We've all had it happen. We're in front of a crowd, giving a speech, and we see the eyes of the audience members glaze over. There's a collective boredom hovering just above their heads as we watch their attention slip away. Realizing they're tuning us out, we panic. Speak more quickly. Question whether we should skip parts of the presentation. Start to shift our weight from side to side, criticizing ourselves for skipping too many classes during speech and forensics in high school.

Giving presentations isn't easy. And the old suggestion about imagining your audience naked has, as far as I know, never helped anyone. The only way to making public speaking less of a torture, is to do everything in your power to keep your audience engaged. Otherwise, it's torture not only for you, but for all of them as well.

So what can you do to give better presentations? Here are a few tips:

Prepare your material. Know it inside and out. Practice the speech over and over. Nothing is worse than watching a speaker stand on a stage and read or stutter over his own notes. The most engaging dialogue is conversational, not page after page of long-winded sentences. Keep in mind also that the audience does not know the material like you do. So keep it brief, highlight the key points, and repeat the same information several times, in several different ways to ensure the audience remembers them.

Use a podium only if it helps. Not everyone needs a podium. Sometimes it's more visually interesting to watch the speaker move around. If that's not possible, or if the idea of having no notes makes you uncomfortable, by all means, use a podium. We found great podiums from Versa Products, Inc. that have reachable shelves, allowing you to run your own power point presentation without your audience members watching you click buttons.

Keep it interactive. There are several ways to turn a lecture into an interactive session. Audience participation helps keep audience members engaged, and assists them in remembering the material as well. Ask questions—not rhetorical questions, ask questions that have an answer and that the audience has to think about. Use anecdotes. Studies show that people remember anecdotes over statistics. Illustrate your points by telling short, interesting stories. If your listener can remember the story, he/she will remember the point it was making as well. Make them laugh. Laughing increases endorphins which fend off feelings of fatigue and boredom. Tell jokes (funny ones), or poke fun at yourself, the material, or your industry.

Use visuals that are visually interesting. The days of clip art in power point presentations are over. Slow dissolves and a myriad of jarring transitions between slides will do nothing more than annoy your audience. Every slide of your presentation should be worth reading and must make a point. Visual aids should either make people laugh, be part of an anecdote, or help your listeners otherwise remember the points you're trying to get across.