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Recently I was lucky (or unlucky depending on your point of view) to attend a conference where there were some pretty average presentations.  Afterwards I started to compare notes from some of my fellow delegates as to what were the most common failings of presenters.

 Afterwards I continued this discussion online and here are a summary of the things that drive audiences nuts!

• Lack of clear purpose for the presentation (other than filling a time slot)
• Presenters who stand in front of their own projector and pretend to be a screen
• Presenters who spend most of their time reading out the words on their slides
• Presenters who show complex and unintelligible slides and then apologise for showing them
• Presenters who don’t make eye contact with their audience
• Presenters who try and compress two days worth of data into a 15 minute presentation
• Lack of congruence - i.e presenters who say one thing on stage and then behave in a contary manner when off stage
• Presenters who fail to think about the interests of the audience
• Presenters who fail to involve the audience
• Using material created by someone else without a proper understanding of the content
• Using copies of the PowerPoint slides as a hand-out without proper background notes
• Using jargon and TLAs
• Not monitoring the energy level in the room.
• Using the invitation to present to sell (a) his/her own product(s) (b) his/her own ego.
• Making repeated grandiose reference to “as I say in my latest book…”
• Too long!
• They present because they’ve been asked not because of their ability
• The presentation is delivered, they do not talk to anyone
• Try to be funny when they are not
• Give solutions for which there are no problems
• Start and finish as opposed to have a clear beginning, middle and end.
• Lack enthusiasm
• Turn up in the first place. It would be kinder to have an attack of stage fright.
• Using PowerPoint because it’s what ‘proper’ presenters do.
• Using every animation and effect in PowerPoint because it’s there.
• Relying on notes and the content of the talk is clearly as much a surprise to the presenter as it is to the audience.
• Apologising at the start of the presentation for the ‘boring’ content
• Failing to project to the back of the room, promising to raise their voice or adjust their microphone, and then carrying on exactly as before while asking “is this better?”
• Forgetting business can be fun - we’re all human and laughter makes learning easier.

So there is no shortage of mistakes that can be made.  The good news is that the solutions are relatively simple.

Have a great week