Imagine you are at your favorite restaurant, and you’ve ordered your favorite dish. You are excited! This dish is the perfect combination of flavors and ingredients, and you've been thinking about it all week long. You see your server walking toward you, and you’re hoping against hope the meal he’s carrying is yours. It is! As your server sets your meal in front of you, your mouth starts to water. A second later, your smile turns to a look of confusion.
You look at the mess on your plate and think, “What the heck is this? This is not what I ordered!” As you pick through it, you see that all the ingredients of the dish you ordered are there, but instead of looking delicious, the ingredients are all mashed together in a pile. You flag your server down and ask him about it. He says, “Oh yes, that is the same dish. However, our new chef hasn’t yet learned how to present our menu in a way that looks appealing. Don't worry, though, all the ingredients are there, so it’ll taste the same.”
You think, “Not to me! Part of the reason I enjoy this meal is the way it’s presented.” You leave the restaurant, food untouched, vowing never to return again.
So what does this have to do with delivering a presentation? Everything. You may have great content (all the ingredients for a delicious meal), but if you don’t know how to present them in an enticing way that keeps people engaged, your audience will tune out and leave disappointed.
The following are 13 of the most common delivery mistakes presenters make, along with tips for avoiding them so people will remain loyal followers of your “restaurant” and tell others how fabulous it is, too.
Pausing: More powerful than words
Because I am a fast-talking New Yorker, I really had to work on this skill. Pausing in the right places and pausing long enough is a critical speaking skill. You can and must learn it! Most presenters don’t pause long enough or at the right times—and that robs their talk of impact.
The reason this tool is underused is that silence can feel awkward and scary. For most presenters, a two- to three-second pause feels like an eternity, but for your listeners, it’s a gift. Why? Because you are giving them space to process what you’ve said. Here are two especially important speaking scenarios that can benefit from a well-timed pause.
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Pause to stress an important point. For example, a presenter might say something compelling like, “Tom and Cindy paid less for four years of college for their daughter than most pay for one year!” Ideally, the speaker should pause for a few seconds and let that huge statement sink in.
If the speaker skips the critical pause and just moves on to the next thought, that important statement loses its impact. When you skip the pauses, nothing in your talk comes across as especially important. All your thoughts blend together and carry the same weight. To avoid that, strategically choose to pause before and after you say something you want your audience to think about.
- You might be wondering, “How long should I pause?” When making an especially important statement, I generally pause for two to three seconds.
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Pause after asking a question. Many presenters will ask a question but will not give the audience time to answer it. Even if you’re not expecting people to answer your question out loud, pause long enough so that they have time to process the question and answer it in their minds. If you don’t, you risk losing your audience.
- Here is one of my favorite tips: When asking the audience a question, answer the question in your own head, and this will generally be a long enough pause for the audience to answer, too.
- Pause after you say something humorous in your presentation. When you make a joke, it is critical that you give the audience time to get the humor. And when they laugh, don’t “step on” their laughter by talking over them. Wait until the laughter subsides, and then start speaking again.
In our fast-paced world, your audience will appreciate your pauses. This is one of the hardest yet most powerful delivery tools to master. It takes practice and a willingness to push past the uncomfortable feelings that silence can bring up. Trust me, though, the payoff for you and your audience will be worth it.
Pausing for impact isn’t new. Writer Mark Twain knew the importance of the pause back in the 1800s. He said, “The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”
12 common delivery mistakes
In addition to leaving out the all-important pause, below are 12 more delivery mistakes that speakers often make. Simply becoming aware of these tendencies—and which ones you in particular fall into—can help you polish your presentation skills significantly.
- Giving a monologue. Be conversational in your delivery. One powerful way to do this is to ask your audience what I call “reflective questions.” They are directly related to the point you are making and get the audience thinking about themselves and how their experience relates to your content.
- ‘Preaching.’ Share your own flaws to achieve common ground with your audience, and again, ask reflective questions. Avoid talking at people and making statements that might make them feel like you are telling them what to do. You can use phrases such as these:
- “If you’re like me…”
- “Like most people…”
- “What I discovered is…”
- Moving without a purpose. Unless there is a reason to move around, stand in the same spot for the first few minutes of your talk. This will help you appear and feel more confident. Then begin moving around the stage with a purpose, but don’t pace during the rest of your talk.
- Lip-synching with your slides. Isn’t it annoying when a speaker reads the text on his or her slides? Don’t do this! On your slides, present a few words and a lot of relevant images.
- Trying to be perfect. I am personally working on this one. You will trip over your words sometimes, and you might forget to say something exactly as you planned it. It’s OK! Connection is more important than perfection.
- Speaking to the entire group. Speak as if you are talking only to one person. By doing this, each person will walk out thinking, “Wow, it felt like the speaker was talking directly to me!” Avoid using words and phrases that lump the audience into a group, such as “everyone,” “how many of you” and “ladies and gentlemen.” Instead, use the word “you” as much as possible.
- Staying at the ‘same level’ for too long. Vary your tone, rate of speech and volume.
- Using facial expressions and tone of voice/rate of speech that do not match your content. For example, if you are talking about being sad, it will confuse your audience if you are smiling, so make sure your face looks sad and your voice sounds sad. Keep everything congruent to create the optimum emotional impact for your audience.
- Standing behind a podium. You don’t want anything between you and your audience; it will diminish their connection to you.
- Making hand gestures that move in the wrong direction. This is a biggie and separates the amateurs from the true masters. Make sure your hands are moving in the right direction as you speak. For example, if you are demonstrating a timeline with your hands to indicate before and after, move your hands to the right to denote “before” and to the left to denote “after.” Novice speakers and even many highly skilled speakers move their hands in the direction as it appears to them (left for “before” and right for “after.”) However, great speakers remember that their audience sees things backward: your left is their right, and vice versa.
- Dressing differently than your audience. Dress like your audience. Will you be talking to a group of executives? Dress like they do. Talking to a group of farmers? Dress like they do. Speaking to a group of recent college grads? You get the point.
- Showing up unprepared. Nothing will disrupt your delivery more than being unprepared. Write out what you are going to say, and then practice it, practice it and practice it again until you internalize the message. Be able to deliver your message without looking at your notes much. When you know your message well, you can focus less on the words you’re saying and more on your delivery and engaging with your audience.
One by one
If this list of presentation “don’ts” seems overwhelming, just work on one of them at a time. I tell people to pick one or two to work on, and when they master those, pick another. Remember to give yourself grace! Learning these skills did not happen overnight for me or my clients, and it likely won’t happen instantly for you, either.
Here’s the great news: Most speakers are making the majority of these mistakes. So that means fixing just the first few of them will already make you stand out from the crowd as a presenter!
Most importantly, deliver a talk that is tailored to your specific audience, and speak from the heart. (Speaking from the heart does not mean winging it, though! See mistake #12, “Showing up unprepared.”) When your audience sees the genuine passion you have for your subject, they will be more likely to overlook some of your delivery mistakes.