While it’s easy to chuckle at a clever April Fool’s Day prank, it’s a bit harder to appreciate a presentation blunder when the mic’s in your hand. These 5 tips will help you minimize preventable mishaps, gracefully handle mistakes, and keep your audience top of mind:
1. Practice! A lot.
Know Your Stuff: Know your material backward and forward, inside and out.
Pretend You’re Presenting: Practice the same way you will be presenting. Instead of sitting down at your computer with eyes glued to notes, stand up, talk out loud, interact with visual aids, and imagine (or even go to) your presentation venue.
Keep Going: When you make a mistake in practice, don’t restart. Take the opportunity to practice rapidly recovering.
2. Be an Early Bird Strategist.
Arrive Early: Thoroughly scope out the space while seats are still empty.
Plan for Contingencies: What could go awry given the space? Might waitstaff drop a lunch tray, outside noise reach a crescendo, or an audience member’s embarrassing ringtone pierce the air? Plan how you’ll handle potential distractions.
3. Channel Your Inner Tech Boss.
Control the Controllables: Run through your slides before the audience arrives. Check the mic is functioning properly and supplies are in place. Keep spare clicker batteries handy, along with a duplicate flash drive. Have a backup plan for power outage and/or complete technological failure – good thing you know your stuff!
4. Own the Oops.
There will come a day, a speech, a time, when despite ample preparation, your presentation goes awry. Rather than worrying and fretting about the possibility, simply accept you’re in good company – the very best speakers still make mistakes and have unexpected occurrences. What matters most is how you respond when something goes wrong:
Keep Calm and Speak On: Take a moment to collect yourself. Deep breath, pause, chin up, sip your water, continue to smile.
Acknowledge: Don’t pretend the Oops didn’t happen. Acknowledge the mistake, address it if needed, avoid blaming anyone else, and then move on quickly. Chances are, your audience won’t know the difference, so don’t spend time unnecessarily apologizing.
Stay Connected: Your presentation isn’t for you – it’s all about your audience. Keep connected to, and focused on, your audience.
5. Kay Guarnay.
A well-known Sherpa saying, “kay guarnay” roughly translates to “it is what it is.” So you made a mistake, experienced a tech failure, or had an impertinent audience member. Move on.
Rather than embarrassing disasters, mistakes handled with good humor and poise can humanize and endear you to the audience. Your unexpected gaffe, addressed gracefully, strengthens your audience connection by making you more real and relatable.
Put these 5 tips into action to minimize preventable mishaps, eloquently handle inevitable mistakes, and maintain constant vigilance for your audience connection.
