AVOIDING PRESENTATION FRIGHT AND COMMON PITFALLS

Twenty Strategies for Reducing Stage Fright

1. Remind yourself that your listeners want you to do well.
2. Believe that you know more about your subject than your audience does.
3. Familiarize yourself with the physical setting of your presentation before you
deliver it.
4. Get to know some members of your audience before you speak.
5. Choose a presentation topic you know something about.
6. Prepare thoroughly for delivery of your presentation.
7. Anticipate questions listeners might ask.
8. Memorize the first and last sections of your presentation.
9. Focus on your audience, not yourself.
10. Do not practice in front of a mirror.
11. Never tell the audience you are nervous.
12. View physical symptoms as positive excitement, not negative energy.
13. Talk positively about your presentation to yourself.
14. Turn your nervous energy into something positive.
15. Abandon rigid rules about public speaking.
16. Tell yourself it is okay to make changes and adapt your delivery during your
presentation.
17. Remind yourself that if things do not go well, it is not the end of the world.
18. Remember that even very nervous speakers usually appear calm to their
audience.
19. Believe compliments on your delivery.
20. Anticipate problems and devise solutions ahead of time.
Avoiding Common Presentation Pitfalls
Instead of
Jumping into facts and figures at the
beginning of your delivery

Try this Instead

Grab listeners attention by briefly describing the problem at
hand in vivid, compelling terms or offering a gripping
anecdote

Leaving it up to your audience to figure

out where your presentation is going
Provide a road map for example, a table of contents
slide that shows a brief list of the sections of your talk
Relying only on your voice to convey
your message
Use effective visuals diagrams, charts, maps and photos
of people to help make your message memorable
Presenting information-loaded visuals
Ensure that each visual only contains one small point or
piece of information
Blocking your visuals or talking to them
Stand to the side so people can see the slides and glance
only briefly at each slide before turning to address your
audience
Using a bewildering number of visuals
Limit your visuals to only those that reinforce key points in

your presentation
Hoping that your audience will take you
seriously
Inject some passion into your delivery, by reminding
yourself ahead of time that you are telling them
something
important
Assuming that your audience is engaged
Make eye contact with listeners and watch for fidgeting
or
other signs of boredom; if you see such signs, stop and
ask
people what is on their minds, and move in close to
selected parts of your audience
Confessing to your audience that you
are nervous
Tell them how you feel about the topic you are
presenting
Limiting your presentation to describing
a problem
Make sure you have potential solutions to offer
Assuming that you do not need to credit
your sources
Quote sources accurately and provide proper attribution
Reading from a script (which bores your
audience)
Look up and establish a personal connection with your
audience
Hiding behind a podium
Walk around it so your audience can see you and read
your body language
Running over the allotted time for your
presentation
Ask a trusted colleague in your audience to give you a
subtle signal that you have five minutes left, and then
one
minute left for your presentation
Going off on a tangent with a long
anecdote
Make sure all anecdotes have some connection to your
main argument
Assuming that you know your audience
Use questions such as Does anyone here understand
what single-entry accounting is? to assess listeners
familiarity with your topic and level of knowledge
Grooming yourself subconsciously
because you are nervous
Practice keeping your hands below your neck and above
your waist