a group project, with the permission of the authority, you can volunteer to do more research, technical and background work and in turn less speaking or none at all during your group presentation. 

5) Deleted Presentation

A reason specifically used so that you could postpone your presentation for some time is using this excuse that your presentation got deleted by mistake and that you did not take a back up. However, this could not be used in a group presentation and could be a little less plausible, because it is a very common excuse people used to get out of a presentation.

6) Home Emergency

home emergencies like pipe burst, water flooding, gas leak can occur anytime, hence becoming a very plausible and perfect way to reach late and miss the presentation. In addition no would ask you to show a photo of your house in a mess. So it is pretty much fool proof. (This could only work if you mention that you live alone)

7) Overslept

One of the commonly used yet barely doubtful justification for missing the presentation. You could say that you stayed up late practicing and preparing for the presentation and then you overslept and could not even hear your alarm as you by mistake put your phone on silent.

8) Untimely Death of a Close Relative

You wouldn’t want to wish or use this unless it’s badly needed. Almost everyone might believe this excuse and more so may give you a full day’s break (although your reason should be full planned like what happened, how did it happen etc.) 

9) Personal Reasons

Here, you can simply say that you couldn’t complete the presentation on time due to personal reasons that you would not be comfortable sharing. The authorities might not ask you if you say that you’re uncomfortable sharing. Just in case they do be prepared with an excuse that sounds personal (example – you started menstruating and stained your clothes).

Can a teacher force me to give a presentation?  

Technically, a teacher cannot force you to present in front of the class; although they can strongly insist you to do so with the intention to improve your public speaking skills and decrease your stage fright. However, if you refuse to give a presentation, they could give a bad grade unless you show them an IEP (Individualized Education Plan – a legal document generally used for children with learning disabilities for personalized learning goals and needs). 

But this needs you to undergo an evaluation and is a lengthy process, on top of which it’s not applicable to get out of presentations at the workplace. So how can you successfully get out of a presentation without so many medical formalities? 

How do I tell the teacher/superior that I can’t perform a presentation?  

First and the most important of all inform them in advance. Don’t come up to them at the end moment, refusing to present. They wouldn’t be able to make changes or find an alternative to give to you this late. Besides, they will think that you are saying this only because you haven’t done your work or haven’t prepared for it and want to get away with it.  

Furthermore, be honest with them, tell them the whole truth and explain to them in detail why you can’t do the presentation. The more genuine you are, the more chance there is that they will understand your situation and help you out. 

Below is a template of the letter to write to the concerned authority/teacher and request them to allow you to not perform the presentation:

Pre-presentation jitters! What to do?  

Admit it or not, almost all of us have once had that feeling of nervousness running through our bodies before giving a presentation, thinking to ourselves “just get done with it already” or “I don’t want to do present anymore. What if I mess up? Somebody please get me out of this to be disaster!” So, how do I overcome that phase? There are quite a few ways to get rid of these jitters which include  

relaxing your whole body internally and externally to decrease the secretion of stress hormones, in turn slowing down the rate resulting in decreased anxiety making you calm and composed and ready to face the crowd. 

Listen to some music

it could help you calm down or distract you from terrifying thoughts (make sure your music has soft melody rather than it being anxiety increasing, bad thought inducing. 

Content familiarization

be fully familiarized with your content, learn about everything you need to know – questions, doubts, theory, statistics etc. This may make you become more confident on stage. 

Practice thoroughly

Try to practice thoroughly before in front of your friends or family and have them ask questions to create a mock environment which will help you get more comfortable in the real one. 

Talk to a close one

Have a conversation with a person who is close to you, this might help calm your nerves and gain you some confidence. Talk to them, tell them how you feel, they might have a solution or might give a pep talk to encourage you or simply their mere auditory presence could make you feel a lot better. 

Bioenergetics

So this is basically a way to loosen up your body a bit from all involuntary bracing that you are doing due to stress. Bioenergetics is a technique of stretching your body in weird ways and along with making weird sounds. This tends to open up your voice and make you more relaxed.

Some Tips to Give your First Presentation:

Here are some tips you can keep in mind when preparing your first presentation:

Pseudo eye contact

If you are nervous to look people in the eye while presenting, make a pseudo eye contact with them which means that look at empty spaces between the audience. Look at every empty space and it will appear like you are maintaining eye contact with them. However with the less amount of audience you could focus on anything on their face but their eyes.

Talk Slowly

Being nervous while on stage, one tends to unintentionally talk very quickly, this may make it difficult for the audience to perceive them and they might instantly lose the attention of the audience. Instead, what you could do is talk slowly than usual, this way you would be more conscious of your speech, seem more comprehensive and less nervous.

Presentation: Start and End   

The start is the most crucial point in the whole presentation. How you start will determine whether you will have your audience’s attention throughout or not. If your audience experiences a boring beginning, they will judge the whole presentation on the basis of the start and not focus on your presentation. Some interesting ways to start your presentation are using stories, weird facts, jokes, questions, games, or anecdotes. Starting in an unconventional way would give you an edge over others. 

For example, to give a presentation on your firm being the best tours and travels company, provides your audience with paper and pen to write their best and worst most hilarious travel memories and put them in a bowl to create a humorous and light environment at the start. 

Similarly, your ending must also be as impactful as the start. Make a strong statement at the end to make an impact on the audience or give them something to think about at end using rhetoric device like “Was your latest travelling experience as good as how we ensure ours to be?” forcing them to weigh the pros and cons of both the deals and thinking about your presentation for a longer time. 

For more effective opening slides, check out our article – 10 Of The Best Things To Say In Opening Remarks ; and our video:

Handing over the presentation to the next presenter, how?  

Now Peter is going to present about ‘xyz’ topic. Sounds a bit monotonous right? Because this is always the scene in almost every group presentation. Your team could try something different instead, like making a connection between your speech and the successor’s speech; similar to how you connect two paragraphs in an essay saying “now we know the importance of tea, but how to make one? My partner tom would now explain on how to make a tea.” and add in some more information on it. 

When to pause during a presentation?  

Whenever you give presentations remember that pauses are important, it helps give yourself and the audience some break and time to ponder upon. This is essential especially when you are having a solo presentation.  

Firstly, time them in your speaking after questions that could be answered (but not necessarily need to be, like rhetorical devices. Such as stand-up comedians ask a rhetorical question or crack an intellectual joke and wait for the audience to react, rather than directly jumping to the next joke or conversation. This makes their connection with the audience seem genuine and also makes the audience feel included. 

Secondly at the beginning of your presentation make eye contact with the audience for 3-5 seconds before you start. This somehow acquaints you with the audience and helps you to gain their focus. 

Lastly, take a pause after you make or convey a significant point. Take a pause for half a minute or so and let the information sink in and enter their long-term memory. You can use this technique even after explaining a complex point. 

Presentation gone wrong?  

We don’t give ourselves enough credit when a presentation is successful but we are the first ones to regret and crib for a long time when messing up a bit in presentation.

Lots of people make mistakes during their presentation possibly due to anxiety, some technical glitch or some kind of innocent mistake. However only some people learn from their mistakes and move ahead, the rest become embarrassed and develop presentation anxiety or stage fright and dread giving presentation for the rest of their lives. 

So how do we handle presentation mishaps in that moment?

1) First, when you realize your mistake, stop on the spot, take a deep breath, calm yourself down, find people around who understood your mistake but still gave you supporting smiles.

2) Next, explain your mistake and correct it, the audience will understand that you are just as human as everyone else in the room and can make mistakes.

3) Lastly take control of the situation and continue. 

4) Another way you could admit your mistake is to laugh at yourself, that is cope with humor. The environment would already be tensed when people have sensed your mistake and because they don’t know how to react to your mess up and that has made them uncomfortable enough. Therefore, to blow off the steam make a joke or laugh on yourself. 

How to make presentations fun?  

Nobody likes those boring presentations with the same clichéd slides, with all the information crowded inside and no visual imagery. One could use different presentation tools to make your presentation more visually appealing. Some sites even have games to add on the slides to make it interesting. 

Additionally, you could add videos, visual imagery, audios, social experiments, good examples, and animations etc. to captivate the audience’s attention. 

To know more about different tools of presentation visit our article : 5 Presentations Tools To Use With Multimedia Presentations

Conclusion  

Presentation skills must be developed since childhood since they are used in every field. However, if you are anxious to present and cannot face a crowd, it is important that you work on your public speaking skills to make it easier for you in the future. Additionally, you need to ask for help from your supervisors or teachers to improve your skills and make you a better communicator. One also needs to learn that their presentations wouldn’t always turn out as expected and that is okay, what is important is to show up, it is fine if you mess up; as explained in the show Brooklyn 99 that “two steps forward and one step back is still one step forward”. One should always keep moving forward, learning from all their mistakes and experiences. 

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Teens Are Protesting In-Class Presentations

Some students say having to speak in front of the class is an unreasonable burden for those with anxiety and are demanding alternative options.

For many middle - and high-school students, giving an in-class presentation was a rite of passage. Teachers would call up students, one by one, to present their work in front of the class and, though it was often nerve-racking, many people claim it helped turn them into more confident public speakers.

“Coming from somebody with severe anxiety, having somebody force me to do a public presentation was the best idea to happen in my life,” one woman recently tweeted . According to a recent survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, oral communication is one of the most sought-after skills in the workplace, with over 90 percent of hiring managers saying it’s important. Some educators also credit in-class presentations with building essential leadership skills and increasing students’ confidence and understanding of material .

But in the past few years, students have started calling out in-class presentations as discriminatory to those with anxiety, demanding that teachers offer alternative options. This week, a tweet posted by a 15-year-old high-school student declaring “Stop forcing students to present in front of the class and give them a choice not to” garnered more than 130,000 retweets and nearly half a million likes. A similar sentiment tweeted in January also racked up thousands of likes and retweets. And teachers are listening.

|￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣| stop forcing students to present in front of the class and give them a choice not to |＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿| \ (•◡•) / \ / --- | | — leen (@softedhearts) September 8, 2018

Teachers, please stop forcing students to present in front of the class & raise their hand in exchange for a good grade. Anxiety is real. — amberlicious. 💧 (@DAMNBlEBERS) January 30, 2017

Students who support abolishing in-class presentations argue that forcing students with anxiety to present in front of their peers is not only unfair because they are bound to underperform and receive a lower grade, but it can also cause long-term stress and harm.

“Nobody should be forced to do something that makes them uncomfortable,” says Ula, a 14-year-old in eighth grade, who, like all students quoted, asked to be referred to only by her first name. “Even though speaking in front of class is supposed to build your confidence and it’s part of your schoolwork, I think if a student is really unsettled and anxious because of it you should probably make it something less stressful. School isn’t something a student should fear.”

“It feels like presentations are often more graded on delivery when some people can’t help not being able to deliver it well, even if the content is the best presentation ever,” says Bennett, a 15-year-old in Massachusetts who strongly agrees with the idea that teachers should offer alternative options for students. “Teachers grade on public speaking which people who have anxiety can’t be great at.”

“I get that teachers are trying to get students out of their comfort zone, but it’s not good for teachers to force them to do that,” says Henry, a 15-year-old also in Massachusetts.

To the thousands of teens who support the effort to do away with in-class presentations (at least enough to like a tweet about it), anxiety is no small issue. Students said they understood why older people might tell them to “suck it up,” but that doing so was unproductive. Some responses to the most recent viral tweet, though, noted that giving a presentation in spite of anxiety might reduce a student’s fear of public speaking.

Just so you know, “Exposure therapy” is commonly used amongst psychologist as a behavior therapy to help treat anxiety disorder. So your point about “ it can’t be cured facing your fears.” Is just false. — Mightykeef (@MightyKeef) September 10, 2018

Being a high schooler in 2018 is more stressful than ever. Academic demands on students are high, kids participate in more extracurricular activities than in the past, and they are saddled with extra hours of homework .

“Kids doing sports don’t get home till 7:00 p.m. I get home at 5:30 p.m. tonight but it’s going to get worse,”  Bennett says. “Kids ... can’t be holed up in their room every night till 1:00 a.m. finishing homework on their third Red Bull.” These stressors and more have led to an unprecedented level of anxiety in their generation. Anxiety is increasing at a faster rate than depression as the leading mental-health issue affecting teenagers, a recent study in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics found. Throwing things like in-class presentations on top of other stressors kids are dealing with, teens say, can be unbearable.

“Teachers think it’s just a fear,” says Jess, a 16-year-old in New Jersey. “We’ll skip school. I’ve skipped school a lot of times if I had to present. Even if a teacher lets me present alone in front of them I still wouldn’t because that’s how nerve-racking it is,” she said.

These students want more options. They say that every student has unique strengths and abilities and that they should be allowed to present their work in ways that speak to those strengths. This might mean presenting alone in front of the teacher, or choosing between several alternatives like producing a piece of art or an essay for private judgment instead of presenting their work orally.

“The resounding theory that education is holding on to right now is the idea of multiple intelligences,” says Travis Grandt, a high-school history teacher in Colorado who says he tries to accommodate students with special needs, including anxiety. “There [are] a lot of ways for kids to present information. It doesn’t have to be through a formal presentation.”

Joe Giordano, a high-school teacher in Baltimore, says that he’s also sympathetic to the movement away from mandatory in-class presentations. As an art teacher, he hosts “crit” sessions where students’ work is critiqued. He always gives the teenagers a choice as to whether or not they want to speak about their own work.

“It kind of irks me when I see a lot of other teachers say, ‘But we have to get them up there.’ These kids are living under more stressful situations than I did as a student. Their anxiety runs pretty high,” he said. “I know we should put them in uncomfortable situations, but if they suffer from anxiety they’re already in an uncomfortable situation. As a teacher I try to show compassion. It’s not about being a drill instructor.”

Kathleen Carver, a high-school history teacher in Texas, says teaching has changed since the days when she grew up. “I think in this day and age there [are] different pressures. We expect different things from our students,” she said. “We’re in a day and age where we have to acknowledge our students’ feelings. I have to listen to them and hear their feedback and respond to that. That’s how I can be a more effective teacher. If I ignored their feelings I don’t think they would like me or my class or walk away learning things.”

Those campaigning against in-class presentations said that it was important to distinguish between students with actual diagnosable anxiety disorders and those who might just want to get out of the assignment. Addie, a 16-year-old in New York, said that schools like hers already make accommodations for students with certain learning issues to get extra time on tests. She thinks similar processes could be put in place for students with public-speaking anxiety. “I think it’s important these accommodations are accessible, but that they’re also given to those who are need it instead of those who just say they don’t want to present,” she said. “There’s a big difference between nervousness and anxiety.”

Students who have been successful in the campaign to end in-class presentations credit social media. Unlike previous generations, high schoolers today are able to have a direct impact on their educational system by having their voices heard en masse online. Teenagers, most of whom are extremely adept at social media, say that platforms like Twitter and Instagram have allowed them to meet more kids at other schools and see how other school districts run things. They can then wage campaigns for changes at their own school, sometimes partnering with teens in other districts to make their voice louder.

Henry said that he’s seen the effects of these types of campaigns firsthand. This year his district shifted the school start time an hour and fifteen minutes later, something he and his fellow students campaigned for aggressively on social media, which he believes played a role in the decision. High-school students across the country have also waged social-media campaigns against discriminatory dress codes, excessive homework, and, most notably, to advocate for gun-control policies on campus. “Teens view social media as a platform to make changes,” Carver says.

Part of why students feel social media is such a powerful mechanism for changing education is because so many teachers are on these platforms. Nicholas Ferroni, a high-school teacher in New Jersey, said that “a lot of teachers use social media as a great way to learn methodologies.”

“Instead of trying to go to a school-board meeting with a bunch of adults in suits—that’s how it was—you can just talk to everyone directly,” said Addie. “We don’t have to do all that stuff formally. We can go online and say what we want to say and people have to listen to us.” “I think social media is a great way to reach educators,” said Bennett.

But when it comes to abolishing in-class presentations, not everyone is convinced.

“We need to stop preaching to get rid of public speaking and we need to start preaching for better mental health support and more accessibility alternatives for students who are unable to complete presentations/classwork/etc due to health reasons,” one man tweeted .

Some educators agree. “My thoughts are that we are in the business of preparing students for college, career, and civic life. Public speaking is a piece of that preparation,” says Ryan Jones, a high-school history teacher in Connecticut. “Now, some kids (many) are deathly afraid to do it, but pushing outside of comfort zones is also a big part of what we do.”

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Should We Force Shy Kids to Do Class Presentations?

Here’s what experts say..

Taylor Lorenz’s recent piece in the Atlantic about kids who want to abolish the in-class presentation has predictably triggered the kind of older people who think children today are far too pampered and indulged. But do these young critics of public presentations have a point? And—to pose a broader question about our requirements of the younger generation—should parents and educators force kids who are shy to do the social things that scare them? Lorenz asked kids and teachers their opinions. I wanted to see what psychologists thought.

There is a big difference between experiencing a garden-variety fear of public speaking, which is extremely common, and having social anxiety disorder. Young people with the latter, psychologist Jonathan Dalton told me, have extended physical responses to public speaking; it’s not the same as just being a little scared beforehand and coming through OK. “One of the things about social anxiety disorder that’s most pernicious is that nonsufferers have the illusion they understand it,” Dalton said. “They can say, ‘Oh, I understand this problem. I used to have a hard time giving a talk when I was in high school.’ That’s like saying ‘I have major depression’ and the teacher saying, ‘Oh, I used to be sad in high school too.’ ”

For people with anxiety disorders who have a fear of public speaking, Dalton said, the difference is physical. “The average person who’s giving a public presentation, their blood pressure and all those measurements of body activation will be elevated for about eight minutes when you begin a presentation,” Dalton said. “With someone with social anxiety disorder, it can be elevated for about 90 minutes.” The situation feels grave to the person suffering through it; Dalton said he once had a patient threaten suicide at school and end up hospitalized because of a mandated class presentation.

Still, Dalton said he doesn’t believe the answer should be to avoid presentations altogether. He said he counsels parents that avoidance of events that may provoke anxiety will only “make more room for anxiety to grow.” “So much of what we do is parent training,” Dalton, the director of the Center for Anxiety and Behavioral Change , told me. “The more compassionate the parent is, the more they want to reduce the child’s suffering. And I always tell the parents, ‘I promise you the anxiety will fill whatever space you give it.’ ”

Even setting aside a clinical diagnosis like social anxiety disorder, what we perceive as “shyness” itself may be partly biological—and not actually about shyness and sociability at all, but rather about a person’s reactions to unexpectedness and unfamiliarity. In their book The Long Shadow of Temperament , psychologists Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman wrote based on their findings that we could assess children as early as 4 months of age for a set of responses that would classify them as “inhibited” or “uninhibited.” “Inhibited” children react to unexpected events, like the appearance of a stranger or the popping of a balloon, with expressions of stress that “uninhibited” children don’t.

Kagan, Snidman, and other collaborators have followed children across their childhoods to see how those biologically determined temperaments did and didn’t affect children’s lives. In the end, they write, a naturally inhibited child might end up shy and reserved, or she might not; the temperamental bias “is embedded in a family context that, over time, creates a psychological profile.” The relationship between a child’s biologically determined temperament and the work that nurture does is infinitely complex, which is why this is an interesting research question .

Psychologist Doreen Arcus , studying these questions about temperament, found that inhibited children who lived with parents who practiced “authoritative parenting” in the kids’ first few years ended up what she described in a phone call as “less fearful, less timid, less stressed.” Children judged “inhibited” but whose parents placed strong limits on their behavior and let them protest those limits had experienced strong emotions, come through them, and realized that those emotions would come to a close. Arcus theorized this enabled those children to respond better to unfamiliar situations as they grew older. In explaining this to me, Arcus used the example of a toddler who is getting into the cat food. The parent might deny the child the experience of sticking her fingers in the kibble, by moving the bowl or the child, and endure the child’s protests before moving on to a new activity. Or the parent might distract the child with some other object of desire (Arcus used the Tupperware drawer as an example), so the baby never has the experience of being frustrated. The inhibited child who has been allowed to feel challenged in different situations had a better chance of losing some of his innate fearfulness.

Arcus said authoritative parenting—as opposed to permissive, neglectful, or authoritarian parenting, the less-effective alternatives —is about a mix of sensitivity and strong expectations. The steps she suggested to acclimate shy younger children to an activity they fear are the opposite of “throwing them in the deep end.” “Would your child really like to be swinging on the swings, but it’s just too painful?” she asked. “You can work up to things in small increments.” A parent could tell a child she can walk by the swings today, but she definitely needs to try to swing tomorrow. The next day, the parent could bring the child to the swings, and have her try swinging, but promise that she can leave after five minutes. “Sometimes, four minutes and 59 seconds comes, and the child is OK,” Arcus said. “And you can say, ‘You want to try another five minutes?’ ” Along the way, the parent should praise the victories. Authority, in this framework, looks more like responsive firmness than strict or angry insistence.

This concept of progressive acclimation, which Arcus described in the context of younger children who fear certain social situations, reminded me of the strategies Dalton told me he and his colleagues might pursue with patients with social anxiety disorder who were afraid of in-class presentations. He told me he might have the patient follow a multistep process: first, to read a kids’ book aloud, with an audience only of a psychologist; have the patient do an original presentation in front of a psychologist, with a camera on, and then email the file to the teacher; have the patient and the teacher watch that file together; have the patient do the presentation with a peer in the room; finally, have the patient do the presentation in class. It’s an art, Dalton said. “We don’t just throw the kid to the wolves and say, ‘It’s just anxiety, do this anyway.’ ” For kids without social anxiety disorder who have a more moderate fear of class presentations, teachers could do a modified version of this graduated introduction to the concept—presentations in pairs, then in groups, with conversations along the way about strategies you can use to cope with the fear that public speaking often arouses.

The answers I got from Dalton and Arcus, which confirm that avoidance is not the answer, might seem to reinforce the predictable arguments of people who think these kids need to suck it up. As the epigraph to the new Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt book The Coddling of the American Mind goes: “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.” The saying is attributed to “Folk wisdom, origin unknown.” The authors hold this idea up as evident common sense (even as their critics strongly refute its implications). Why let shy kids, such people grumble, claim an exemption for themselves? After all, we all did class presentations, and we survived.

But when it comes to shyness and social anxiety, “the road” has changed before. In the United States in 2018 we reward boldness, curiosity, self-assuredness, and social ease; the parent of a naturally uninhibited child will get a lot of compliments, even if some of that brazen sociability and lack of fear comes from the child’s biology. But it wasn’t always so. “Before Freud,” Kagan writes, “a child who conformed to parental requests, was cautious in dangerous situations, and remained quiet with adult strangers was regarded as having a good character. After Freud, this child was classified as anxious.” Historian Barbara Benedict writes , in a history of early modern inquiry, that children and adults who were very curious about the world were once seen as dangerous and disruptive instead of laudable founts of ingenuity. The Victorians perceived shyness, Joe Moran writes in his delightful cultural history of the trait , “as an unwavering disposition, a force one could never defeat, as fixed and as little one’s fault as a tendency to suffer from gout or piles.”

We older people think of the “road” as common sense, “the world the way it is.” Of course you have to be able to talk to people you’ve never met. Of course you’ll need to do presentations. That’s just the way it is. But as a parent or a teacher, you always make personal judgments about the things children will need to do in order to survive “the road.” In this argument, as in so many intergenerational conflicts, a little adult humility would go a long way. Yes, your child probably should present in class. But you don’t have to be a jerk about it.

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

It feels ILLEGAL to know this trick to get out of a presentation

TABLE OF CONTENTS (jump ahead)

How to get out of giving a class presentation

I’m scared of doing a class presentation, i don’t want to do a class presentation, how to get out of a college presentation, can a professor force me to do a presentation.

Talking to your professor about skipping presentation

Should you skip class instead of presenting?

You may be able to get out of a school presentation if you have a documented disability that is protected by Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the presentation is not an integral part of the course. Schools and colleges are required to provide reasonable accommodations to students with recognized disabilities, and you might qualify. However, there might be some circumstances where you can’t avoid a presentation, even with an accommodation.

NOTE : This information is relevant to students in the United States and may not apply to all countries, all colleges or students.

This is the best way to help high school or college students trying to get out of class presentations. I went directly to a college and asked them for information about their accommodations so read on to find out how it might work for you.

If you are scared of doing a class presentation, realize you are not alone. Talk to your professor about your fears and work on a solution. There are some virtual reality programs where you could work on your presentation skills.

You read the syllabus and realize you must do an oral presentation. You start to panic. You worry you'll have stage fright or too much nervous energy to get in front of the class and be the center of attention.

So, you start wonder how you’ll avoid this presentation.

Can you switch classes?

Can you drop the class and take it with another professor next semester?

Can you skip the presentation and still make a good grade?

All these things cross your mind, but you realize you can’t do anything about it, or can you?

Public speaking is a common fear. I asked college students, and an overwhelming 88% had some anxiety around oral presentations with students saying things like, “I’m worried what people will think of me,” or “I am scared I’ll mess up and freeze.”

In my own college classes, where students have presented, I have seen people get extremely anxious. One time a student thought she was going to pass out and had to be helped back to her desk in the middle of her presentation.

She couldn’t finish it.

If you find yourself having this crippling fear, I have some solutions for you on how to get over your nerves.

But in this article, I am going help you understand some of the excuses to get out of a presentation and how to talk to your professor about your anxiety.

Don’t be afraid to talk to your professor about your mental health because it can impact your college coursework. It’s not something you should take lightly.

If you have to do a class presentation in college, you need to take a deep breath and realize that most of your peers will also be anxious to present in front of everyone. You should definitely do the presentation and avoid skipping out on it. Face your fears because it can help you be more confident the next time you have to present.

It has been discovered from surveys that the fear of public speaking is very common. And it is even estimated that more people are afraid of public speaking than death itself.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, around 73% of the population are afraid of public speaking. It is a common phobia.

You aren’t alone. It seems completely normal to have presentation anxiety.

Some psychologists have agreed that the fear of public speaking might be instinctual. Humans used to live in tribes and being rejected from our peers sometimes meant death.  You needed your tribe to survive oftentimes. You can equate this to a survival skill because they did not want to be vulnerable to rejection and get cast out.

There is more to it than that, but I am trying to explain how you aren’t different than most people. And because you are scared to present doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with you.

Pretty interesting stuff.

If you want to get out of a college presentation, you need to have a legitimate excuse. If you have a medical diagnosis that may prevent you from presenting, you could check with your college’s disability office and see if you could get a reasonable accommodation.

Public speaking fears are common therefore it is expected that you will have some uneasiness so don’t immediately try to run from your fear.

You really should only seek out help from your professor if you have been diagnosed with a condition that makes presenting impossible.

And if you haven’t been diagnosed, you should seek assistance from someone who can assess you.

But for people who have a medical diagnosis, accommodations are going to be your best bet. The federal government has something called Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

You have rights in college regarding health conditions , so you should check with your college’s disability service office and find out more.

Now, you might not be able to completely avoid the presentation, but if you have accommodations through your school’s services , at least it is documented that you have a psychiatric illness and maybe your teachers are more likely to work with you.

If you don’t have accommodations already, you should see if you qualify.

They aren’t retroactive so you can’t go back and expect the school to do anything different regarding previous things that have happened. They are only effective when you officially got them.

A professor cannot force a student to present however the student could hurt their grade in the class if they don’t present. Sometimes skipping a presentation could lead to a failure in the course.

I reached out to an accredited college and talked with them about their accommodations around presentations and this is what they said.

If someone has a psychiatric illness that gives them social anxiety, and they have accommodations surrounding this disorder, then they may avoid presentations in certain classes. For example, if you are taking a sociology course and presentations are required and aren’t an integral part of the course, then your professor should try and modify it.

For example, maybe they could offer an individual presentation or recorded presentation instead.

But the college said that sometimes it might not be possible. For example, if it were a speech class, and it’s an integral part of the course, it might not be avoidable.  This would depend more on your professor.

The best case scenario for you is to meet with your disability services. If you don’t have accommodations, try getting them. If you don’t have the documentation to get the accommodations, you need to find out if you have a disorder that can be diagnosed first.

Tips to talk to your professor about getting out of a presentation

1.)  Be honest. Go to their office (preferably in person) and talk to them about your anxiety. Discuss your concerns. Don’t be afraid to talk to them.

2.)  Explain - Tell your professor that you have tried to overcome your fear and explain what you’ve tried. You want your professor to know that you’ve tried to overcome your fears and anxiety and present, but can’t.

3.)  Give them a solution – Don’t just say, I have anxiety and cannot present, but give them some solutions. You might say something like, can you consider an alternative assignment? Is there a way I could present in a classroom with only you present, or could I record my presentation?

4.) Seek help - Find out if your college offers any personal or mental health counseling. They might have some free support services that could help you address your fear of public speaking.

You can see that there are several steps to discussing your fear with your professor. Do not expect your professor to accommodate you unless they must because of your accommodations. But hopefully you can at least share your concerns and get some feedback from your professor.

Things to consider

Understand that getting accommodations may not mean that your professor must do anything at all. This entirely depends on the circumstances. If you do have accommodations, you will want to speak with your college’s disability services’ office to ask about this possibility.

And lastly, make sure you are only trying to get out of the presentation because you simply cannot overcome this fear. And it’s something you have tried to overcome. I am sympathetic to this anxiety, but know most people present without any issues, even with anxiousness.

Don’t lie. Be genuine, and if you need truly need accommodations, get those. If you need medical treatment for your anxiety, seek it.

Should I just skip a class for a presentation?

No, you should not skip class just to avoid a presentation. There are lots of positive things you can learn by doing your class presentation. You could miss out on a grade and risk failing the class. If you skip class just to avoid a presentation, you are not gaining the confidence you need later in life. The more you do public presentations, the better and more comfortable you will get.

In your job, you’ll need these oral presentation skills and you are missing an opportunity to build these skills when you skip a presentation. Finally you want to support your other classmates too.

Look, I hope you can overcome your fear and do the presentation. To help you, I have created an article dedicated to helping you get over your fears and present like a boss.

Anxiety support

If you need assistance for anxiety, panic disorders, depression, etc., you can seek assistance from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Note : I am not a disability services expert so please use discretion and remember that there are a lot of variables that will impact your outcome. This is not professional, medical, or legal advice and is for informational purposes only. Your results may vary.

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I taught college students for about 15 years. I have experience teaching online and in-person. I have a graduate degree. I have a passion for education. But I’ve also worked in the professional world (outside of education) too. And with my teaching and educational experience, I want to help students answer their most pressing questions. I want to give my wealth of knowledge to college students to help make their life easier.

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[Guide!] How To Give a Presentation When You are NOT Prepared?

By: Author Shrot Katewa

Presentations are a powerful way of conveying messages to your colleagues, employees, or even prospective clients. But, there are times when you have been given a really short notice and you just don’t have time to prepare for a presentation! So, what can you do in such situations and how should you give a presentation when you are not prepared for it?

If you are not prepared to give a presentation, start by calming yourself down. Jot down 3 to 5 points as key takeaways. Then, make a short presentation with images and one-line text. Speak slowly and allow audience participation. Remember – your audience doesn’t know that you are not prepared.

In this article, I will discuss everything you need to know about giving a presentation when unprepared. Tips that I’m sharing below are from my own personal experiences. It has worked for me, and I hope it does for you as well. So, keep reading!

Giving a Presentation when you are NOT Prepared!

Giving a presentation is not hard even when you are not prepared for it. But, it is the fear of failure, especially in front of others, that compounds the problem.

So, any time you are in a situation when you are not prepared for a presentation, remove the audience from the picture temporarily. Imagine that you have to explain the topic (that you have been assigned for the presentation) to a friend. What would you have said? How would you have explained to him or her?

Once you’ve got that soaked in, take a deep breath and try some of the following tips on how to give a presentation when you are not prepared!

1. Calm Yourself Down

Everything is a lot more difficult when you are flustered and in a rush. That is why calming yourself down just before giving your speech or presentation, will help you focus on all the next steps that we will talk about in the rest of this article.

Calming yourself down can be done quite easily, in fact, one of the best ways to do it is just to tell yourself to be calm. Tell yourself that the worst thing that can happen is not the end of the world and that you shouldn’t even worry about it because you know you are going to give the best presentation possible.

I know, I tried to make it seem easy. But, as I mentioned earlier, just take a few breaths and do what I mentioned above. It will surely help.

2. Focus on 3 to 5 Key Takeaways for your Audience

As mentioned earlier, think of how you would have explained the topic of your presentation to your colleague or a friend. Then, introspect and observe the points that you just thought of and make a note of these points. This will help you create an outline for your presentation.

Identify a few key takeaways for your audience. Then, using the outline you just arrived at, build up your talking points. Remember the 3 things that you want each of your point to convey –

• State your point
• Talk about the “why” of your point.
• Talk about what your point means. Share some anecdotal or personal experience.
• Depending on your type of presentation you can also include the “where”, the “consequence” and the “how” of your points.

Try and include the aforementioned structure for your talking points as this will help build your presentation.

3. Use Images and One Line Text

This trick is super helpful especially if you are short on time!

Okay, so let’s say that you have to give a presentation and you have to do it really quickly. You don’t have much time to prepare but you need to get it done. Well, making an image-based presentation can really do the trick for you.

Use a lot of images, possibly one on every slide. Then, with those images, include only one line of text. This should be the key point that you are trying to convey through that slide.

This allows you to do 2 things –

• Forces your audience to focus on you rather than read the text on the slides.
• Saves you time to create, write, and design the content for your presentation; thereby allowing you at least some time for practising the presentation!

Furthermore, this will also force you to keep your talking point short and precise and make your presentation look structured and professional.

Also, when you are not reading the text from the slides (which you perhaps would have otherwise done if there was more than one line of text on the slide), the presentation delivery feels natural and you will come across as a person who has indeed prepared for the presentation.

4. Speak Slowly

This kind of ties-in with being calm.

If you are flustered, you will find yourself talking very fast. This is one of the quickest ways to lose your audience’s attention and also a sure way to put yourself under more pressure.

From when you introduce yourself, you want to speak slowly and clearly. Speaking slowly will also give you enough time to think about what you are going to say next.

When I say speak slowly, I don’t want you to sound mentally challenged. What I mean is take enough pauses during your presentation. Don’t be afraid to take pauses in between sentences to recoup your thoughts while allowing your audience to soak all the information that you’ve just shared.

Trust me, if you do this right, the only thing that you will be doing is creating suspense within your audience. This means that they want to hear what you have to say next, even more, that’s actually a win-win for you.

5. Think Before you Say Something

Again, as with speaking slowly, take your time to formulate your sentences. Think about what you are going to say and then say it. If you make a mistake and you maybe mumble something, don’t shy away and don’t don’t cave in.

Instead of caving in, when you make a mistake, just rehash what you are going to say. You can do it like this “oh excuse me, what I meant was…” and then just carry on with your presentation. Your audience really will not mind a few fumbles as long as you stay calm.

This will also ensure that you don’t use filler words as those are a real mood-killer!

So, speak slowly and take a brief moment to think before you say something.

6. Keep all your Talking Points Short and to the Point

Keep all of your talking points short and precise. Stick to the point and do not venture off in your mind and start rambling on about random things. This is one of the easiest ways to tell if somebody is unprepared.

It is important to note that there is a difference between rambling on about something and including your audience and then responding to their thoughts and opinions.

When you do respond to the audience, that is not rambling on, they are just giving you talking points that help your presentation.

7. Look Carefully at Each Slide Before you Engage the Audience

When you aren’t prepared for a presentation, the last thing that you want to do is to start fumbling your words or having to look back at a slide multiple times. Look at each slide carefully to prevent any unwanted fumbles on your part.

If you don’t want the audience to know that you weren’t prepared, give them time to absorb everything on the slide. In reality, you are busy preparing your points for the slide and your audience is busy looking at the slide.

The audience might actually be grateful that you weren’t in a rush and you gave them the necessary time to fully understand your presentation.

8. Include the Audience by Allowing them to Participate

If you are unprepared to the point where you don’t really know what you are going to talk about and have to give the presentation on the fly, there is one trick that can help you. This is especially if you need to go past a certain amount of time.

Including the audience in your presentation will not only help you increase the length of your presentation but it has a number of benefits as well. Here are a few of those benefits.

• You will hold the attention of your audience for longer.
• They will understand the presentation better.
• You will be able to take some talking points away from your audience.

That is just a handful of relevant benefits.

Some of the ways you can include audience participation is by –

• Asking them questions or their opinion on certain key points of the presentation.
• Including a small activity that involves knowledge sharing and exchange of ideas such as a group discussion on a topic.
• Include an ice-breaker at the beginning of your presentation.

9. Share Anecdotal Experience Wherever Possible – Make it Personal

Sharing anecdotal experience makes your presentation unique. It gives the audience your perspective of a certain topic.

Storytelling is a great way of sharing your personal experience. You can include any personal experiences that are unique to the point or the message you are trying to convey with the specific slide. However, do make sure that it is linked with the presentation and the key point of the slide.

Personal experiences also keep the audience more engaged experience something that is unique which draws their attention towards you as a speaker. Little personal touches go a long way not only when giving a presentation but also when dealing with clients.

10. Remember, your Audience Doesn’t Know that you are NOT prepared!

It is important to remember that only YOU know that you haven’t been able to prepare. Your audience is not aware of that! So, as long as you don’t give away any hints of lack of preparedness, they are never going to find out that you aren’t prepared.

You can use any one or multiple tips mentioned above and trick the audience into believing that you are indeed prepared for the presentation.

Final Thoughts

Giving a presentation especially when you are not prepared doesn’t have to be that hard. Perhaps you may feel nervous the first time. It is absolutely normal. But, remember to stay calm and be confident. You surely will be able to deliver the presentation with great success.

Hopefully, this article has helped you, and I hope that you will not have to be nervous the next time you get caught off-guard. Remember to bookmark this page so that you do not forget anything.

What is Memorial Day? The true meaning of why we celebrate the federal holiday

For many Americans, Memorial Day is more than a long weekend and an unofficial start to the summer season. The real meaning of the holiday is meant to honor all U.S. soldiers who have died serving their country.

Originally called Decoration Day, Memorial Day's history goes back to the Civil War. It was was declared a national holiday by Congress in 1971, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs.

Although Veterans Day in November also honors military service members, Memorial Day differs by honoring all military members who have died while serving in U.S. forces in any current or previous wars.

The late-May holiday has also evolved into an opportunity for Americans to head to the beach or lake , travel to see friends and family , or even catch a Memorial Day parade .

Here's what to know about the history and the reason behind why we observe Memorial Day.

Memorial Day weather: Severe storms could hamper your travel, outdoor plans for Memorial Day weekend

When is Memorial Day?

One of 11 federal holidays recognized in the U.S., Memorial Day is always observed on the last Monday of May. This year, the holiday falls on Monday, May 27.

Why do we celebrate Memorial Day?  

The origins of the holiday can be traced back to local observances for soldiers with neglected gravesites during the Civil War.

The first observance of what would become Memorial Day, some historians think, took place in Charleston, South Carolina at the site of a horse racing track that Confederates had turned into a prison holding Union prisoners. Blacks in the city organized a burial of deceased Union prisoners and built a fence around the site, Yale historian David Blight wrote in  The New York Times  in 2011.

Then on May 1, 1865, they held an event there including a parade – Blacks who fought in the Civil War participated – spiritual readings and songs, and picnicking. A commemorative marker was erected there in 2010.

One of the first Decoration Days was held in Columbus, Mississippi, on April 25, 1866 by women who decorated graves of Confederate soldiers who perished in the battle at Shiloh with flowers. On May 5, 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, the tradition of placing flowers on veterans’ graves was continued by the establishment of Decoration Day by an organization of Union veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic. 

General Ulysses S. Grant presided over the first large observance, a crowd of about 5,000 people, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on May 30, 1873.

This tradition continues to thrive in cemeteries of all sizes across the country. 

Until World War I, Civil War soldiers were solely honored on this holiday. Now, all Americans who’ve served are observed. 

At least 25 places in the North and the South claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. Some states that claim ownership of the origins include Illinois, Georgia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, according to Veterans Affairs.

Despite conflicting claims, the U.S. Congress and President Lyndon Johnson declared Waterloo, New York, as the “birthplace” of Memorial Day on May 30, 1966, after Governor Nelson Rockefeller's declaration that same year. The New York community formally honored local veterans May 5, 1866 by closing businesses and lowering flags at half-staff. 

Why is Memorial Day in May? 

The day that we celebrate Memorial Day is believed to be influenced by Illinois U.S. Representative John A. Logan, who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat in November 1858, and served as an officer during the Mexican War.

It is said that Logan, a staunch defender of the Union, believed Memorial Day should occur when flowers are in full bloom across the country, according to the  National Museum of the U.S. Army.

Congress passed an act making May 30 a holiday in the District of Columbia in 1888,  according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

In 2000, the National Moment of Remembrance Act – which created the White House Commission on the National Moment of Remembrance and encourages all to pause at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day for a minute of silence – was signed into law by Congress and the President.

What is the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day?

Memorial Day and Veterans Day both honor the sacrifices made by U.S. veterans, but the holidays serve different purposes.

Veterans Day, originally called “Armistice Day,” is a younger holiday established in 1926 as a way to commemorate all those who had served in the U.S. armed forces during World War I.

Memorial Day honors all those who have died.

The 7 Main Reasons Why People Give Presentations

1.      Selling a product or service

2.      giving a toast at a party or celebration.

3.      Teaching a new concept

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4.     Memorialising a loved one

5.      inspiring a crowd to take an action.

6.     Entertaining a group of people

7.      demonstrating that you understand a concept, more articles on presentation skills.

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