Hundreds of thousands of meetings are held every day be it in business, private and social environments. During our lifetime we will attend many and on some occasions we will be the person who speaks in front of the audience. In such occasion our success depends on our ability to present ourselves clearly and in the interest of the listener. Following are some of the worst presentation sins and ways to avoid them.



1) Never, ever read your speech! Unless you are very practised in this your voice will be monotonous and put people asleep. Practise until you know your beginning sentence, the ending and the main point of your speech by heart and then deliver from the heart with conviction and sincerity. A few deep breath if you are nervous won't hurt.

2) Droning on when the topic is exhausted - If you are not clear what the purpose of your message is you might try desperately to get points across that you are not even clear on yourself. To avoid that make sure you can state your message in one short clear sentence before you prepare your speech or presentation and work towards keeping that message clear.

3) Hammering your points in - Sometimes we want to get a point across and instead of using different examples we just hammer the point across, again and again until we believe the audience must have gotten the message. Using real life examples to illustrate our point will be much more efficient and more fun too.

4) Looking either at the lectern or ceiling instead of your audience. Nerves can make our eyes glue to the lectern or up on the ceiling as if looking for divine inspiration. The result is that your audience feels left out, unimportant to you and within a short time span will lose interest. Make sure you keep eye contact with the room looking slowly from side to side actually stopping to look into the eyes of some people in the audience.

5) Confusing your audience - Give them key points that they can digest easily and eliminate conflicting messages and jargon. Use vocabulary everyone can understand and repeat your main message during your presentation several times.

6) Boring your audience - Package the information with vocal variety and pitch, active body language and style to make it interesting. Be honest and lively and always well prepared!

7) Lacking passion - Believe in your message and let them know how much you believe in it. Passion is captivating, contagious and more convincing than logic. Whether your presentation is "perfect" or not if you are passionate about it the message will come across.

8) Insulting your audience - Talk to them and with them - but not down to them. Don't make jokes about the audience. Don't assume that you know more than they do or that you know what they think.

9) Information overload - K.I.S.S. - Keep It Short and Simple. Give them what they need to know to be able to do what you want them to do. Don't overload them with too many details.

10) Too many slides - Many presenters seem to confuse quantity with quality. Visual aids are there to reinforce your message but neither your PowerPoint slides nor other visual aids will rescue you from a poor presentation. Your enthusiasm will always be your best messenger.

11) Being inflexible and unapproachable - make your audience part of your speech. Ask them questions they can answer by raising their arm or ask rhetoric questions that you give an answer to yourself but which will get your audience thinking too.

A speech or a presentation is not about you. It is about the message and the better you can get your message across the more successful your presentation or speech will be.

Jim Rohn said: "Always be your best. You never know who is in the audience." No matter if you have an audience of one or one thousand if you are well prepared and speak from the heart your audience will respect you for your effort and love you for sharing the emotion.