What are we doing wrong?

Top three mistakes

I think it’s important to first recognize that there is a problem with the way presentations are being made and then we need to try and define what we are doing wrong. Only then can we attempt to solve the problem and start making outstanding presentations.

You may have a different list, but I’ll give you the top three mistakes that I think people make when they create and deliver presentations.

Firstly, presentations are too long! Have you ever left a presentation and said to yourself, 'That was a great presentation, but it was just too short.' I didn't think so.

Is there a time limit for presentations? Of course not. But, we have a tendency to put way too much information into our presentations and make them much longer than necessary. We want to make sure we’re not leaving anything out and, in doing so, we bombard our audiences with loads of unnecessary information. And, the result is that we lose our audience’s attention.

Secondly, presentations are usually not audience-focused. If the audience is even considered in the preparation stage, it’s usually just an afterthought.

One of the most important questions you can ask yourself is what the audience expects from you. Why are they coming to see you speak? What do they expect to get out of this presentation? What do they want from you? Presentations are NOT about the speaker. They are all about the audience!

And, lastly, there’s a real problem with the way we think about slides. Please remember that your slides are NOT your presentation. Their only function is to support your presentation i.e. you and your message. Use them to get your audience‘s attention and make them curious about what you’re going to say. They should function as a way to get your audience to listen to you.

So, this is a start. If we can take these three issues and start to make changes, it’s a good step on the way to making our presentations more focused, engaging and effective.

Next time we’ll look deeper into the problem of information overload and how to avoid it.

© 2009 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved