On this bank holiday Monday, there will be people fretting over the fact that they have to give a presentation at work tomorrow. And people can get really anxious in the run up to having to give a presentation, whether it's to three people in a board room, or to three hundred people at a seminar in an aircraft hangar. Barry Brophy, author of Awful Presentations: Why We Have Them and How to Put Them Right, joined Dave Fanning – sitting in for Ryan – this morning to talk about presentations and why so many people worry so much about giving them. The first thing he told Dave was that people need to think of their presentations as conversations.

"Because it's a planned conversation, it's not spontaneous, they undo an awful lot of the good stuff."

A presentation should be viewed as a big opportunity, Barry says, if the presenter keeps it conversational and makes good use of the "cinema behind your head".

"The whole idea of the book was to look at what people do wrong, in terms of what they don't do, in presentations, that they do do in conversations."

Barry claims that there are mental biases at work behind our sabotaging of our own presentations. Dave assumes that he's talking about nerves and all the problems nervousness bring, and how we should try to get on top of them, but apparently not:

"Nerves aren't the problem, that's the point. Nerves give you energy."

So it's not nerves. Nerves are your friend. Tell that to your best man and see what his response is. Barry prefers to talk about caution, rather than nerves and caution creeps in during the preparation, sometimes months in advance. People will avoid unusual and ultimately interesting stuff to try to please everyone in their audience, but that means your material won't stand out.

"People actually filter out all the good stuff. They don't tell stories in presentations, even though they do tell them in conversations."

Some people will tell the good stories in a Q&A at the end of their presentation, but that stuff should have been used during the presentation itself, not tagged on at the end. People naturally use stories during regular conversations all the time and the trick with good presenting is to slip in the stories seamlessly into your presentation to keep you and your audience interested.

"People will identify with your material, if they can identify with you."

Sometimes the facilities can be a little overwhelming: "It's a bit like The Wizard of Oz in some of these places, where the screen dwarfs the presenter." But the slides that go up on that screen are some of the most difficult things to get right, according to Barry. Most slides, he maintains, are "absolutely awful". Using simple images and video means you remain the focus and the slides retain a supportive role. A simple but striking image or video clip remains with the audience far longer than unadorned speech.

"I would say it's all about content. Your conversational instincts kick in if your content is good."

The best weapon in the arsenal of the presenter, though, is the story. If you have stories to tell, you'll take people with you. Dave wondered about eye contact and Barry agreed that it's essential that a presentation contact with the audience.

"Interaction isn't an activity, it's a frame of mind."

If you have to give a presentation, or even a wedding speech, or if you've ever had to sit through the 20-minute father of the bride speech and wondered how something could go so wrong for so long, this is well worth a listen.

Awful Presentations: Why We Have Them and How to Put Them Right by Barry Brophy is published by Bennion Kearney.

And you can hear Dave's full discussion with Barry, as well as the rest of The Ryan Tubridy Show here: