The main mistakes of public speaking

Often, in order to learn how to do something right in a particular area, you first need to figure out how not to do it. A clear understanding of what not to do will serve you well in the early stages, whereas knowing some of the subtleties of the case and making basic mistakes at the same time can scare away the audience. Therefore, it is always useful for you to learn all the taboos first before improving your skills.
Let’s look at the main mistakes in public speaking.

Incongruity

The audience is like a polygraph for a speaker — as soon as you start lying, she will immediately notice it. And neither you nor those who listen to you need this, because people’s trust will disappear, and you will become even more nervous, because, most likely, you will also feel the reaction of the audience. Therefore, you should not say one thing, but nonverbally show something completely different.

Excuses

Starting a speech with the words “I have no experience of public speaking, so I’m very worried…” is a bad move. The public doesn’t care about that. She’s here to get the information she needs. And whether you are worried or not, how long you have been preparing for the performance and other nuances — the audience is not interested in all this. You are here to share something with people, and people are here to get the knowledge they need. Focus on this, don’t think about your condition, but only on what you are saying on the topic. In this case, even if you are very worried, the public may simply not notice it, and you, in turn, will also calm down, because all attention will be switched to other people and the information that you give them.

Apologies

Forget about the apologies. You are not in confession. Whatever the reason, whether in a quiet voice, in a long speech, in excitement or in something else, you should not focus on this at all, and even more so apologize for it. Firstly, it will not give you any points from the public, and secondly, you can only make yourself worse, because no one likes people who are always apologizing. However, if you really regret something, say “I’m sorry” and close the subject.

Facial expressions

It is quite difficult for an untrained person to control facial expressions. But for a speaker in the long run, this is a must-have skill. As statistics show, when the audience looks at the speaker, they pay most of their attention to the eye area. Therefore, expressive expressions of the eyes and eyebrows are the speaker’s number one priority. The best choice here will be straight eyebrows and laughing eyes. But to achieve such a result, you need to practice a lot.

Choosing the right words

A person perceives individual words faster than sentences, so the use of formulations with negative connotations should be avoided as much as possible if your goal is to create a positive image of the statement. For example, you should not say “it’s not bad”, it’s better to just say “it’s good”.

Lack of humor

With the exception of certain topics, you can joke everywhere. And it is necessary. No one likes boring and monotonous speech with an abundance of incomprehensible words and compound sentences. But humor, on the contrary, not only dilutes seriousness and gives people a break while listening, but also improves the perception of new information, which has been proven by scientists.

Know-it-all

Pompous and pretentious speakers who consider themselves the most important and intelligent people in the room are a direct route to nowhere. Not only are such people disliked, but also this opinion of the speaker about himself is not true. No matter how smart a person is, he cannot know everything. There will always be someone (including among the public) who may be more knowledgeable about some issue than the speaker. In addition, such a presentation of oneself can go sideways to a person, for example, if they decide to catch him, and he, unaware of anything, will come up with an answer to a newly invented question. On the contrary, admitting your incompetence in some matter will make you more attractive in the eyes of the audience, because it will show you as a person, not an omniscient robot.

Fussiness

By the way a person moves during a performance, you can understand how confident he is in himself. So, people who doubt their abilities are always walking back and forth, fiddling with something in their hands or performing other repetitive actions. A confident speaker, on the contrary, will broadcast calmly and also move slowly around the stage. The best option would be to move as marking parts of the report. That is, you start the performance in one place, in the next semantic part of it you change your position on the stage, then move again to another position and so on. This way, the public will be able to better remember the material being given, and it will be easier for you to navigate the report.

Monotony

It’s no secret that monotonous speakers are tiring. They are like a bad lullaby, the words and manner of performance of which I do not like, but I still want to sleep. In order for you not to make the same impression on the audience, you need to tell with feeling, change intonation, put accents, play with your voice. The main thing is not to overdo it. Speak as if you are telling a story to a friend, but with an eye on the topic of your story and your listeners.

No pauses

There is nothing terrible about pauses, and you should not be afraid of them. And you need to be ready for them, because they will certainly be, because you are not a robot, and speech is not recorded by your program. At these moments, it’s better to just be silent, and not make any sounds like “uh…”, “aah …” and so on. Pauses are even good. Experienced speakers use them specifically for various purposes. Sometimes, to look around his audience, to see how they understood one or another of his statements. Sometimes to create tension or to get feedback. Of course, all this comes with experience, but you need to try it now. And here is another point that will be useful for beginners to know — the pause feels much shorter for the audience than for the speaker.