9Presentation Mistakes

Perhaps the number one component of a successful workshop is powerful and polished presentation skills. The ability to communicate and engage people with your eyes, gestures, movement, stories, humor, information, and pace is so critical. Some speakers make it look effortless and poetic, but others make you want to shout, sleep, or sneak out of the room. Nevertheless, to remain effective in the classroom, facilitators—whether novice or tenured—need to continue to hone their presentation skills.

From poorly handling questions to using too many acronyms, the mistakes are countless. Twenty-two of the top mistakes are reviewed in this chapter, but this chapter could probably include 1,000 more. Careful consideration should ...

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