5 Pieces of Bad Public Speaking Advice You Need to Stop Following
After more than a decade of coaching public speakers and helping people elevate their presentations, I've encountered my fair share of questionable advice. Some of these tips have been repeated so often that they've become gospel — but that doesn't make them true. In fact, following them can actively sabotage your performance on stage. Here are the worst pieces of public speaking advice I've come across, and what you should do instead.
1. "Imagine the Audience in Their Underwear"
You knew this one was coming. It's arguably the most famous piece of public speaking advice ever given — and it's absolutely terrible. It's creepy, it's weird, and there's no basis of truth to it.
The supposed logic is that by imagining a scary audience in a vulnerable state, you'll feel more confident. But here's the problem: this approach vilifies your audience. It frames them as a hostile group of people who are out to get you, ready to scowl and tear your speech apart. That's simply not the case.
The truth is that most audiences genuinely want to see you succeed. They're rooting for you. They want to enjoy what you have to say. So instead of picturing them in their underwear, try this far more effective technique: look for the friendly faces.
Some people naturally have a resting expression that looks stern or aggressive. If you fixate on those faces, you'll spiral into self-doubt. Instead, find the people who are smiling, nodding, and making eye contact. Lock in with them. When you land a joke and hear someone laugh, connect with that person. That energy and positive reinforcement will give you a genuine confidence boost — something no amount of imaginary underwear can provide.
Still scan the rest of the room, of course. But when you finish a thought, come back to those friendly faces. That's what builds real confidence on stage.
2. "Memorize Your Speech Word-for-Word"
This sounds like solid advice on the surface. Write out your full speech, practice it until you know every word by heart, and deliver it perfectly. What could go wrong?
Quite a lot, actually. Memorizing word-for-word creates zero room for adaptability. If you're locked into reciting every sentence exactly as written, you lose the ability to go with the flow. What happens when someone raises their hand with a question? When there's a distraction that captures the whole room's attention? When something spontaneous occurs that would be awkward for you to ignore? If your entire speech is memorized verbatim, these moments can freeze you completely.
There's another major downside: if you forget a single sentence, you're stuck. You're handcuffed to a rigid script with no way to recover. The likelihood of freezing on stage goes way up.
A far more effective approach is to learn your speech in chunks or general categories. Practice it, sure — and over time, your delivery will naturally become consistent. But it doesn't need to be identical every time. Here's the secret your audience doesn't know: they have no idea what's in your notes. If you forget to mention something you'd planned to include, nobody knows it was ever supposed to be there. They only know what you present to them.
When you build your speech around flexible categories rather than rigid scripts, forgetting a train of thought is no longer catastrophic. You can adapt, transition smoothly, or simply jump to your next idea.
Pro tip: If you're using slides, let them serve as visual notes. Instead of writing out everything you plan to say, use a single large image or one or two words that trigger your memory of the topic. This gives you guidance without chaining you to a script.
3. "Always Keep Your Speech Short and Sweet"
This advice stems from the popular notion that people have short attention spans — that with all the distractions of modern life, audiences can only focus for a brief window. So the takeaway becomes: keep it short, no matter what.
I understand the spirit behind this, but it's not universally true. The real issue isn't length — it's whether your speech is compelling.
People will gladly give their attention for an hour, ninety minutes, even two hours if they feel they're getting genuine value. Think about your favourite long-form podcasts, keynote speakers, or TED talks that run well past the typical time limit. When the content is engaging, the audience stays locked in.
Conversely, even a five-minute presentation can lose an audience if it's poorly structured, delivers no value, and fails to capture attention. Length isn't the variable that matters most — engagement is.
Instead of obsessing over keeping things short, focus on these three principles:
- Hook your audience immediately — start with a story, ask a thought-provoking question, or share a powerful statistic.
- Deliver genuine value through the body of your speech.
- Conclude by wrapping full circle, tying your ending back to where you began.
Do these things well, and your audience will stay with you regardless of how long you speak.
4. "Read Your Slides So the Audience Can Follow Along"
This might be the single most damaging piece of advice for anyone who uses PowerPoint or slide presentations — and it's a mistake I've seen countless speakers make, especially those early in their journey.
The advice goes something like this: put all the information on your slides and read along with the audience so they can follow. It sounds helpful. In practice, it's a disaster. Here's why:
- It signals a lack of expertise. If you're reading the words off a screen, it suggests you haven't internalized the material — you're just narrating text in real time.
- It destroys your body language. To read slides, you have to turn your back to the audience. Body language is one of the most powerful tools a speaker has for immersing and connecting with a room. Turning away from your audience eliminates it entirely.
- It's boring. Nobody wants to watch someone read to them, especially someone facing the wrong direction whose voice isn't even projecting properly into the room.
- It doesn't even work. Text-heavy slides are distracting, the font is usually too small, and most people in the room can't read it anyway.
What works far better is using large images and minimal text — think one or two words in 100-point font that anyone can see from anywhere in the room. Each slide should serve as a visual anchor for whatever topic you're discussing, not a teleprompter.
This approach frees you to walk across the stage, make eye contact, use vocal variety, and employ all the elements that make a speech truly compelling. Your slides should support your message, not replace you as the messenger.
5. "Great Speakers Are Born, Not Made"
This is perhaps the most harmful lie in public speaking, and it persists because we love the romantic notion of natural talent. We picture someone striding onto a stage with zero preparation and delivering a breathtaking, impromptu speech that earns a standing ovation. And yes — those unicorn humans do exist. But they are the vast minority.
Most of us, myself included, are far better served by practice. The idea that public speaking is simply a talent you're either born with or not — that there's nothing you can do about it — is flatly untrue.
I've witnessed this transformation firsthand many times, particularly through my years as a Toastmasters member. I've watched people who were genuinely frightened, who stumbled through every single sentence, who had no confidence whatsoever in front of an audience. And then they worked on their craft. They practiced. They honed their skills. And much quicker than you'd expect — sometimes within just a few months — they looked like entirely different people.
The confidence, the ability to stand before an audience without notes, to draw people in with stories and command a room — all of it was developed, not inherited.
If you've ever told yourself, "I'm just not a public speaker," I want you to recognise that for what it is: a mindset, not a fact. I've seen too many examples of people who believed they could never be good speakers transform into phenomenal communicators to accept that lie.
The Bottom Line
Bad public speaking advice is everywhere, and much of it has been repeated so often that it feels like common sense. But imagining your audience in their underwear, memorizing scripts verbatim, obsessing over brevity, reading from your slides, and believing talent is innate — these are all traps that will hold you back rather than help you grow. The good news? Every one of these myths has a better alternative rooted in genuine connection, adaptability, and deliberate practice. Public speaking is a skill, and like any skill, it can be learned, refined, and mastered. The only question is whether you're willing to put in the work.