For some, giving a speech is just part of the job. These people are constantly doing sales pitches or addressing the board. For others, giving a speech is an opportunity to establish their credentials or gain more visibility. In any case, not everyone is a good speaker, and some people have really annoying habits when giving a speech.

I was at a two-day conference last week and I heard A LOT of speeches. Some were good, some were fine and some were just plain annoying. Here is a list of actual behaviors observed last week. If you are giving a speech, please keep your audience in mind and try to avoid any of these!

<strong>Talking too loudly:</strong> do not  yell into a microphone please!

<strong>Talking too softly</strong>: yeah, the microphone amplifies your voice, but won't help if you are whispering. Besides, to me talking softly means that you are unsure of yourself.

<strong>Sounding unsure:</strong> mostly this happens when you end each and every sentence with a question mark, so your speech sound like  this: Hi? Today I am going to be talking about widgets? Widgets are the fastest growing segment in the market?

<strong>Sounding too sure: </strong>also known as sounding arrogant or dismissive.

<!-- 		@page { margin: 0.79in } 		P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --><strong>Self promoting:</strong> say you are asked to talk about literature in the eighteenth century, but all you talk about is the book you just wrote, inspired by the 18th century.

<strong>Being off-topic:</strong> you were given a topic, try to address it. No one came to hear your views on extra-terrestrials if the topic was the planetary system.

<strong>Hogging the spotlight:</strong> if you are speaking on a panel, that means the other people get to speak to. If you are told you have five minutes, we should not still be hearing from you fifteen minutes later.

<strong>Not answering questions: </strong>this applies to speeches that have an audience Q&amp;A component. If you don't know the answer to a question, it is OK to say that you don't know. It is not OK to go off on a tangent or ignore the content of the question and add more time to your speech.

Do you have any pet peeves about speeches? Any advice? Please share in the comments.

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