How to Avoid These Public Speaking Mistakes
To avoid mistakes and keep your audience happy, you should keep a few things in mind whenever you speak in public. Your audience wants you to help them understand the subject matter, so you need to keep in mind they must feel relaxed and comfortable and attentive in your presence.
Lack of Preparation
Your success is directly tied to your level of preparation, so with such, there is a guarantee that it will happen. In most cases, it’s immediately clear when a presenter has prepared beforehand. You can’t keep your audience engaged if you don’t know who they are, what they care about, what they already know and what they need from you.
Whether making a sales pitch, doing a presentation, meeting or reporting something, you need to be well-prepared to stay on top. The last thing you want is your audience asking questions like “Why should I care?” or being lost in their phones or spacing out.
Wasting Their Time
If you ever had the misfortune of being in a presentation where the speaker is flooding you with information you already know, or you can find obvious and old news through a quick Google search, then you know the feeling. Nobody likes wasting their time, so ensure you are thoroughly prepared and ready.
Looking Uncomfortable
In most cases, you will feel some discomfort when you’re speaking in public, but if you allow it to show, your audience may feel it too. You can be nervous, but you need to keep it together during a speech so you won’t turn into a blubbering mess that can’t finish the presentation or speech. The best way to do that is to prepare well ahead of time and to focus on being as good as you can be at delivering a smooth speech and experience. That takes rehearsing in front of a mirror, your friends and family, you name it. You don’t have to memorise everything word for word necessarily, but you need to be able to deliver your presentation with confidence.
Lack of Commitment
If you are not entirely committed to the idea and information you’re about to present, your audience will feel it, which will show during your presentation. Speaking in public requires you to persuade the audience to accept the ideas you’re talking about, and if you don’t feel that way, they won’t either. Be committed, be prepared and above all, be convinced in your message.
Being Boring
If you’ve ever had the unpleasant experience of sitting through a very boring presentation, you know how painfully tedious it is to finish it so you can go about your day. To ensure a captive audience, you must make your presentation both stimulating and engaging, capturing curiosity and minds. Your subject matter isn’t boring; how you present matters the most.
Reading the Slides
If your slides offer way too much information and your audience needs to read it while you speak, you would be better served if you have an email ready to send off to anyone who wants more or a file prepared for people in the audience. If you want to keep your audience engaged but not bombarded with needless details, you should never present slides they need to read in detail, and you should also refrain from reading them out loud. Never turn your back on the audience to read your slides.
