If you make a mistake while youre delivering a presentation, it is best to

We all know what it’s like to sit through a bad presentation. We can easily spot the flaws — too long, too boring, indecipherable, what have you — when we watch others speak. The thing is, when we take the stage ourselves, many of us fall into the same traps.

Here are five of the most common, along with some tips on how to avoid them.

1. Failing to engage emotionally. You risk losing your audience when you just “state the facts,” even in a business setting. No presentation should be devoid of emotion, no matter how cerebral the topic or the audience. Speak to people’s hearts as well as their minds. Look for ways to add emotional texture to your exhibits, data, proofs, logical arguments, and other analytical content. Try opening with a story your audience can relate to, for example, or including analogies that make your data more meaningful.

To unearth the emotional appeal of your ideas, ask yourself a series of “why” questions. If you’re requesting funding to pay for cloud storage, for instance, start by asking, “Why do we need cloud storage?” Your answer may be something like “to facilitate data sharing with colleagues in remote locations.” Then ask why you need to accomplish that — and you’ll eventually get to the human beings who will be affected by your ideas. Suppose your answer is “to help remote colleagues coordinate disaster relief efforts and save lives.” That’s your emotional hook. Once you’ve found it, it’s easier to choose words and images that elicit empathy and support.

2. Asking too much of your slides. PowerPoint can be a great tool. But know what you’re trying to accomplish with it. Do only that, nothing more. Problems crop up when you place too many elements in a slide deck. If you cram in all the points you’re going to cover so you won’t forget anything, you’ll end up projecting entire documents when you speak. (Garr Reynolds aptly calls these hydra-headed beasts “slideuments.”) No one wants to attend a plodding read-along. It’s boring, and people can read more efficiently on their own, anyway. So don’t try to spell everything out bullet by exhausting bullet. Keep your teleprompter text hidden from the audience’s view, in the “notes” field, and project only visuals that reinforce your ideas. And if you need to circulate documents afterward? Create handouts from all that text you’ve pulled off your slides and moved into “notes.”

3. Trotting out tired visuals. Nothing gets eyes a-glazing like a visual cliché. Want your presentation to stand out (in a good way) from the others your audience has seen? Brainstorm lots of visual concepts — and throw away the first ones that came to mind. They’re the ones that occur to everyone else, too. That’s why you’ve seen them a million times in other people’s presentations. Generate several ideas for each concept you want to illustrate, and you’ll work your way toward originality.

4. Speaking in jargon. Have you ever listened to a presenter who sounded super-smart without having any idea what she really said? If so, the presentation was probably full of jargon. Each field has its own lexicon that’s familiar to experts but foreign to everyone else. Unless you’re speaking to a group of people who are steeped in the material themselves, you’re better off avoiding highly technical or industry-specific language. Use words that will resonate with those whose support and influence you must earn. If they can’t follow your ideas, they won’t adopt them. Consider whether your presentation passes the “grandmother test”: If your grandmother wouldn’t understand what on earth you’re talking about, rework your message.

5. Going over your allotted time. There’s nothing worse than a presentation that seems like it will never end. A great talk goes by quickly. People in your audience will never scold you for ending early, but they certainly will for ending late. So treat the time slot assigned to you as sacred. And keep in mind that people have a 30- to 40-minute presentation tolerance (they’re conditioned by TV shows with creatively produced commercial breaks). Go longer than that, and they’re sure to squirm.

This is the seventh and final post in Nancy Duarte’s blog series on creating and delivering presentations, based on tips from her new book, the HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations.

Tell me if this rings a bell: You’re going along, giving a great speech or presentation, when all of a sudden you draw a complete blank. Your train of thought has derailed. It’s about to crash and burn and take your presentation with it.

You look to the audience nervously, then you fidget and shuffle through your notes. You’re desperate for something, anything, to jog your memory and get you back on track. How can this be happening? You practiced. You know the material inside and out. Then suddenly a word or phrase in your notes catches your eye and you breathe a heavy sigh of relief as you pick up and keep going. But now you’re mortified. Everyone knows you messed up and it’s all they’re going to remember of your presentation, right?

Wrong.

Making Mistakes in Public: It’s Okay

It doesn’t matter how often you give presentations or for how many years you’ve been giving them, you’re going to a make a mistake sooner or later. And sometimes it won’t even be your fault: Technology can malfunction, equipment can break. You have to accept that mistakes are a part of life, and they’re certainly a part of public speaking. And believe it or not, making a mistake every once in a while is a good thing because it teaches you how to handle those mistakes with confidence and grace.

Public speaking is an incredibly valuable skill to learn, but if you’re just getting started at it, the mere thought of making a mistake can send you into a panic. Is it really possible to survive a blunder or two and not ruin the entire presentation?

Presentation Skills Take Practice

Once again I’m going to emphasize the importance of practising. Except this time, it’s not just the presentation I’m going to say you need to practice, but the mistakes you make, too. That’s right, I said practice your mistakes.

No, that doesn’t mean you should intentionally make mistakes while you practice, but you’re probably going to make a lot of them until you’ve worked all the bugs out. And I want you to practice correcting yourself, regaining your composure, and moving on. Don’t stop because you made a mistake—because that’s not an option during your time on stage. You have to keep going. If you stop at every mistake, you’ll succeed at just one thing: drawing attention to the mistake and away from the real message.

No matter what, keep talking. Sometimes you’ll mispronounce a word; sometimes you’ll use the wrong word; sometimes you’ll get tongue twisted. Maybe your Powerpoint presentation will fail or you’ll lose your train of thought. Whatever it is, be ready with a good-natured joke and move on. Dwelling on a mistake serves no purpose other than breaking your confidence and allowing it to overshadow your presentation. And let’s face it: If you tripped over one or two words in your 15-minute presentation, I’d say there’s more to celebrate than grieve.

Public Speaking Isn’t Perfect

At Effective Presentations, we can’t guarantee you’ll never make a mistake during a presentation, but we can guarantee we’ll equip you with the skills you need to handle a slip-up.  It’s not the end of the world if you make a mistake. (The end of the world would have come for us a long time ago if it was!) A confident speaker can shrug off a mistake and keep moving forward. The mistake will long be forgotten by your audience and you’ll look like a total pro.

How do you recover from a public speaking blooper? Tell us about it in the Comments section. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ where we are always posting great tips and advice to improve your presentation skills.

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