Presentation Skills: Three common mistakes to avoid when delivering a presentation

Part of my role is to coach public speakers, people working towards giving a speech or people who need to improve their presentation skills. I also run public speaking and communication courses for children here in Perth. Despite differences in talk topic and content, I’ve found little difference in the communication skills and behaviour between adults and children when giving a talk. Children’s behaviours are typically more exaggerated than adults because they are (subconsciously) still learning to conceal or suppress behaviours to fit in with social norms. However, the common mistakes made by adults are typically the same as those made by children. In this article, I’ll explain three common mistakes people make when delivering a talk or presentation.

Three Common Mistakes when Delivering a Talk or Presentation

Stress Behaviours

Glossophobia, a fear of public speaking, is believed to affect up to 75% of people, so it’s no surprise that stress behaviours are common when people deliver a talk or presentation. Stress behaviours are a group of varying behaviours that can be voluntary or involuntary. Since we can’t control involuntary stress behaviours like sweating and a high blink rate, we’ll ignore those and focus on voluntary behaviours.

Common stress behaviours that appear during a presentation are pacifying, self-soothing behaviours. These are behaviours, where one part of the body (usually the hands) touch another part of the body or object. For example, face and neck touching, hand rubbing, fingerpicking or fiddling with/touching clothing. The reason we indulge in these behaviours is that they pacify us, bringing a level of comfort.

Another common type of stress behaviour is movement-related behaviours like rocking and swaying. These may sound extreme, however, they are probably the most common behaviour displayed by people presenting while feeling nervous. Out of all the people I work with, from children to executives, none of them are initially aware of the behaviours they display. So don’t automatically assume you don’t do these behaviours just because they sound extreme.

Why Should we Avoid Stress Behaviours?

Stress Behaviours can be a Distraction

Stress behaviours can be distracting and provide an opportunity to lose an audience. At certain points during a presentation, the engagement levels of the audience rise and dip. They are especially low during the middle of a presentation. Whether engagement levels are high or low, indulging in distracting behaviours gives the audience something else to focus on when they should be focusing on your talk content.

Emotions are Contagious

Another reason to avoid stress behaviours is that emotions are contagious. People mirror behaviours, so if you’re feeling uncomfortable and displaying stress behaviours, your audience is likely to be picking up on and experiencing your discomfort. Providing them with a less positive experience leads them to rate your presentation lower.

Trust and Credibility

Perhaps the most important reason comes down to trust. An audience is looking for credibility–should they buy into your message or not? What conveys credibility is confidence, and confidence isn’t conveyed through stress behaviours. If you’re not comfortable with delivering your message, why should anyone buy into it? While you may elicit empathy or pity, your stress behaviours are killing your credibility.

Credibility can come from other places too, for example, being a known expert in your field or having the right qualifications, however, your audience may not be aware of this.

How to Avoid Stress Behaviours

Breathing

The best thing to do is to tackle stress head-on by practising slow breathing exercises. During the fear response, the physiology of the body changes, for example, heart rate and blood pressure rise. I won’t go into detail about this here, but you can learn more in this article One Simple Solution to Reduce Stress in Minutes. In a nutshell, slow breathing regulates the physiological changes in the body, slowing heart rate and bringing you back to a calm state.

Stress behaviours can be avoided or regulated, even when stress is present. The key here is awareness,

• awareness about what stress behaviours are

• awareness about which stress behaviours you commonly use

• awareness of what your body is doing while you’re presenting

Practise

It can be hard to avoid stress behaviours initially, but it just takes practise. In my public speaking course for children, I teach children about stress behaviours and providing feedback, training them to seek out these behaviours in others. They get used to delivering and receiving feedback when practising delivery. They discover the stress behaviours that they personally use, then practice controlling and avoiding them. Oftentimes, while they deliver a talk, I see their hand reach out to indulge in a stress behaviour, then in a moment of realisation, their hand stops and returns to where it was. I commend this behaviour as it shows self-awareness and self-regulation, two important components of emotional intelligence. Then what usually happens, whether they are a child or an adult, is that I feel so proud of them and go warm and fuzzy.

Practise being aware of your body language and behaviours and being still while rehearsing your presentation. That said, not so still that you appear stiff, which leads me to the next common mistake to avoid when delivering a presentation.

Lack of Hand Gestures

Hand gestures are closely linked to verbal communication, with the two sharing the same neural pathways. Interestingly, children who use more hand gestures earlier on have larger expressive vocabularies in later development. And children’s hand gestures predict their storytelling ability later on. Telling stories within a presentation comes with many benefits, but that’s an article in itself—I’ll refrain from sharing it here.

Why Should we use Hand Gestures?

Using Hand Gestures Aids Lexical Retrieval and Free Recall

Using hand gestures as you talk helps you to, well, talk! There’s scientific evidence suggesting that using your hands to talk helps to improve lexical retrieval, the process of getting from a concept in your head to words. Additionally, using hand gestures improves free recall, meaning it helps us to remember. Using hand gestures as you rehearse your presentation, then using the same hand gestures as you deliver your presentation can help you recall and deliver your content.

Hand Gestures are Universal

It’s a controversial theory, but mounting evidence suggests that speech developed from hand gestures—as opposed to vocalisations. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, use hand gestures, so our last common ancestor used them too, suggesting using hands to communicate is universal.

Although not everybody uses hand gestures. As we develop through childhood, learning communication skills from people around us, we can learn to stop using hand gestures if those in our family or culture don’t use them. If you don’t already use your hands to talk, try it. You’ll probably find is that very soon you’ll be doing it naturally, as though you always did. Almost like you’ve unlocked an innate skill.

Hand Gestures are Engaging

Another reason to use hand gestures as you communicate is that your audience (or conversation partner) becomes more engaged with something to see and something to hear. More areas of the brain are activated as the message is picked up though more senses. This results in the message being interpreted, understood and recalled, more easily. So the benefits are for the speaker and the audience.

How to use hand gestures

What I don’t want you to do is to use your hands as though you’re playing Charades. Gestures should flow fluently alongside words. Some gestures will illustrate words easily and without thought, for example, gesturing that something tall or short might be a hand held straight, high up or low down. Other hand gestures are more like movements timed with speech, for example a movement stops as we pause. These are called beats. Beats also help the audience (or communication partner) to interpret what you’re saying. Once you’ve unlocked this innate communication skill, you shouldn’t need to plan what your hands are doing, just let them go with the flow of your words.

If you keep forgetting to use your hands, position your hands loosely around hip height, with your elbows bent and loose. In this position, as you talk, your hands are more likely to start moving naturally. If they are held down by your sides or (heaven forbid) in your pockets, they are less likely to move.

Talking too Fast

Talking too fast is very common. At a rough guess, around 80% of the participants in my public speaking courses talk too fast when delivering a presentation. Sometimes, I feel like I’m on repeat when I keep saying, “slow down”.

Why do we Talk Too Fast?

Speech Speeds up when we’re Nervous

There are a few reasons for people speaking too fast. The first is that speech speeds up when feeling nervous, so using slow breathing to maintain a calm state can help.

Urgency to get off the Stage

Another reason is that many people hate having to present. Even executives who appear calm and collected can have a secret hatred and fear of presenting. How do I know? Because they tell me. Our body reflects how we feel and leaks our intention. If we don’t want to be up presenting, where do we want to be? Off the stage and in the audience or at the boardroom table like everyone else. Subconsciously, because we just want to get through the presentation and back in our seats, speech speeds up.

Perceptual Differences

A slower pace of speech usually feels too slow from the perspective of the speaker, another reason why talking fast is so common. Yet from the perspective of the audience, who are often unfamiliar with the topic and the speaker, they need more time to process speech. This is especially the case if the speaker has an unfamiliar accent, speaks too quietly or when speech is unclear. An audience member, having to focus hard to interpret speech can quickly lose interest, as listening becomes too hard. Engagement is lost as the audience members switch off to give their brains a break.

How to find a good pace

As you practise delivering a presentation, record yourself, then play it back and listen. This is a great way to improve a presentation all round, as you often hear parts that sound too formal, not very well explained or awkward. You can go back and rework these areas until you feel comfortable with the content. As you listen to the recording, sometimes it can sound obvious that you’re talking too fast. However, it can still go unnoticed, because it’s you explaining a concept you understand, you’re unlikely to need to expend much cognitive effort to process it. Therefore, rehearsing in front of a trusted friend can also help, especially if they are unfamiliar with your talk content. Ask them for feedback and be specific about the pace, as not everybody is forthcoming with feedback.

How to Get Better at Delivering a Presentation

You can’t, but if you could rehearse in my Public Speaking Course for Kids, the children would happily point out (tactfully, of course) your stress behaviours, when you don’t use hand gestures and when you speak too fast—amongst other things.

One real option is to video yourself rehearsing, then give yourself a self-audit. Even if you’re not a communication and behaviour expert, you’ll probably notice parts that need work and may uncover some behaviours you should be avoiding. If you get stuck here and need help, contact me to discuss the potential for a body language audit.

Another great option is to learn and practise with a friend, pointing out to each other where you can improve. Feedback can seem scary, but when you look at how much it can help you develop, negative feedback becomes your best friend.