Hello my friend,
After coaching hundreds of executives on public speaking and presenting I thought I’d share five common, and overlooked, mistakes I often encounter.
The ones that increase nerves, decrease impact and ruin our confidence.
I must note these are all common mistakes I have regularly made myself.
Now, less so.
Practice makes progress.
Here they are:
Mistake 1: Start talking straight away.
There is no rush.
We often step on stage or in front of a group and immediately open our mouths. This creates more nerves and stops us from thinking clearly. How we start sets the tone for the entire talk where we often just trying to keep up with ourselves. We lose impact and we lose connection. Take a deep breath, gather your thoughts, start when you’re ready. Your audience isn’t going anywhere and they will thank you for it later.
Mistake 2: Focusing on Performance first.
But, performance is key, right?
Surely we want to perform well? Yes, of course. But that shouldn’t be the priority. The focus should always be delivering value to your audience with your message. Most of our tension on stage is from our perception of what others are thinking of us. In short, do they think we are doing well, or badly. But they are rarely ever thinking that. But we are! The more we focus our performance first over what our audience needs, the more anxious it will make us and the worse our actual performance will be.
Mistake 3: Looking to Impress.
Our talk or presentation must be about them, not us.
This is tied in with mistake three. Impressing the audience shouldn’t be our goal. Impacting them should be. There’s a big difference. When we’re trying to impress, we’re thinking about ourselves. When we’re trying to make an impact we are thinking about them. Keep the eye on the prize = the value for your audience.
Mistake 4: Overpreparation.
Most of us get into a daze when it comes to preparation.
In fact, overpreparing can be a bigger problem than underpreparing. From trying to remember every word, step, gesture and move can cause a mountain of anxiety on stage. Perfect is not what the audience wants. They want real. Not only that, when we overprepare we often appear far less natural. Allow for naturalness. Take time to understand the content well, sure. Know your plan on the day, sure. But don’t be a perfectionist about it. This is so common and makes many speakers a bag of nerves and the main reason they hate public speaking.
Mistake 5: Too much information.
The old adage of “less is more”.
This is nearly always true when it comes to speaking in public. Our brains as listeners can only take in a certain amount of information at any given time, never mind fully process and understand it. It is very common to want to try and add more value by adding more and more content but going deeper on the key idea you are sharing is far better than going vague on several. Every sentence should add value. Cut what isn’t necessary. There will always be time for questions later - which is also a great sign! If no-one has questions, you were likely too vague, not the other way around!
None of these mistakes are about being a “bad speaker.” They’re usually about trying too hard to be a good one.
Remember your role on stage is to provide service and value. If you focus on doing that you’ll naturally become an exceptional public speaker.
Good luck!
With Love. Nick.