Think about the last presentation you sat through that was not your own. Forget the content for a moment and just remember how it felt. Did you leave that room, or that call, with more energy than you took into it, or with a little less?
I have been thinking about that question since I came across a popular image on social media. It listed the things that drain our energy in everyday life, like endless scrolling, clutter and poor sleep, alongside the things that restore it, like sunlight, movement and gratitude. It struck me that exactly the same is true every time we stand up, or unmute, to speak. Some choices quietly take energy away from us and from the people listening, while others give it back. In my experience, the difference between them has far less to do with talent than with decisions, many of which are made long before anyone walks into the room. Here are the ten energy takers I come across most often in the training room, each paired with the energy giver that turns it around.
1. Building slides or content before you are crystal clear on your message
Instead: Being clear on what you want your audience to think, feel and do about your message.
The moment we are asked to present, many of us open PowerPoint or a previous deck and start moving things around. It feels like progress, but it means the slides become the plan, and before long we are presenting what we have built rather than what the audience actually needs from us. Once you start repopulating a template, you are on autopilot.
Before you touch a single slide, ask yourself what is so important that you cannot just send an email, and then what you want the people in front of you to think, to feel and to do as a result of hearing you. If you cannot answer each of those in a sentence, you are not ready to build anything yet. It is a short conversation with yourself, and it changes everything that follows.
I have written about this moment, and the questions worth asking in it, in more detail in The M Point.
2. Talking to the screen and reading to your audience or making them read
Instead: Connecting with your audience rather than the screen or script.
When the words are on the screen, and we read them aloud, we turn our backs on the room, sometimes literally, and hand our message over to a slide. There is a practical problem too. We read silently much faster than anyone can speak, a gap confirmed across a large body of reading research, so your audience races ahead, finishes the slide and then waits for you to catch up, or simply stops listening.
A dense slide asks people to choose between reading and listening, and research on multimedia learning by Richard Mayer suggests people learn better from spoken words with a supporting image than when the same words are also printed on the screen. Let your slides carry pictures, a number or a few words, and let your voice carry the message. If you need a detailed document for people to take away, create a separate one and send it afterwards, because a deck designed to be read and a deck designed to be presented are two different things.
3. Memorising a script and hoping you don’t lose your place
Instead: Knowing your story so well you can tell it in your own words.
A memorised script feels like a safety net, but it often works the other way. Your attention goes inward to the business of remembering, and one missing word can make the whole thing wobble, because you are no longer telling people something; you are reciting it.
Instead, know the shape of your story, the few points you want to make and the order they come in, and then trust yourself to find the words in the moment. Rehearse the ideas rather than the sentences. It takes a little courage to let go of the script the first time, but what you gain is the sound of your own voice, and it is far easier to recover from a stumble when you are talking to people than when you are trying to find your place on a page.
4. Cramming in everything you know so nobody can say you missed something
Instead: Choosing the few things your audience really needs to hear.
Cramming is usually protective. If everything is in there, nobody can accuse us of leaving something out. The cost is that when everything is included, everything carries the same weight, and the points that really matter have nowhere to stand out.
Ask yourself a simple question. If your audience remembered only one thing from your presentation, what would you want it to be? Then build around that and a small number of supporting points, and put everything else into a document they can read later. Leaving out things you know well can feel uncomfortable, even exposing, but it is one of the most generous things you can do for the people listening.
5. Trying to impress your audience with how much you know
Instead: Focusing on how you can genuinely help them.
When we focus on how we come across, how clever we sound, and what people think of us, our attention turns inward. That is where the Headstuff lives: the running commentary in our heads that judges every word before we finish saying it.
Changing the question you ask yourself changes where your attention goes. Rather than asking how you can impress them, ask how you can help them. In my experience, it is one of the quickest ways to settle nerves, because it moves the spotlight off you and onto the people you are there to serve, and it tends to make your content simpler, clearer and more useful at the same time.
6. Opening with your biography and agenda
Instead: Making your audience a promise you know you can keep.
Think about how it feels to sit through a speaker’s career history and a slide listing the six sections that are coming. It is rarely what we came for. The opening is the moment an audience quietly asks why they are here and whether it is worth their attention, and a biography answers neither.
Open instead with a promise, a clear and specific benefit your audience will have by the end, and make sure it is one you know you can keep. Then keep it. Your credibility will come from how relevant and useful you are, far more than from the list of places you have worked, and an agenda can come once people have a reason to care.
If you would like to explore what your audience is asking in those first moments, take a look at the four questions every audience is asking.
7. Rushing through it to get it over with as quickly as possible
Instead: Slowing down and pausing so your key points have time to land.
Wanting it to be over is completely understandable, especially when you are nervous. The trouble is that speed leaves nobody any room, neither you to breathe and think, nor your audience to take in what you have just said before the next thing arrives.
Pausing is one of the simplest skills in public speaking and one of the hardest to do, because silence feels far longer to the person speaking than it does to the people listening, or at least that has been my experience in every room I have worked in. Start by pausing after your most important point, count to two and then carry on. It takes courage the first few times, and the reward is that people actually hear what you most want them to hear.
8. Gripping the lectern or hiding behind your laptop
Instead: Standing grounded, open and fully present in the room.
The lectern and the laptop are there to help us, but they very easily become something to hold onto, and something to hide behind. When your hands are gripping the furniture and your eyes keep returning to the screen in front of you, it becomes much harder to feel that you are really there with the people in the room.
Before you begin, place your feet firmly, feel your weight evenly spread and take a slow breath. If you can, step out from behind whatever is in front of you, even for part of your presentation, and let your hands be free. Standing grounded is not just about looking confident; it is about giving yourself a stable place to speak from, which is what centring is all about.
9. Rehearsing silently in your head the night before
Instead: Rehearsing out loud, more than once, the way you’ll deliver it.
In our heads, everything flows beautifully. The transitions are smooth, the timing is perfect, and the difficult sentence comes out just right. Only when we say it out loud do we discover where we get tangled, where the breath runs out, and how long it really takes.
Rehearse out loud, standing up if you will be standing on the day, and do it more than once. If you can, rehearse in front of someone you trust and ask them what they will remember. It can feel awkward talking to an empty room or a patient friend, but every stumble you find in rehearsal is one your audience never has to hear.
10. Dreading the questions and hoping nobody asks any
Instead: Being curious about what your audience wants to know.
Questions can feel like a test we might fail, so we rush through them, or secretly hope the time runs out before anyone raises a hand. Yet in my experience, a question is far more often a sign that someone was listening and cares enough to want to know more.
Before you present, write down the questions you would least like to be asked and think about how you would answer them. When a question comes, pause, make sure you have understood it, and answer the person rather than the room. If you do not know the answer, say so and promise to find out, and then do. Curiosity turns the questions from something to survive into one of the most valuable parts of your presentation.
Choose one
None of these shifts asks you to become somebody else. Every energy giver on this list is a choice, and you do not need to make all ten at once. Pick the one that made you wince a little as you read it, and try it the next time you speak.
Then notice how you feel at the end, and how your audience feels too.
How we can help
If you would like help making these shifts, here are three ways we can work together:
If you found this useful, please share it with someone who presents, and I would love to hear which energy taker you recognise most.
Image courtesy of canva.com
