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Presentation Fails and How to Fix Them #13: Personality

What’s the best way to make a good first impression in a business scenario? You want to look credible and professional, right? In which case you probably want to leave all the odd personal stuff behind; there’s no need to mention your obsession with Star Wars and the late eighties hip hop you were listening […]

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Presentation Fails and How to Fix Them #12: Verbatim Script

You’ve written a great presentation: inspiring, concise and full of useful information. So far, so good. You start to rehearse. This – in principle – is an excellent course of action (one I like to bang on about) because most people sabotage their presentations by not rehearsing enough. Then comes the day of the presentation:

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Presentation Fails and How to Fix Them #11: Don’t Apologise

“Sorry about this, I know it’s really boring.” “I hope this is OK, I wasn’t sure what I should do.” “Sorry, this isn’t as good as the last presentation, I only put this together yesterday” Sorry, But We Don’t Care Being typically British* and apologising for everything (including things you’re not responsible for) may seem

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Presentation Fails and How to Fix Them #10: Information Overload

You’ve written your presentation; you’ve created loads of great material, with graphs, quotes and images. It feels pretty good. But how to improve it? Clearly, the only way to do that is to add something, surely? WRONG. The biggest problem I see in the material of a presentation is simply too much information. More is not

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Presentation Fails and How to Fix Them #8: Eye Contact

(Watch this video, also about eye contact!) It’s time for your presentation. You walk to the front, go to the laptop and realise that you need to open your Powerpoint. You minimise the previous speaker’s Powerpoint, look around on the desktop for yours, but can’t find it. Ah, there it is. Double click. Wait for

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