28 Common Presentation Mistakes: Which are you making?

The best presenters and speakers continually hone their skills and test out new material. Regardless of how seasoned you are, there are always new presentation skills and techniques to learn. Instead of chasing perfection, concentrate on correcting a few critical presentation mistakes that will have the biggest impact with your audience.

So how do you go from an average to an outstanding presenter?

We’ve compiled a list of the most common presentation mistakes and grouped them into five categories: Clarity, Slide Design & Tools, Confidence & Presence, Connection & Engagement, and Closure & Growth. Think of these as the core dimensions of effective presenting. By paying attention to them, you can avoid the traps that trip up even seasoned professionals and keep your audience engaged from start to finish.

Don’t feel discouraged if you’ve done some of the things on this list. Most people aren’t born natural presenters! Luckily, it is a skill that can be learned, practiced, and improved upon.

Clarity Presentation Mistakes

Your audience can’t follow your ideas if your message isn’t sharp. These mistakes muddy the waters and make it harder for people to grasp what matters most.

1. Failing to address the audience’s concerns

Before you even think about creating a presentation, know what your audience is struggling with so that you can solve their problems or address their concerns. You want them leaving with the feeling that their time was well spent.

2. Losing focus

Your slide deck should help you stay on track. Use it as a guide to make sure you move logically from one point to another.

3. Rambling or using too many words

Don’t use up an hour of time when 20 minutes will do. Respect people’s time and get to the point. Be concise and don’t ramble. But don’t rush, either. Yes, it’s a fine line.

4. Cramming in too much information

If the audience can’t make sense of the data, or if they have to stop listening to you so they can read, you’re doing it wrong. Simplicity and white space are your friends. Think, “How would Apple design a slide deck?”

5. Incorporating too much data

Ask yourself, “Why am I including this data?”, “What action do I want to inspire?”, and “If I removed this, could I still make my point?” to help determine if the data is relevant enough to include.

“We have met the Devil of Information Overload and his impish underlings, the computer virus, the busy signal, the dead link, and the PowerPoint presentation.” – James Gleick

6. Summarizing the entire presentation

If you can recap your entire presentation in 5-10 minutes, why did you waste an hour of the audience’s time? Emphasize or reiterate only the main ideas very briefly, and end with your call to action.

Slide Design & Tools Mistakes

Slides and tools should support your message, not distract from it. These common presentation errors often turn helpful visuals into barriers to understanding.

7. Poor slide design

PowerPoint gets a bad rap because 99% of slides are very poorly designed, but it’s not Bill Gates’ fault that the world lacks design skills! Just because a feature is available in PowerPoint, doesn’t mean you need to use it.

In fact, when you start designing a presentation, it’s best if you don’t even open PowerPoint. Use Microsoft Word to create an outline first. Focus on the content and structure, and only when that is outstanding, move to PowerPoint and start designing your slides.

If you don’t know how to design good slides, find someone who does or learn. While poor slide design probably won’t make or break your presentation, it can undermine your credibility and distract your audience – or worse – help put them to sleep.

Depending on the type of presentation, you may want to consider the 10/20/30 rule from Guy Kawasaki. Ten slides for a 20-minute presentation with fonts no smaller than 30 points. It’s not appropriate for all types of presentations, but it’s a nice guideline and slide-to-duration ratio.

Be careful when using PowerPoint templates – while they may look pretty, more often than not, the design is not conducive to great presentations. The fonts are almost always too light and/or small to be read from the back of a room and the designers often cram too much on one slide. Presentation templates only work if you understand good design. Don’t trust that just because a “professional” designed it, that it’s any good. It can take longer to fix a poorly designed slide than to just build one from scratch.

8. Reading slides verbatim

In all likelihood, your audience can read perfectly well without your assistance. If you’re just going to read to them, you might as well save everyone some time and just send them a copy of your slide deck. This isn’t the place for a bedtime story.

Challenge yourself to put as few words on the slides as possible, so that you can’t read from them. Could you do your entire presentation with only one word on each slide? If not, this is an indication that you may not know your materials well enough. The exception here is if you’re presenting technical concepts or data – just make sure you’re simplifying any charts and tables so you’re not making your audience work too hard to figure them out.

9. Relying only on PowerPoint

Even when used correctly, PowerPoint should not be your only tool. Use flip charts, white boards, Post-it notes, and other tools serve to engage your audience. Try to break up the amount of time the audience spends staring at a screen.

10. Overusing animations and transitions

Many people struggle with vertigo, motion sickness, and nausea. Out of respect for those people, never move text; if you must animate it, the text should remain static on the screen as it fades or wipes in. This allows people to fix their eyes on a focal point and start reading before the animation finishes. Don’t make your audience follow bouncing, flying, zooming, spinning, growing, or floating text… or anything else for that matter!

Transitions are quite unnecessary, but if you must use them, only use a quick fade. If your transitions are too slow, they’ll interfere with your normal speech pattern.

Remember – no one will leave your presentation and think, “Wow, those animations were great!”. They will comment on the content and your ability to present it. And the coffee… or lack thereof.

Confidence & Presence Mistakes

How you carry yourself shapes how people perceive your expertise. These presentation mistakes chip away at credibility, authority, and composure.

11. Starting poorly

Make sure to start your presentations with impact. Saying, “Welcome, my name is ___. Today we will be talking about…” is boring. Do something different – be bold, creative, inspiring! And arrive early so you won’t feel flustered, which will carry over into your presentation. Most importantly, be interesting!

12. Making it about yourself

As the presenter, you are the least important person in the room. When you understand that and focus on the goal of helping your audience, you can eliminate a lot of the nervousness that comes with presenting.

13. Acting like a Diva

To be a great presenter, one could argue that you have to have a slightly inflated sense of ego and tough skin. It’s not easy standing in front of a room full of people (often complete strangers) who will critique your performance without knowing anything about you or the kind of day you’ve had. That inflated ego can be useful in protecting you when things don’t go well.

But your ego doesn’t give you permission to act like you’re more important than everyone else. You’re the least important person in the room, remember?

The best presenters are those who are authentic and who truly want to help people. Try to accommodate the organizers and see things from their perspective when they need you to adapt at the last minute. Make it easy for people to work with you and they will ask you to come back.

14. Apologizing or highlighting your shortcomings

When you’re having an “off day” it’s natural to want to say something like, “I didn’t sleep well last night so forgive me if I seem tired.” But when you do that, you’re undermining your own credibility because your audience might not have even noticed you were tired. But now that you’ve drawn attention to it, they will focus on it, look for clues, and may even include a comment on your feedback form. Don’t give them reasons to complain!

15. Not practicing enough

“Winging it” works well for very few people. The people who successfully speak without much practice are those who are fantastic natural speakers and who know their material inside out and upside down. Even if you’re one of the lucky few, you need to get the timing right – so practice anyway!

16. Not preparing your technology

There are no excuses for not preparing technology ahead of time. Make sure you’ve tested everything before your presentation. Always carry extra batteries for your presenter remote (if you use one).
If you arrive late, you’re setting yourself up for failure and run the risk of starting off stressed, which can have a domino effect on the rest of your presentation.

17. Forgetting to pause

A pause is like the mount on a diamond ring. The diamond is the message, but the mount is what presents it to the world and helps it shine! Help your message shine with a well-placed pause.

18. Avoiding eye contact

Obviously, you want to be sensitive to different cultures. Barring that, in North America, lack of eye-contact can make people distrust you. If making eye contact adds to your nervousness, pick three main focal points around the room (one on the left, one in the centre, and one on the right). Move from one focal point to the other as you speak, making eye contact with a few people from each area. If you’re too nervous to make eye contact, look at their foreheads instead.

19. Going over your allotted time

This is a simple matter of respect. If your presentation goes over your allotted time, there’s a good chance your audience will lose interest and leave anyway – or at the very least, stop listening because they’ll be focused on other commitments and trying to figure out how they will adjust. Practice and plan your presentation carefully to ensure you can finish on time or even a few minutes early. No one in the history of meetings has ever been upset when one ends a little early.

Connection & Engagement Mistakes

The best presenters don’t just speak — they connect. These presentation mistakes weaken the human bond that turns information into influence.

20. Boring the audience

Audiences tune out quickly if they’re not interested. Your job as a presenter is to keep them curious and engaged.

21. Failing to engage emotionally

We like to think that humans make rational decisions, but studies show that people make decisions based on emotion, and then rationalize their decisions afterwards. Even if you’re not doing a sales pitch, if you’re standing in front of an audience, you are “selling” something, whether that’s your ideas, your research, or even your training information. You want the audience to “buy in.”

22. Using too much jargon

Your language needs to be appropriate for your audience. If they have to pause and decode acronyms or technical terms, they’re no longer listening to you. For example, government presenters can overload audiences with program acronyms, while those in IT might lean too heavily on technical jargon. If you can’t avoid using a specialized term, introduce it clearly the first time and keep the number of new terms to a minimum.

23. Lacking relevant, impactful stories

Connect with people on a personal level to build rapport and trust. People will remember your stories much more easily than they will remember any facts you present. Just make sure the stories are relevant to your presentation or you’ll risk annoying people for wasting their time.

24. Making your stories too long

Don’t drag out your stories with useless details. The worst stories begin something like this:

“So last Tuesday I was walking the dog and… or wait, was it Wednesday? No, it must have been Tuesday. Hmm, now I’m not sure. Oh, wait. I was wrong. Actually, it was Monday and I know that because I had just come back from the gym. Right. So, last Monday, I was walking the dog and…”.

By now your audience is ready to pull their hair out. To make your stories more interesting, keep them succinct and only include relevant information. If you mess up unimportant details that don’t affect the outcome of the story, don’t correct it – just keep going.

End your stories strong with a punch line, a twist, a lesson, or a relevant call to action.

25. Misusing humour

Humour can enrich any presentation, as long as it’s appropriate. Self-deprecating humour is almost always safe. Poking fun at yourself also helps put people at ease, and when you hear laughter, it can help you relax.

Closure & Growth Mistakes

How you finish matters just as much as how you start. These errors undermine your ending and block opportunities to improve for next time.

26. Ending with Q&A

This is a mistake that almost everyone makes. If you end with a Question and Answer session, what happens if you can’t answer the last question? What if the answer isn’t one the audience likes or wants to hear? Ending with Q&A risks ending on a negative note. Instead, do your Q&A a few slides before finishing up so that you can end strong.

27. Not providing a clear call to action

What is the purpose of your presentation? Are you trying to teach something? Do you want to persuade the audience to take an action? Whatever the goal, make sure to end with a slide telling people what you want them to do next.

28. Not asking for anonymous feedback

Feedback is useless unless it’s anonymous. If you just want people to tell you how great you are, ask them in person. You’ll rarely find anyone who won’t be willing to tell a little white lie to save face. But if you actually want to improve your presentation skills, ask for honest, anonymous feedback in writing. This is where that tough skin comes in handy, but it’s the best way to learn. And over time, as your presentation skills improve, so will your feedback.

How to Keep Improving Your Presentation Skills

Remember, presentation skills aren’t fixed traits; they’re capabilities you can strengthen with awareness, practice, and feedback. Each presentation is an opportunity to refine your approach, test new strategies, and grow as a communicator.

If you want to improve your skills in a safe environment with the guidance and feedback of an experienced presenter, consider PMC Training’s Skills for Effective Presentations course. This workshop will help you gain the tools, confidence, and feedback to take your presentations from good to unforgettable.