by Gilda Bonanno LLC
It happens. Despite your preparation and practice, you make a mistake during your presentation. You quote the wrong statistic, mispronounce the product name or stumble over your words while providing an example. What do you do?
First of all, remember that it seems
worse to you than it does to the audience.
In some cases, they didn't even notice your mistake. Don't call attention to it by stopping in
mid-sentence, looking horrorstruck and apologizing profusely. Simply pause, take a breath, restate the
statistic, word or phrase correctly and keep moving forward. There is no need to dwell on it or make a big
deal out of it. Keep going with the rest
of your presentation as planned.
Sometimes the mistake is obvious to most
people, but it’s a relatively small error. For example, I sometimes make up
words - accidentally when I’m talking too fast or on purpose to make a point. During
a workshop on presentation skills, I wanted to emphasize that most people aren’t
born as naturally good presenters, but they can become good with practice. I said, “presentation skills are learnable
and practice-able,” and then followed up with, “I just made up the word ‘practice-able’
to help you remember this point.”
Sometimes the mistake is obvious to
everyone in the room and it's not small.
For example, at a presentation early in my speaking career, I ended with
a handout that misspelled the client company's name. I didn't realize it until I got off stage, heard
some laughs and someone in the audience pointed it out to me. I immediately got back on stage, turned the microphone
back on and admitted that I had made a mistake spelling the company's
name. I apologized and then made a
humorous comment about needing to hire an assistant to proofread. It was such a glaring error that I could not
ignore it. Even if everyone hadn't
noticed it yet, they would definitely notice it when they read the handout or
when someone else made a joke about it.
By taking responsibility for my mistake and apologizing, I was able to
salvage the situation and no permanent damage was done. (And you can be sure that the experience
taught me to triple-proofread my handouts, especially the company name!)
When presenting, your goal is not to be
perfect. Perfection is unrealistic and
unnecessary. Your goal is to communicate
and that does not require perfection. We
are all human, which means that we make mistakes – how you handle your mistakes
is what matters.
© Gilda Bonanno LLC - Gilda Bonanno serves as a trusted advisor to executives and entrepreneurs to transform their communication, presentation and leadership skills. She has worked with companies on 4 continents, from Chicago to Shanghai and Rio to Rome. The instructional videos on her YouTube channel have received over 2 million views and her e-newsletter has reached subscribers in over 45 countries since 2008. For other articles or to receive Gilda's e-newsletter, visit www.gildabonanno.com