Town halls are a popular way to communicate to employees about new benefits, sales updates, new product rollouts and more. Typically, the format includes a couple of figureheads presenting in front of a wide audience, with prepared slides and 10 minutes reserved at the end for Q&A.

Are you bored already? Probably so. While the content relates to employee needs, the presentation is not engaging. Avoid these presentation pitfalls in today’s Promotional Consultant Today to ensure your next all-team presentations are engaging and informative.

Mistake No. 1: Failure to engage. Regardless of how much experience you have making presentations, engaging your audience is an intentional process. People have short attention spans and it is your job to re-engage each member of your audience often throughout your talk.

Some of the best ways to engage and re-engage your audience are to:

-Use compelling, well crafted stories.

-Share just enough information to make your point, leaving the extra details for a report they can read later.

-Connect with others by being a likeable, knowledgeable person talking to each member of your audience. Don’t be a corporate “talking head.”

-Be entertaining by changing your vocal tone, volume and speed. Being a verbal flatliner with little variety will cause you to lose your audience quickly.

To ensure success, structure your presentation to address the key intent, illustrative stories, powerful opening and call to action.

Mistake No. 2: Being a support to your slide presentation. Slides should provide visual support, not take over the show. You should be the authority not the slide show. If you let your slides share the most important information, it might be better to email everyone your slides because they don’t need to hear you.

No matter how effective your slides are, they will never compel an audience to take action as well as you can when you are clear and passionate in your delivery.

Formally practicing your presentation is the only way to make sure that your carefully developed content is presented effectively.

Mistake No. 3: Failure to improve. Your presentations will ultimately define your success and, when done properly, will be remembered and acted on by your audience. While the ability to present information is critical to many professionals, most fail to improve over time, typically as a result of one factor: they don’t get feedback from the right people.

To determine the true effectiveness of your presentation, try the following tips:

-When listeners say “Great job” after your presentation, instead of taking the accolades and saying thank you, ask them questions such as “Tell me something specific you learned?” “What are you going to do differently as a result of what you heard?” “How do you feel about this subject?” By asking specific questions after you speak, you will discover what they really heard. Important: Ask people who come up to you and the ones who don’t.

-Listen to a recording of your presentation as a disinterested, disengaged audience member. Is there anything in your presentation that might grab attention? Were you dynamic and personable?

-Ask a professional who is trained in speaking, connecting to an audience and critical strategic feedback to provide an assessment at least once a quarter.

Source: Mark A. Vickers, a Certified Professional Coach and Certified World Class Speaking Coach, is a communications consultant focused on performance improvement through improved communication and speaking skills. He is known as a creative author and speaker, and for creating the Communications Challenge, an objective way to measure communication effectiveness.