There is a tongue-in-cheek article on the Business Week website titled “How to Give a Lousy Presentation: Fifteen ways to make a bad impression.”
The author, Carmine Gallo, states, “Giving truly great presentations requires skill, work, and practice. Giving catastrophic presentations is far easier. So if you want to take the easy way out and look like a rank amateur, here are 15 surefire tips to guarantee that you leave a really, really bad impression.”
Here are the highlights:
1. Misspell words.
2. Create distracting color combinations.
3. Use inconsistent fonts.
4. Use a really small font size.
5. Insert improperly sized photos that are stretched to fit the slide.
6. Look completely and totally disinterested.
7. Look disheveled.
8. Read every word of each slide.
9. Don’t bother with a backup plan.
10. Don’t practice.
11. Call attention to your mistakes.
12. Open with an offensive or off-color joke.
13. Use wild animations.
14. Use cartoon clip art.
15. Use ancient presentation software.
Of course, you might want to avoid all of these if you want to do it right. Carmine Gallo is a communication skills coach, a popular speaker, and the author of several books including Fire Them Up! To read his entire article, please visit the Business Week website.
