2018 is not yet here, but some of us are probably thinking about standing up in front of an audience in the New Year.
Mike Pacchione (@mpacc) who facilitates workshops for Duarte, points out six common, but thankfully avoidable, presentation mistakes. Here they are:
- “Your presentation covers too much.” A presentation probably needs less information than you think. I agree. In my work, I often encounter long presentation decks. What always strikes me is that not only are the slides dense with content, but also that there are just too many of them. (And don’t get me started on speaker notes.) PechaKucha, advocates presentations of 20 slides each slide shown for 20 seconds, or a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. How refreshing is that?
- “You distract your audience with acronyms, abbreviations and jargon.” Pacchione points out that if audience members haven’t memorized or assimilated them, their brains attempt to figure them out, as the presentation moves on and leaves them behind. This is an interesting pickle. Writers are generally asked to spell out an acronym and follow it with the acronym in parentheses. Probably the best approach is to use acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon sparingly to maintain momentum.
- “Presenting irrelevant information guarantees a bad presentation.” Relevance, of course, depends on the audience, so it’s important to home in on what’s important. If you figure that out, you can shorten your presentation. Your audience will likely thank you, though it may initially be confused by your brevity.
- “Your call to action is confusing or vague.” If your audience walks out of your presentation without knowing what to do or how to do it, then no matter how great your talk was, you get an F. Be clear and specific—whether it’s “Call your senator and ask her not to vote for this bill,” “Call your five top prospects for this solution within the next three days,” or the like. I’ve edited content for clients who are invariably enthusiastic about their offerings but never include a call to action. That’s a tremendous waste of time for everyone.
- “Your style is soporific.” Isn’t that a great word? Mr. Pacchione notes that if you don’t sound excited by your subject, neither will your audience. He recommends recording yourself with your voice memo app for a minute and listen to how you sound. I also recommend asking a friend or family member with a reputation for honesty to listen to you and offer feedback. You also need to practice. A single run-through won’t do it.
- “Your presentation lacks a clear point or purpose.” Reciting facts is a lot different than taking a point of view or having a real reason for making a presentation. The example Mr. Pacchione uses is “The team made a lot of mistakes.” That’s a fact, but it isn’t particularly useful. Saying “Next time, the team can avoid expensive mistakes and deliver good results by doing X, Y, and Z” is more like it.
Most of us have sat through many poor presentations. Maybe we’ve given some bad ones, too. But, as Mr. Pacchione says, “The good news is that the bar for presentations in your organization is probably low. If you can avoid even a few of the very natural presentation mistakes … you can avoid giving a bad presentation and even stand out as a good presenter.”
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