The 3 Deadly Presentation Mistakes

Today I want to have a conversation with you about the 3 deadly presentation mistakes.

If you are making any of these mistakes…

  • you’re going to find yourself disconnecting from your audience,
  • you’re going to bore your audience,
  • and you’re going to leave them with a bad taste in their mouth.

I see a lot of people make these presentation mistakes, especially when they first come in to workshops that I run like Present with Confidence. When they come in and realise that they’re making these mistakes I love teaching them some small shifts that can make a huge difference.

So here are the 3 deadly mistakes that people make when presenting:

 

1. It’s not a balanced brain approach to the presentation.

The first presentation mistake that I find people make is that they lean too much towards their brain preferred style.

What I mean by that is some people are naturally left-brained and some are right-brained. If you are left-brained, you probably like numbers, statistics, and graphs. And when you design your presentation, it’s highly leaning towards the left brain.

Or maybe you’re right-brained. Maybe you like stories, metaphors, pictures and images, and you lean your presentation heavily towards the right brain.

Now the problem with that is that if you don’t have a balanced brain approach in terms of your presentation, either you’re going to bore people to death on the left side or you’re going to miss a level of credibility on the right side that the left side actually brings.

 

2. People don’t think about their end goal when they’re presenting.

For example, they’re thinking about their content, but they don’t have a clear idea in terms of what end result they want from their presentation. So whether you want the audience to take action in a certain area or whether you want the audience to think a certain way about an idea or concept, you must start your presentation with a really clear end goal.

When I’m training people at Present with Confidence or any presentation skills program that I’m running, I teach people to think about their end goal. It reminds me of the Steven Covey principle that he talked about in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Start with the end in mind. Have the result — the end goal — clear in your mind when presenting and that will make a huge difference in terms of your presentation.

 

3. People make their presentation a one-way presentation.

In other words, it doesn’t feel like a conscious, constructed conversation. A presentation should feel like you’re having a conversation with a person — even in a ten-thousand or twenty-thousand-seat auditorium.

One of my favorite presenters John Maxwell does this brilliantly. I’ve sat in large sessions with him but it feels like I’m having a conversation with a good friend. It feels like I’m in his living room (almost) having a conversation with him.

So in terms of your presentation, make it conversational. Make it a casual but constructed. Think about it from a conversation perspective, not a presentation perspective.

Keep these 3 big mistakes in mind.

Make sure you don’t make them, and your next presentation will be exceptional, engaging and persuasive.

But before you leave…

Please Like and Share this post so others can benefit as you have.

colinboyd_subscribe_to_weekly_training

————————————————-

Discover to Deliver a Highly Persuasive Presentation and Move People into Action

Join Colin for a free masterclass on persuasive presentation (without coming across pushy or sales-y).

On this workshop you’re going to discover:

  • Proven strategies that the top 1% of influencers use to become leaders in their marketplace.
  • You’ll learn how they craft and deliver presentations to achieve massive impact.

THE EXPERT EDGE PODCAST with Colin Boyd

Hi,

I’m Colin! I’m an Aussie, but I’m based in Newport Beach, California.
I help entrepreneurs sell from virtual and live stages (without being pushy and sales-y)
I coach thousands of experts, course creators and coaches around the world on this topic, and I’ve also advised the biggest names including people Amy Porterfield, Alison Prince, Carrie Green, Julie Solomon  and many other industry leaders.