Top Ten Presentation Mistakes

I have been giving presentations of one form or another for many years now. In fact, you could go back to my days in college when I took a public speaking course, and that was half a lifetime ago (but it is still relevant). Over the years I have learned a handful of things when it comes to giving presentations. The most important thing I ever learned? To be yourself. (Yeah, sometimes it really is that simple.)

Back in my grade school days when I was in the school band we learned very quickly that if you play a wrong note you do not draw attention to yourself as that only makes things worse. You simply pretend as if nothing went wrong. (Want a great example? Go here and listen to Keith Moon play the drums for “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, and at 1:21 of the clip you can hear him cross his sticks but he just continues on.) Now, we all know that no one is perfect. Everyone will make a mistake. I think the truly gifted speakers are the ones that can cover their mistakes the best. Like being in a school band, they are able to easily continue on as if nothing wrong has happened and for the most part their mistake can go unnoticed.

But if you make enough mistakes then the performance itself will suffer. Miss one note, not a big deal. Miss every note? Now you’ve got a problem.

These days I find myself attending many presentations not only for the subject material but also to learn more about how the presentation is being delivered. I always take notes about the pieces that work well and the ones that don’t work very well for a particular speaker. When I came back from TechEd I went through my notes and it hit me that I had seen a lot of the same notes previously. I went back through the talks I have attended since the last PASS Summit and I saw a pattern. Some speakers would always miss the same thing, even when reminded about their mistake (sometimes during their talk, say when you remind them to repeat the questions). And other speakers would miss one thing during one talk, and something different the next time. I was able to group the mistakes and came up with my top ten list that I am going to share with you today.

What I find most amazing about these mistakes is that they all get made at one time or another by even the most seasoned veterans.  My goal here is to give you a leg up on delivering a solid presentation, which you can do if you simply avoid doing the items listed below. In fact, you could show up at a agreed upon time and talk about making cheese but as long as you avoid each item listed below chances are people will leave your talk believing you had done reasonably well *and* they will have a hankering for some good cheddar.

So, let’s get started on how you can improve your evaluation scores.

Not Knowing Your Audience

I see this happen a lot, and it has happened to me more than once. You show up to speak only to find the room filled with people you were not expecting. For example, you prepare a talk for DBAs and three dozen developers show up instead. This scenario could very well be outside your control, no question. But if you fail to do any legwork to verify the expected audience then you are just asking for this to happen to you. Such was the case for me; I was expecting DBAs to show up and instead I got maybe ten developers and programmers. I decided to give an ad-hoc performance, if you will, trying to gear things specific for the people that arrived.

Another thing to mention here is the level of the talk. If you know that the room is full of MVPs then you probably don’t need to do a 100 level talk on backup and recovery. Likewise, if you are at a SQL Saturday you probably don’t want to be pulling out your 400 or 500 level material for consumption either as the majority of attendees at such events are beginners to intermediate level. If you are uncertain about who may be attending the event all you need to do is ask the event coordinator, they will be happy to tell you all about their target audience.

Title or Abstract Does Not Match Content

Everyone wants a catchy title. People feel that they need something witty in order to catch the eye of the people reviewing the abstract submissions, or to catch the eye of people that are wondering which session they should attend. I understand that, I’ve been there. Know where else I’ve been? Out to eat.

Let’s say you decided to order yourself a nice bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on a croissant while you grab yourself a cup of coffee for your morning breakfast. You get your order to go because, you know, you work from home and the nearest coffee shop is a couple of miles away and no longer just downstairs (well, you can go downstairs but if you order a coffee all you get are two confused cats staring back at you). The guy hands you a bag and says it is your sandwich. The receipt on the bag indicates it is your sandwich. You get home, open it up, only to find it is a crappy ham, egg, and cheese wrap.

Sure, it’s still breakfast food. Two of the main ingredients are there, and the other two are close but not quite correct. And it is warm, which is nice. But it’s not what you wanted. Not at all. You eat it anyway, but you are not happy. And when it is over, if someone handed you a survey about your dining experience, you would rate them as poorly as if a rat had bitten you on the hand while they handed you the food.

And that’s how people will feel if they show up for a talk where the title and/or abstract does not match the content. Like a rat bit them on the hand while they were handed the survey.

Too Many Bullets On One Slide

I don’t care who you are, shoving too much information into one slide should result in having someone rap your knuckles with your keyboard. Would it kill you to put the info on multiple slides? Unless you are going for the effect of overwhelming people with a long (and usually unreadable) list of items, then you must stop doing this. I try to stay to four bullet items at most, and can certainly understand how easy it is to want to put more up on the screen. But I try to keep in mind that I am there to help explain the story that the slides are telling. If the slide itself were able to explain everything then there is no need for me to be there.

When you put too much info on one slide then you are inviting your audience to simply read ahead, which means they are not paying attention to you, and you might as well not even be in the room. If you feel you must have that much information then you should stagger the bullets to appear one at a time rather than all at once. Otherwise you might as well just send everyone an email with the details and tell them to write back if they have any questions. Loading up one slide with 27 bullets is just offensive. It serves no purpose other than to overwhelm the average attendee. You want to build a bridge to them, not a wall.

And while I am here, let’s talk about shoving items into a slide deck just so they are mentioned. I see this most often when people don’t really know their audience very well. For example, they think they are giving a 200 level talk, but they also want to make certain that if there is a person expecting something like a 400 level talk they throw in a few buzzwords and topics just so they feel like the talk was worth their time as well. I call this a “kitchen sink special”, as the presenter goes out of their way to mention every possible scenario and angle related to their subject, but at every possible depth level.

Pick a level, and stick with it. Let the audience decide if you need to go deeper or not. If you are not prepared to go as deep as one or two people may like, just tell them to see you after the talk. That way you keep your presentation moving, your material has better flow, and the majority of your audience remains engaged. Don’t just shove stuff into your slide deck just so it’s there.

Not Preparing Properly

Two big things I see here are people who have not rehearsed properly, or not prepared their demos adequately.

You simply must do a walk-through of your slides prior to taking the podium. You need to be very familiar with the flow of your talk. If not, it will be very apparent to those of us in the audience if you have any idea as to what is coming next. Do not fall into the trap of thinking “hey, I put together the slides, of course I know what comes next”. No, not without rehearsing or at least reviewing them. If you are going to present at PASS then I would suggest you practice your talk in front of a few live audiences beforehand. Find a user group or a SQL Saturday that is looking for some speakers.

As for your demo, you need to prepare for disaster. If your demo relies on an internet connection, you should prepare for the event that the internet connection is lost (it happens!) If your demo relies on a VM on your laptop, you should prepare for the event that your VM no longer functions as expected. How can you accomplish such planning for various events? Easy: screen-shots.

Take screen-shots of your demo as you rehearse. If anything goes wrong during your presentation, you can show the audience your screen-shots. Trust me, it sure beats having nothing to show them and you standing there saying something like “Well, gee, since the internet is down, I guess my talk is over, thanks for coming anyway and you can grab an evaluation form on your way out.” The audience will be very forgiving when it comes to demo disasters, but less than forgiving if you did not prepare for one in advance.

Not Interacting With Your Audience

This is a difficult one for a lot of speakers, especially if they are in an unfamiliar room. I see many speakers get their equipment set up and then stand at the front of the room and wait for their start time. Often their first interaction with the audience is something like “OK, we’ve got a few minutes before the scheduled start time and some people are still coming in, so we’ll give everyone a few minutes to get settled and then we’ll get started.”

*YAWN*

Look, you don’t need to be Don Rickles, but you do need to develop an interaction with your audience at a level other than Professor and Student. If I don’t know anybody in the room I will go out of my way to strike up a conversation with someone in the first few rows. It at least helps to break the ice with someone in the room, and makes them feel comfortable (they may even be apt to ask questions, which is always nice to have). I have also walked over to the door to greet people as they walk in, that’s always an interesting icebreaker as well.

The point here is that you need to interact with your audience, and not just at the start but throughout your presentation. People need to feel engaged, they need to feel comfortable, and so do you. And all of you will get there but only if you interact with one another. Otherwise it is a very sterile environment, and such talks are rarely successful ones. Find ways to interact with your audience and you’ll find that giving talks not only gets easier but becomes rather enjoyable.

Not Reading Your Audience

When giving your presentation you really need to be mindful of the visual clues your audience is giving providing for you. If you are only reading from your slides, or notes, and never looking out to the audience then you are disengaged from them, which is a bad thing. If people are nodding off, or checking the phones, or typing on laptops, then they are not listening to you. And if they are not listening to you, what are the odds they will bother to fill out an evaluation form later?

Another part of reading your audience is to see who *is* engaged, so that you can interact with them. Funny thing, but when you interact with one person in the audience you immediately get the attention of the people near and around that person. If you spread yourself out just right, you can engage the whole room by interacting with only a handful of people. And from there you can start to read your audience better. You will see if they are responding to your current slide, for example, or if you need to move along to the next slide. I always like finding just the right point in the presentation when I can get 2-3 people spread throughout the audience involved in a sidebar. I can read the whole room and see if the discussion is worth continuing or if we need to move along more quickly.

No Inflection In Your Voice

I have attended technical presentations, lecture, political speeches, and sermons. Each one requires a different style of delivery, but each one does require a human element. What I mean by that is while they may be all different vehicles of communication with an audience, each audience wants to know that the person doing the talking is an actual human being and not a robot. Inflection is the key here. You need to use inflection, pauses, and other speech techniques to control the flow of the words. The end result is you must be able to communicate to the audience the parts of your talk that matter most.

Take the one piece of your presentation that speaks to you the most, the one part that you find will raise your emotional level more than the others. Whatever it is that you are most passionate about in your presentation, take the one thing and find a way to make your audience understand just how important that one piece is to you. Whatever techniques you find most natural in order to achieve that goal, use those same techniques (at a lesser degree) to communicate the minor points of your talk.

So many times I have seen people talk as if they are just reading aloud and it is painful to stay in my seat and listen. If you don’t have a passion for the material, then don’t bother presenting. If you want to have a highly rated talk then you must find a way to get me as passionate about the materials as you are. One way to get there is to use inflection in order to stress the important parts of your talk.

One other thing to note here: please do not simply read each bullet point. Chances are your audience can read just fine. The bullets are meant as a guide for you to give additional details. They are not meant for you to simply read. Nothings kills a presentation faster than having the presenter simply read bullet points.

No Pictures Or Graphs

I had a math professor in graduate school that would tell us if we could not put the answer into words or numbers then we should draw a picture. In fact, he would often advocate the use of a picture first and then have you try to explain the picture with words and numbers. Pictures are incredibly strong learning devices, people will remember an image longer then they will remember words.

If you just put the finishing touches on your slide deck and did not include one picture then you are doing it wrong. If you just put the finishing touches on your slide deck and included a demo but did not include one other picture then you are still doing it wrong.

Let me be clear here, I am not saying that you have to go find a funny picture of a clown and somehow insert that into your talk. What I am saying is that you should be able to insert a diagram, a graph, an image of some kind in order to enforce some point you are trying to make.

Ross Perot ran for President in 1992, and even he had the good sense to bring along a pie chart. You should do the same. It really does help others to understand what you are trying to communicate.

Not Allowing Time For Questions

This could be a good problem to have, but it is still a problem. You simply must either allow time for questions or make an announcement at the start that there will be no time for questions at the end. If you don’t, then what will happen is some people will hold their questions until the end and then never get to ask them. And usually questions are a great way to interact with your audience, to keep them engaged, and they offer everyone (yourself included) to learn something new that was not in the presentation.

If your talk has gone so well (say people were asking questions the entire time and really engaged and are starting to write folk songs about how incredible you are) and you run out of time, then you have a good problem on your hands. Still, you need to do your best to be considerate for those people that do hold all questions until the very end.

Not Repeating Questions

When you are giving a presentation for an audience you must repeat the questions that they ask. There are two very good reasons for doing this. First, by doing so you will be certain that everyone in the room has heard the question, including yourself. Second, this helps you to confirm that you understand the question that was asked. As a bonus, you also get some extra time to think about the question before you begin to answer it.

Some people consider this to be a minor issue but for me I consider it to be important enough to list it here. There is a big difference in the overall performance of your presentation if you go the extra step and repeat the questions that are asked. It really helps you to stand out; people leave your talk thinking that you are very professional, and that usually lends itself towards higher rankings.

Then again, so does handing out gift cards to Starbucks. In fact, if you give away enough cash during your talk you could probably get away with making a lot of mistakes, but that would have made for a much shorter blog post.

There you go, my list of top presentation mistakes. Starting next week I get a chance to avoid each of these as I head out on tour. I’ll be posting my upcoming schedule later this week.