[Note: This post originally appeared on IABC's Communications World blog.]
It can be hard to hold a room these days. Between the Twitterstream and the BackChannel, and our relentless need to surf as we learn, keeping your audience alert and engaged requires skill, smarts, and a great presentation.
While not every speaker can be a rock star, there’s no excuse for not doing your homework. Yet, time and time again, speakers screw up the basics.
Here’s my list of the seven deadly sins of a bad speaker:
- He mumbles, fumbles, and stumbles out of the gate.
- He reads his PowerPoint, which is all text anyway.
- He makes sweeping pronouncements, but offers no data to back them up.
- He’s giving the same speech, with the same examples, at the third conference in a row.
- He doesn’t bother to change the date on his handouts.
- He forgets (or does he really?) to leave time for questions.
- He name drops, and name drops some more.
Have I left anything out? What speaker sins have you seen?
Photo by Mauren Veras (Flickr).
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