Jennifer McClure`

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Written by Jennifer McClure

How to Deliver a Killer Presentation: Avoid These 5 Common Mistakes

I make my living as a professional communicator, which means I have the honor of speaking to audiences at conferences, association meetings, and corporate events all over the world.

One of the benefits that I truly enjoy when speaking at events is attending other keynotes, breakout sessions, or workshops whenever possible. I’m always interested in learning, and I also want to watch great speakers in action, so I can continue to grow and improve my speaking skills as well.

At a recent conference, I chose to attend a breakout session led by a speaker with an impressive title. His bio listed many professional accomplishments and years of experience in a topic that I was very interested in learning more about. Even though his session was scheduled a few hours before my closing keynote, I made a point to get to the convention center early in order to take advantage of the opportunity to learn from him.

Unfortunately, very quickly into the 75-minute session, it became clear that learning was going to be a challenge. Even though his professional experience and accomplishments related to the subject were impressive, the speaker conveyed zero excitement or passion for the findings of the case studies and research that he shared, and he didn’t seem to care at all about connecting with the audience.

Pretty soon, in an effort to salvage my time investment, my note taking shifted towards capturing quotes and actions from the speaker that affected my ability to learn from him.

10 Audience Engagement Killers

  1. “I’m not going to bore you with that…”
  2. “We don’t have time to talk about that today…”
  3. “What time is it?”
  4. “Here’s a picture of an article I wrote in 2008…”
  5. “I’m not going to go through each one of these…”
  6. “How much time do I have left?”
  7. “There are a variety of reasons for this, we just don’t have time to talk about them here…”
  8. “I’m not going to go into this, it’s too involved for this gig…”
  9. “Am I still okay on time?”
  10. “This slide shows a whole bunch of reports which focus on financial metrics. Blah, blah, blah, blah…”

The 10 statements above were exact quotes from the speaker during this session – even number ten.

Unfortunately, I left the session frustrated, because myself – and about 150 others – had wasted 75 minutes of our time. We had met the speaker’s expectations of not being able to understand or take action on the information presented, but he did not meet my expectations as an audience member – which is for the speaker to provide value.

I can guarantee you that no meeting planner plans for their audience to leave a session having learned nothing new or at least challenged to try something new – and no speaker should either.

As someone who has been speaking on stages for over 15 years, I know that speaking in front of any size of audience can be tough on the ego. Even when I feel that I’ve knocked it out of the park, there is always someone in the audience who didn’t connect with my material, or who didn’t care for my delivery.

But I also know that I can increase the odds that my message will connect with the majority of audience members if I can answer the following question:

“What do I want the audience to DO with this information following my presentation?”

Once I have the answer to that question, I then need to care enough to use the time that I’ve been given to help the audience to understand why and how it’s possible for them to do just that.

Successful speakers care about the audience and their learning experience.

If you’ve been selected or appointed to speak in front of an audience – you’ve been given the valuable gift of people’s time. Whether it’s a keynote in front of thousands, a DisruptHR Talk, or a presentation to your team in a conference room, you can show your audience respect and appreciation by never making the following mistakes as a speaker:

5 Mistakes Successful Speakers Never Make

1. Never show, mention, or refer to something the audience cannot see clearly on the screen.

Examples: “I know this is an eye chart, but…” or “You can’t see this, but let me tell you what it says…”

2. Never show a statistic, reference a study, or display a quote without also sharing the source.

Who said this? When was it? How can I follow up to learn more? <- What your audience is thinking.

3. Never include stats, studies, or reference material on a slide that is more than 2 years old.

If your idea or premise is based upon 10-year-old research, find (or create) new research to support it.

4. Never refer to your own presentation materials, content or speaking style as boring.

Don’t plant seeds that you don’t want to grow. If the audience wasn’t already thinking that – they surely are now.

5. Never ask how much time is left for your presentation.

Asking the audience about time remaining shows a lack of preparation – and implies that you plan to fill the allotted time – no matter what. Bring a clock, use a time app on your phone, or have a friend hold up a sign to keep track of time – but never ask the audience to do it for you!

Any presentation that you create and deliver should be with the goal of educating, informing, encouraging and inspiring your audience. They’ll love you for it – and maybe they’ll even say something nice about it afterwards!


Do you want to build your personal brand and share your expertise as a speaker?

Download my free guide today: 10 Tips to Build Your Brand and Land Gigs as a Speaker – to discover how!

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Categories: Blog, Effective Communication, Speaking
Posted on August 22, 2023

Written by Jennifer McClure

5 Mistakes Successful Speakers Never Make

I make my living as a professional communicator, which means I have the honor of speaking with audiences at over 50 corporate, association and conference events each year. Whenever possible, I like to attend other sessions at these events – because I enjoy learning, and I also want to watch great speakers, so I can continue to grow and improve as a speaker myself.

Last year, I attended a conference breakout session led by a speaker with an impressive title. His bio listed many professional accomplishments and years of experience in a topic that I was very interested in learning more about. Even though his session was scheduled a few hours before my closing keynote, I made a point to get to the venue early in order to take advantage of the opportunity to learn from him.

Unfortunately, very quickly into the 75 minute session, it became clear that learning was going to be a challenge. Even though his professional experience and accomplishments related to the subject were impressive, the speaker conveyed zero excitement or passion for the findings of the case studies and research that he was sharing, and he didn’t seem to care at all about connecting with the the audience.

Pretty soon, in an effort to salvage the time investment as a learning opportunity, my note taking shifted towards capturing quotes and actions from the speaker that affected my ability to learn from him.

[Read more…]

Categories: Blog, Speaking
Posted on March 28, 2016

Written by Jennifer McClure

How To Get Speaking Opportunities (And Where You Can Find Me)

As you can probably tell, I really enjoy speaking to groups and traveling to various places to meet new people. Recently on her blog, my friend and HR Blogger Lisa Rosendahl asked for some suggestions to help her overcome The Anti-Speaking Demon. I responded in the comments with a short novelette that I thought I’d also republish here, since it may be helpful to others interested in developing as a speaker as well.

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Podium To get started, I’d suggest making people in your network aware that you’re interested in speaking to some groups and some examples of topics you could talk about or do a workshop/seminar on. You’ll likely be surprised at how many opportunities are out there – especially if you’re willing to speak for free. Once you’ve gotten several under your belt, you’ll likely be referred and recommended to other groups who are willing to pay you for your time and expertise.

Beyond your network, here’s a few additional resources I’d suggest contacting:

1)  Schools or universities in your area. Usually, the Career Development offices are dying to connect students to business leaders who can talk to them about what it’s like in the “real world” and also provide networking and job search tips.

2)  Job search support groups or networking groups in your community – In Cincinnati, there are a number of groups that meet regularly to help people in career transition. Most have a speaker as part of their meetings and they’re thrilled to have someone from HR/Recruiting come to talk with them and answer questions about how to approach their job search.

3)  Check with your local HR Association or Recruiting groups. While most local chapters tend to book their lunch speakers months in advance (and it seems they like to book out of town speakers to add some “cred”), it’s likely they’d be interested in having someone in the trenches like you offer to provide a seminar, breakfast or lunch talk about one of the many topics you could speak on.

A few more tips:

1)  Add a Speaking page to your blog. List topics you can or have spoken about. Not only will your blog readers find you that way (and you’ll get opportunities from it I’m sure), but you’ll also get found through search engines. My Speaking/Workshops page on my blog gets daily traffic and more than once I’ve booked a speaking gig because someone Googled “Using Social Media in HR & Recruiting” or “Using LinkedIn for Job Search”, etc. and landed on my blog. I’ve also gotten interview requests from magazines, radio shows, etc. through being found by this page.

2)  Add that you’re a speaker, or open to speaking, on your LinkedIn profile. Same as above, I’ve booked speaking engagements and interviews as a result of being found on LinkedIn.

3)  Don’t be shy about asking attendees to write a recommendation for you on LinkedIn if they found your talk to be of value. I’ve not been comfortable with asking myself, but I know several speakers who have tons of great recommendations on their profiles – because they asked. Once your LinkedIn network starts seeing recommendations pop up for your speaking, you’ll start getting more requests to speak. Subtle marketing works.

4)  Bring your own evaluation sheets if the group doesn’t provide one. The feedback will not only help you understand what resonated with the audience, but also what you can improve upon. As you start speaking more and filling out Speaker Proposals, often they ask for evaluation results from some recent engagements.

5)  Eventually make sure you get a good video of you speaking to a group. Same as #4, it will help you see what you do well and what you need to improve and it’s also frequently requested for more high profile speaking opportunities.

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Where You Can Find Me

Since some of you may subscribe
to this blog via
RSS
(I hope you ARE a subscriber!), you may not have noticed the link
on my blog to the Speaking/Training/Workshops page before. Take a
look there, and you’ll notice that April, May & June are thankfully
shaping up to be pretty busy for me as a Speaker including:

RecruitCamp
– Raleigh, NC – April 22, 2010
. Thanks to RecruitingBlogs.com
I’ll be leading a session at this event and I’m looking forward to the
Keynote by my friend Laurie Ruettimann of Punk Rock HR!

HRevolution
– Chicago, IL – May 7 – 8, 2010
. Special thanks to Lisa Rosendahl
for asking me to co-lead a session on “Can HR Be Trusted” to continue
the discussion started with my recent post. (This should be good – can’t wait!)

Louisville
Kentucky SHRM Chapter
– June 8, 2010. Thanks to a recommendation
from Crystal Peterson, I’ll be joining LSHRM as their
luncheon speaker and also leading an afternoon workshop on Using Social
Media in HR.

I’m also super excited about speaking
at the Ohio HR Conference in September thanks a connection
from my friend Steve Browne and also the Sm@rt Social Media
Conference Reno/Tahoe
in December thanks to Dr. Bret L. Simmons.

You’ll notice in the engagements I’ve highlighted,
there was at least one person from my network who helped me to connect
with the opportunity. I’m grateful to each of these people and appreciate their support very much. My network rocks and if you’ll be attending any of these events, I’d love to meet you in
person to get to know you as well!

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What did I miss? What would you
recommend to someone interested in developing their speaking skills or
becoming a professional speaker? I’d like to learn from you!

Categories: Blog, Presentations
Posted on April 19, 2010

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  • Future Fluidity and the Evolving Role of Leadership in the Age of Disruption With Dr. Tanvi Gautam
  • What Public Speakers Can Learn From Actors and Performers With Public Speaking Coach Adriana Baer
  • The Best Articles & Resources for Leaders Transforming the Future of Work: September 2023
  • The Power of Human Connection: Lessons Learned on a Mission to Meet 10,000 New Friends With Rob Lawless
  • How AI Is Changing the Game for Thought Leaders and Content Creators With Laurie Ruettimann and Jennifer McClure

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