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Not everyone is born to be a successful orator, and getting acquainted to the principles of this wonderful art can sometimes raise difficulties. Either they result from psychological tension caused by pressure or merely from lack of interest, most common blunders in public speaking can blow away the true meaning and charm of a well-written speech with constructive ideas.

This is why we should take note of these common presentation errors and avoid turning public speaking into a true nightmare, so we could spare us the worries and embrace success in everything we do.

Death by PowerPoint

Nevertheless, technology has brought valuable improvements to the world of business and presentations, as it offers useful visual support and makes your message easier to understand by keeping your audience entertained. However, the countless benefits of this software could only be signs of good luck if you know how to effectively use them. Don’t forget PowerPoint is there to improve your presentation where necessary and not to entirely replace you. If loaded with information, slideshows become repulsive to your audience from the first glance: nobody will pay attention to intricate pieces of info clustered into a single place. Remember this advice and use straightforward, simple notions to fill in the slides. They only have to resume the main ideas in your speech and help the audience keep them in mind. Never choose to entirely focus on a PowerPoint presentation!

This also applies to speech notes. There are speakers constantly reading their notes and therefore forgetting about eye contact, a vital part to meeting the target of the presentation! Most of these speakers also tend to turn PowerPoint slideshows into virtual speech notes and kill their presentation twice!

The Defensive Speaker

The attitude of the speaker, as well as his presence are elements with a drastical influence to the overall impact of his speech. This is a quite delicate situation, as it sometimes refers to an issue mostly depending on psychological matters.

A nervous speaker is most likely to be rigid and avoid eye contact with the audience. The speech becomes tedious and all members of the audience will only wish for the presentation to end sooner. They will feel ignored and have the impression they landed in the wrong place. Murmur would probably be their desperate way of letting you know that.

Stage Fright or Simply Careless?

A well-prepared speech gathers the attention of the audience from the very beginning. A weak, poorly motivated opening betrays a lack of confidence in your own speech and even make the strength of your arguments diminish in the eyes of the audience, as no interest would be risen from your behalf in the first place. What’s more, it is scientifically proven the first 90 seconds are vital to one’s first impression when meeting another for the first time. Why wouldn’t that apply to presentations too? So remember to always draw attention with a catchy opening.

I Happens to Have Came in Front of You Today…

This is the most painful experience a speech could ever offer its audience. Incoherence and poor language are never tolerated in the world of oratory. You should have flawless knowledge of language and vocabulary and master the art of phrases in order to keep your audience entertained and prove your point!

Ummm… errrr…

It sometimes happens to genuinely run out of ideas or simply forget, for a few seconds, what is that you wanted to say. It is better for you to keep a few moments of complete silence instead of filling in the gaps with “ummm” and “errrrr”. They disrupt the natural flow of your ideas and annoy the members of your audience by forcing them to repeatedly lose focus and focus again. Make speech notes to ensure your fluency and rely on in case this ever happens, it is natural.

Bond. Audience Bond.

Last, but not least, do keep in mind to always connect to the audience. People value emotions and are more likely to genuinely welcome your message if you also rely on empathy. No one will have any memory of a distant speaker, as these speakers tend to keep their speeches distant as well. However, be careful not to exaggerate with connecting!

CEOs, systems analysts, and civil engineers swear by storytelling these days for a riveting C-suite experience. My point is that presenters should stop telling “stories” that aren’t stories. More often than not, presenters patter along for a few bullet points and then stop occasionally for an anecdote break, under the illusion that they’re telling a story.

Here’s how stories and anecdotes differ:

Structure:

Anecdotes present a “slice of life.” That is, they describe an interaction, a situation, or a scene.

Stories have a hero struggling to overcome challenges to accomplish a goal. Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Delivery:

Presenters usually just “narrate” anecdotes. They describe what they heard, saw, said, felt. Most often, the anecdote flows naturally in the past tense because the person is talking about what happened yesterday, last month, or when they were child, a newly wed, or maybe a first-year grad student.

But stories… ah, when someone tells a great story, the listeners feel as though they’re watching a movie. The speaker sets the scene, and then it’s lights, camera, action. The storyteller delivers the dialogue and gestures the action. Listeners envision what’s happening while the story unfolds.

Purpose:

Most often, anecdotes illustrate something-a feeling (frustration, anger, grief) or a situation (poor customer service, stupidity, innocence, helplessness).

Stories may illustrate as well. But they typically add other dimensions-motivation to act, inspiration, emotional tension or relief.

Impact:

To illustrate the difference in impact, I’ll leave you with examples.

Anecdote:

Customer service has deteriorated until I no longer think you can call it “service” in some organizations. The other day I was flying out to Chicago. I’ll admit I haven’t traveled much in the last 12 months, but I felt as if I were in a factory being “processed.” No agents to check me in. Just a computer.

The TSA agents were extremely rude: “Where’s your ticket?”

I had a little trouble finding the email on my phone with my e-ticket to be scanned.

The agent kept saying, “Don’t you have a paper copy? Just give me your paper copy! You’re holding up the line!”

Why do they send e-tickets if they can’t wait a moment for you to access them? The gate agents were equally surly. One even hassled me for “oversized” luggage, which wasn’t! It fit in their sizing container just fine. It’ll be a long time before I fly that airline again.

Story:

Customer service has deteriorated until I no longer think you can call it “service” in some organizations. The other day I was flying out to Chicago for a 3:00 pm job interview. I was booked on an 8:00 am flight to arrive at 10:00. Plenty of time-or so I thought. They cancelled the first flight-without notice, no reason given.

Finally, I’m rebooked to arrive at noon. We land. I reach up in the overhead bin for my briefcase, and it’s gone. Then I see a guy heading off the plane ahead of me carrying my laptop! I yell at the flight attendant, “Stop him! He’s got my laptop!”

She acts as if she can’t understand what I’m saying. The guy with my laptop takes off running, so I start after him.

I’m dashing through the airport, but it’s crowded and I lose him before I ever get out of that corridor. Just as I stop to catch my breath, two police officers step up beside me: “Sir, you’ll need to come with us.”

“Me? Why? What’s going on? I have to make my job interview in an hour!”

They slapped handcuffs on me and the officer says, “You’re under arrest for… “

(Wouldn’t you be hooked in at this point? Do you see the difference between a story and an anecdote?)

Don’t get me wrong: Stories make a great presentation even better. Just chose them wisely and tell them well.