Summary: <p>No one wants to be boring, and yet how often do you find yourself pinching yourself during a speech trying to stay awake?</p> <p>Perhaps the reason for bad presentations is because speaking in public is one of our biggest fears, right up there with death. We can be so scared of giving a bad talk, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy.</p> <p>But done right, even the smallest of speeches, even the weekly check-in with your boss, can "change the world, even if just a little bit," according to Nick Morgan, the president and founder of Public Words, a company that helps people tell their stories. He's also the author of <a href="https://hbr.org/product/power-cues-the-subtle-science-of-leading-groups-persuading-others-and-maximizing-your-personal-impact/an/11710-HBK-ENG">Power Cues</a> and is featured in the Harvard Business Review article, <a href="https://hbr.org/2014/11/how-to-give-a-stellar-presentation">"How to Give a Stellar Presentation."</a></p> <p>He's studied what makes speeches good, and just as importantly, what makes them bad. He said there are some sure fire ways to make a speech boring:</p> Start With a List: If you want to lose your audience at the very start, lead with a laundry list of things you'll cover. When you're speaking out loud, people don't connect to lists. Give them a reason to care first. Let In Your Nervous Filler: If you want to lose listeners, waste their time with niceties, coughs, and bad jokes. Shrug When You're Selling: If your body language is inconsistent with the things you're saying, people won't buy in to your message. <p>Morgan says before you start a speech, you have to understand where your performance anxiety comes from. He says the reason speakers make all these mistakes is because they often set a standard for themselves that just isn't achievable. So they're humiliated before they even begin. Nerves let filler take the place of genuine communication. </p> <p>Morgan says for big speeches, the solution is to use a personal story to hold the parts of your talk together. Get people emotionally invested by taking them on a journey with you. </p> <p>But you can't make every little speech a story. It gets old. In day-to-day business meetings, Morgan says the solution to mediocrity and monotony is very simple. All you need to do is spend a few minutes before the talk focusing on the emotions you want to convey. Too often, people enter a meeting with a to-do list in mind instead of a desire to motivate. When your body language and tone evoke emotion, it makes a meeting hum with energy.</p>
