Three ways you should never start your presentation

Not only should you never START your presentation with any of these statements, you should never END with them or include them ANYWHERE in your presentation.

Ready?

1. People fear public speaking more than they fear death.

It's trite, and the only study to ever come up with this conclusion was a survey posted in the Sunday Times of London, in a tiny blurb with no citation, in 1973. Get over it -- it's not true.

2. People would rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy.

This is Jerry Seinfeld's clever version of #1. Again, not original (it was funny when Seinfeld said it... the first time), and not true.

3. Communication is 93% nonverbal.

How many times have you read this in an article about communication or public speaking:

* 7% of communication comes from our words
* 38% of communication comes from our tone of voice
* 55% of communication comes from our body language?

Or, in other words, "our words make up only 7% of the meaning of our communication."

Well, it's bunk.

Albert Mehrabian, the originator of the research that is so often misinterpreted, was studying incongruent verbal and nonverbal communication when a person is expressing feelings. He looked at how subjects responded to images with different facial expressions and recordings of a voice saying a single word with different inflections conveying like, dislike and neutral emotion.

Nowhere in his research does he say that words make up only 7% of communication.

Listen to Mehrabian himself talk about how frustrating he finds this constant misrepresentation of his research in this brief audio interview. This quote says it all:

"Whenever I hear that misquote or misrepresentation of my findings I cringe, because it should be so obvious to anybody who would use any amount of common sense that that's not a correct statement."

Please, for the love of audiences everywhere: If you want to present yourself as stale, unimaginative, derivative and out of touch with reality, then keep on telling these tall tales. Otherwise, stop it.

Be courageous. Let go. Find something new and fresh to say that's actually based on real research and/or your own experiences. You'll be doing the world a huge favor.

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