Posts

PRESENTATION KILLERS: Five of the Most Often-Encountered Obstacles and How to Avoid Them 

/0 Comments/in /by

Every presenter wants to connect with their audience—to inform, inspire, or persuade. But even skilled communicators sometimes fall into habits that quietly sabotage their message. Over years of coaching and observing professionals, I’ve noticed that the biggest presentation killers are rarely about lack of knowledge or preparation—they’re about focus. Specifically, focusing too much on yourself and not enough on your audience.

Here are five of the most common traps that derail presentations—and how to avoid them.

1. Mistaking “feels good” for “looks good” 

What feels comfortable to you doesn’t always look good to the audience. Putting your hands in your pockets might calm your nerves, but it often sends the message that you’re disengaged. Likewise, pacing around the stage might help burn energy, but it distracts your listeners. Every movement, gesture, and stance should serve the message—not your nerves.

2. Misguided dedication to perfection instead of “usefulness”

Many presenters obsess over flawless delivery. But perfectionism often backfires—it shifts your focus inward instead of toward the audience. A stumble or slip of the tongue doesn’t ruin your presentation; awkward over-apologizing or panic does. Handle mistakes with calm confidence and a genuine commitment to keeping your audience informed and comfortable.

3. Over-planning the script and visuals while under-planning the desired effect. 

Slides, data, and polished scripts are helpful tools—but they’re not the presentation. The real impact happens in how you deliver those ideas. Spend as much time thinking about your tone, pacing, and audience connection as you do perfecting your visuals. The best slides in the world can’t make up for flat delivery.

4. Confusing a sense of humor with joke-telling. 

Trying to win people over with jokes is risky territory. Humor is powerful, but it doesn’t have to come from punchlines. Instead, use wit: point out relatable truths, make surprising comparisons, or highlight absurdities in your topic. The goal isn’t to make them laugh—it’s to grab their attention and hold their interest..

5. Apologizing: Don’t do it.

Apologies in presentations are almost always self-serving: “Please forgive me, but…” It signals that your focus is on you, not them. Instead of apologizing, stay matter-of-fact. If you misspeak, correct it quickly and move on: “That should be billion, not million.” Plan ahead so you don’t have to say, “I know you can’t see this in the back…” And if something goes wrong, keep things moving forward. Your composure builds credibility faster than any apology ever could.

In the end, the best presenters think less like performers and more like explainers.
Focus your energy on helping your audience understand your message; if you can do that,  confidence, clarity, and connection fall into place naturally.

If you want to elevate your own presentations, start by removing these five obstacles. The result isn’t just a smoother talk—it’s a stronger impact.

Helping professionals become confident, engaging presenters is what we do. If you’ve got a talk coming up or want to sharpen your presentation skills, reach out—we’d love to connect. And if this article resonated, share it with someone who could use it too.

Anxiety and Eagerness: Extemporaneous Speaking Strategy

/0 Comments/in /by

In our previous article we provided a strategy to deal with emotions that come up when you’re called upon to speak in front of a group unexpectedly. We discussed the role that mindset plays going into an unexpected presentation, how it can help to focus on the needs of the audience rather than focusing on your own needs. But let’s say you’ve successfully shifted your mindset, you’re eager to address the question that you’ve been surprised with – then what?

Anxiety’s most important component is fear of the unknown. To leave anxiety behind, it’s important to have a plan before you even begin speaking. You’ll find great value in adopting a format that you can have at the ready, in any situation.

We have a simple formula that you can apply to your next extemporaneous presentation: start with an attention grabber, expand on the question using three main ideas, and summarize your message.  

Part of what we experience as anxiety has to do with simply getting started. Once you’ve begun, what happens then? This conundrum translates to a feeling of being out of control. The sense of lacking control pushes us toward anxiety and away from a sense of eagerness.

A “grabber” can be defined as a device that introduces the problem interestingly, and it gets said first. It can be a question, a challenge, a factoid or a metaphor. Example: you’re asked in a meeting to comment on a difficult problem in IT security. If you work in this field, you’ll easily come up with some things to say in answer to this question. Maybe the grabber starts you off this way: “Cybersecurity isn’t really about technology — it’s about people. Hackers don’t break in anymore. They log in, using stolen credentials from social engineering.”

Next, expand on three main ideas. Having the pieces in mind helps to put your thoughts into a clear set of ideas. Come up with three topics to develop, for example the problem’s history, the solutions that have already been attempted, and a new solution you’re confident in. Each of these sub-topics is probably relatively obvious for you to expand on as the IT professional, but now you’ve given yourself a well-organized, step by step list to talk through. You’ve kept it within a reasonable time allotment because you’ve made the choice to give yourself a doable goal (three things) for the time you’ve been asked to fill.

Conclude your brief talk with a short summary. This is the easiest element of the formula; it’s just a restatement of what you’ve already said.  It can just be a sentence or two summarizing what you’ve offered to this point. Take the opportunity in your conclusion to reinforce any main ideas or points of persuasion.

This approach also lends itself well to practice. Just for fun (maybe not as much fun as a trip to the beach, but enjoyable nonetheless) give yourself a topic to develop this way, and video-record yourself. Craft a message on the fly and present it as though to an audience. Practicing in this way removes even more of the “unknown” which will help with nervousness – you’ll know exactly how you sound and look.

Using an interesting grabber and using the “rule of threes” to assemble a message on the fly is one way to tip the scales towards eagerness rather than anxiety. This formula works even better in conjunction with the mental technique from our previous article. To come across confidently, expect the best possible outcome and don’t fall into the trap of expecting the worst possible outcome.

Nicholas Dalley ICI 2025, All Rights Reserved.