Team Building

A CEO once asked me, "As an executive coach, what are the top mistakes you've seen when business leaders give a presentation"? He was expecting just a few insights, I'm sure. But once I got thinking about all the mess-ups I'd seen, I just could not stop writing them down. What started as a Letterman "Top Ten List" took on a life of its own.

So, for all you executives getting ready to present, here are 100 of the top mistakes I've seen over the years.

100 Ways to Bore Your Audience

1. Don't have a story
2. Show lots and lots of slides
3. Don't have clear messages
4. Have plenty of bullets and lists
5. Don't break your deck into sections or "chapters"
6. Have 100 disconnected slides
7. Don't have an introduction that "wows" people
8. Read the slide word for word
9. To make a point read the slide twice
10. Don't close with a strong and memorable ending
11. Don't use examples
12. Make sure you use at least 10 bullets per slide
13. Change colors on each slide
14. Use titles that are just boring facts
15. Make sure your titles are long enough to go to two lines
16. Make excuses for why the slides don't look that great
17. Keep turning to look at the slides and not the audience
18. Turn your whole back to the audience when looking at a slide
19. Never look the audience in the eye
20. Never, ever practice the presentation
21. Actually go up and touch the slide on the big screen
22. Use an annoying laser pen
23. Make crazy little circles with your laser pen
24. Make zig-zags with your laser pen
25. Have no gestures, just stand there with arms dangling down
26. Or, wave your arms around like Marcel Marceau
27. Or don't move at all, or
28. Pace like a lion in a cage
29. Be sure to walk or stand in front of the screen (it's especially good if the words display on your face)
30. Only stay on one side of the stage
31. Talk to just the left side of the room
32. Talk to just the right side of the room
33. Use humor knowing you can't tell a joke
34. Don't modulate your voice
35. Don't emphasize any words
36. Have no transitions from slide to slide
37. Don't connect any of the ideas from any slides
38. Put a quote on screen and read it word for word
39. Talk very fast
40. Talk very slow
41. Walk with your hands in your pant pockets
42. Fold your arms
43. Never sound passionate or interested in your own material
44. Don't ask any questions
45. Never engage the audience
46. Don't use stories or anecdotes
47. Hold onto a podium or dais
48. Hide behind the podium
49. Memorize your slides and sound like a robot
50. Never use images or pictures on your slides, just lots of text
51. Make the text so small people in the back can't see it
52. Make an excuse about small text, "I know you can't read this…"
53. Use lots and lots of charts and graphs
54. Put two or three charts on one slide
55. Have at least a dozen data points on a graph
56. Use different fonts
57. Never proofread your slides, have spelling and grammar errors
58. Talk about something else that is not on the slide
59. Ramble and get off your topic
60. For a 1-hour preso, have 60 slides
61. For a 30-minute preso, have 30 slides
62. For a 15-minute preso, have 15 slides
63. Be sure to insult the audience's intelligence
64. Use lots of outdated facts and figures
65. Use lots of animations, especially twirls, fly-ins and spinning words
66. Add cheesy annoying sounds to your fly-ins and spins
67. Look over the heads of the audience
68. Don't ask rhetorical questions
69. Never have an agenda
70. Keep referring to "him" and "he," especially if females are in the audience
71. Use the PPT wizard; never vary the slide style or make your own template
72. As you describe ideas on a slide, jump around, don't order your thoughts
73. Use really small images that don't enlarge well
74. Make sure the images are of the poorest quality
75. Use the images your drunk brother-in-law took from his vacation
76. Never buy classy stock photos
77. Be sure your slides don't reinforce your words
78. Use as many builds as you can pack in
79. Make sure the transition builds are different for each slide
80. Chit chat and say thank you to 20 people before you begin to speak
81. Make sure your slides are really crowded
82. Never tell the audience how long you will speaking
83. Skip over ideas and tell people you're running late
84. Point to a slide with your middle finger
85. Point at the audience with any finger
86. Use lots and lots of flash animation
87. Don't have a clear purpose
88. Talk a lot about you and your company and never talk about the audience or their needs
89. Use a screen shot of a web page so no one can read it
90. Insert poorly shot videos
91. Insert videos with muddled sound
92. Never tell listeners what your presentation is about
93. Always choose dark text on a dark slide background or
94. Light text on a light background
95. Use lots of word art and slanted text
96. Use child-like clip art and lots and lots of cartoons
97. Never repeat the agenda so people can follow your ideas
98. Be more concerned about your data than telling a good story
99. Always go over, never under you allotted time
100. Never ever be conversational—just drone on and on

Moral for presenters: Just get up there and have a compelling and relevant conversation, just you, the audience, and your passion, and leave the deck at home.