Things You Should Not Do During Presentations

Have you watched the video above? What can you tell about this person just from his presentation?Having to do presentations has been one of the significant changes in my education. Ever since the beginning of the course, presentations are a requirement, an area totally alien to me prior to this. During previous presentations, I have learned that we unconsciously send out messages through our body language. As you can see from the embedded video, the man is not capable of delivering his speech effectively to his audience due to a few reasons which are discussed in this post.

The first thing we got to pay attention to is our attire during our presentation. The clothes we wear play a significant role in determining your effort and professionalism. This is because even before you open your mouth to present, the first thing the audience will notice about you is your outfit. What you wear, determines your status. Even in college, we are encouraged to wear formal attire during our presentations to show formality. In this video, the man is wearing a Microsoft t-shirt, which is casual wear. His shirt projects the little effort he actually has put into his presentation or speech.

Secondly, the way we stand and our posture also affects the ability to deliver a good presentation. Usually, I always make a conscious effort to stand up straight when conducting a presentation as our posture actually reflects the amount of confidence we have in ourselves. As you can see, the man in the video is slumped and slouched, with his hands crossed over his chest. His slouched body indicates that he has no confidence in himself, and possible has a low self-esteem as well.

Next, eye contact with the audience is also very important. When presenting, having constant eye contact with the listeners is crucial as this can prevent them from drifting away into their own worlds. It also shows the interest in presenting a certain topic. However, it is also vital to know that one should not only make eye contact with part of the audience, but at best most of the audience. The man in the video however, constantly keeps his head down and looks down throughout his whole presentation. How can he expect the audience to listen to him when it does not even seem like he is talking to them?

Finally, the most important reason that caused him to unsuccessfully present was his tone of voice. The tone of his voice was constant throughout the video, also known as monotone, and has a higher chance of inducing sleep among his audience. Therefore during presentations, I usually try to use different tones of my voice to prevent the audience from being bored or sleepy.

Overall, it can be safely said that our presentations are greatly affected by non-verbal communication, such as our dressing, posture and eye contact and also verbal communication such as the tone of our voice. Hence, when presenting, all these aspects of communication need to be taken into consideration to successfully conduct a presentation that will be effective as well as entertaining.


Written by,
Hooi Kit Wei