Edith Yeung.com Dream Think Act

Have you ever seen a boring presenter?

I have. In fact I am listening to one right now.

While I am pretending to pay attention to him, I feel compelled to share these 7 habits of a highly ineffective speaker.

I feel really bad for him… but this is how we all learn. Here you go!

Over-reliance on PowerPoint

PowerPoint should be a supplement to your talk, not the talk. I despise speakers who read off their own slides like they have never seen it before. Don’t you know your own material?

Best Practice: Maximum 4 bullet points. No more than 40 words per slide. Memorize your speech please.

Um… Errr… Um… So… Like…

Um… People… um… like… like… to… um… use… errr… to um… filler… Err…words to fill the silence in between sentences. Err… This is really distracting and takes credibility away from you and your talk.

Best Practice: Use a simple pause to fill the gaps between words and/or ideas.

Lack of Eye Contact

I know I know… This is not an easy thing to do and it does take practice. However, if you don’t look your audience in the eye, you will never know if you are really getting your point across. Lack of eye contact is also a sign of lack of confidence.

Best Practice: Look your audience in their eyes. 5 seconds per person. If it is a big room, look at the four corners of the room in rotation.

Bad Jokes

Can you imagine? You are the speaker. You tell a joke. You start to laugh and the audience looks at you with a blank face. It happens. Telling a joke is easy. Telling a joke that makes the audience laugh is an art… It takes practice to become a Jerry Seinfeld.

Best Practice: Practice, practice and practice with a smaller group of close friends. Only when they laugh, then try it with a bigger group.

Lack of Enthusiasm

You can be a bad speaker but if you are passionate about your topic, you will still have an audience. But if you are not excited about your own topic and act like you don’t want to be there, there is no way your audience will want to be there either.

Best Practice: Get excited! Even you don’t love the topic; pretend you want to be there!

Wandering

Have you ever seen speaker pacing from one side to the other like a mad man? I have and it is extremely funny to watch. It looks like he wants to go somewhere but there is nowhere to go.

Best Practice: Stand Still. Make your body movements and gestures purposeful and confident.

Playing with Toys

Toys could be a pen, a chalk, a marker, a watch, a phone or even your own hair. I once saw a speaker repeatedly ‘clicking’ his pen so frantically during his speech. The clicking noise was so loud that it totally drew the audience’s attention away from his speech.

Best Practice: Keep your hands free of all “toys.”

To recap, here are the 7 bad speaking habits you should avoid at all times:

1. Over Reliance on PowerPoint
2. Um… Errr… Um… So… Like…
3. Lack of Eye Contact
4. Bad Jokes
5. Lack of Enthusiasm
6. Wandering
7. Playing with Toys

Until next time, have fun speaking!

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