You are giving a very important presentation to the board members and midway through something overwhelms you and you can’t for the life of you remember exactly where you were in the presentation. You are giving a sales pitch on a new product to one of your biggest customers and you just lost it and lost your train of thought right in the middle of a flowing sales presentation. Recovering from a broken speech or presentation is a very important skill that you can develop, It’s just that no one wants to prepare for a failure that may occur because the last thing you want to think of is messing up during your presentation, so we just do not prepare believing that if we are thinking positive we may mess up. The reality is that we should be prepared for a failure during our performance.
Below are four methods that you can employ if something happens to interrupt your flowing presentation. If you practice and understand these remedies to recover from a broken presentation they can save you a lot of stress and embarrassment. So take a look at each of these and just how easily you can employ any of these tips to save rescue yourself from a broken presentation.
Method 1: Make It Look Planned
This is what Jack Elliot did by pausing, saying “This next part is so important that I need to read it to you”, consulting his notes, then starting up again. One key lesson here is that you should always have your notes easily accessible. I keep mine in my pocket as a safely blanket; I rarely need them, but having them there sure make me feel good.
Method 2: Paraphrase Your Previous Content
“You will have to excuse me, but I am so passionate about my topic that I sometimes get ahead of myself. Allow me to review my previous point.” Nine times out of ten, retracing your steps will help you find the path forward.
Method 3: Ask Your Audience A Thought Provoking Question
“What seems to be the most important point so far?” I feel that this technique would work better in presentation that is highly interactive to begin with. However you can use this as a rhetorical question to either buy time with a long pause or to precede a review of your previous content (i.e. a lead-in to Method #2).
Method 4: Review Your Overall Speaking Purpose
Every speech should have a central theme – preferably encapsulated in a three to twelve word catchphrase. Repeating your theme is always welcome by your audience so a memory lapse is a reasonable time to throw it back out there.
In Conclusion, the idea here is to help you be able to think on your feet as well as being able to deliver a presentation. The best presenters have the ability to adapt to their situations and be able to react in a professional manner as to not ”get rattled”. If you employ the above tips you will be able to confidently recover from a broken presentation.
Steven Stasczak is a soft skills trainer who facilitates professional speaking training and team building events/workshops. He spent his earlier career as a top business to business sales manager before beginning coaching and training around the U.S. professionally, his areas of expertise includes developing effective public speaking workshops and helping individuals overcome fear of public speaking. He also performs and facilitates leadership training , time management workshops and team building activities to align your team in the workplace. Steven brings a unique blend of dynamic energy and straightforward talk that allows individuals to dramatically improve their effectiveness as successful team members, leaders, and speakers within organizations.