How to bounce back from a shockingly bad presentation

Speaking
Written By Liam Sandford
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You went into a presentation confident, it started well and then something happened. You forgot your key message, an audience member derailed the conversation, you all of a sudden didn’t feel confident anymore. The experience is horrible but we have all been there.

Even when you are a confident speaker you can have a bad rep. It’s what you do afterwards that defines your speaking trajectory. Will you maintain your confidence or will it put you back in the 75% of the population that have a fear of public speaking? With these tips, you will keep your confidence ready to bounce back next time.

Avoiding the circle of doom

After a bad experience it is easy to fall into the mindset of ‘I must avoid what happened last time’. This is a negative starting point for your next presentation. It is the circle of doom. After a negative experience you avoid presentations as much as you can and the negative becomes your norm. Your narrative shifts from ‘I can’ to ‘I can’t’ and it breaks any foundations you have built of successful speaking.

Instead, your mindset should be ‘what one thing am I going to improve this time?’. In fact, that is the mindset regardless of a negative speaking experience.

After your negative experience, reflect on whether anything did go well in the presentation. This might be hard, but you started off confidently so your open might have been strong. Maybe you used a great analogy that helped your audience to understand a key point. Whatever your ‘success moment’ was, make it your focus. That is one thing you want to emulate in your next presentation, it is what you are building on.

You are your harshest critic

You are harsher on your presentation than anybody else would be. You knew the content back to front, you knew the plan, and you spent time putting it together. It’s your content, it is understandable to be defensive about it. But you don’t have to listen to your harsh view of your negative experience. You are your harshest critic. Your audience have already forgotten the presentation.

Not everyone sees the world through your lens, so when you feel everyone is focused on you, that is not the reality. During a presentation, half of the audience is paying attention, listening intently to what you are saying. Simply listening to the information, which is different from being focused on you. The other 50% have a string of other thoughts running through their mind:

  • ‘I am hungry, I hope my stomach doesn’t make a loud noise.’

  • ‘I need to leave to pick the kids up from school soon.’

  • ‘This chair is so uncomfortable.’

Now the point of this is not to suggest that half of your audience is not listening, but instead that people are not paying as close attention to you as you believe them to be. Let go of some pressure because it all comes from you. People are not judging the way you are delivering the presentation, they are not thinking about what you are wearing, they are simply listening to what you are saying, or they are thinking about something completely different.

You are not the negative experience — it doesn’t define you. Remove some pressure.

Your brain is wired to protect you

Your negative experience feels worse than reality because your brain is protecting you. but you don’t have to listen to every thought that goes through your head.

Your brain is telling you to quit, to stay away from another presentation, or to panic at the thought another negative experience might occur. This is part of the circle of doom. Although it is trying to protect you it is harming you.

What can you do about it?

Write down the experience that you want to avoid happening again. Ask yourself:

  • Am I in control of the outcomes?

  • What is the reverse if it goes really well?

  • How likely is it to happen again?

This will help you to gain control of the experience and where you feel it is likely to happen again, you can actively put steps in place to reduce the chances. Actively spending time reducing the likelihood of something happening stacks the odds in your favor.

A negative experience does not need to define you. It happens to everyone — the difference is how you bounce back.

Actionable takeaways

  • After a negative experience seek out another presentation to deliver, or another opportunity to speak in public. Reps is the way to overcome a fear of public speaking (including negative experiences).

  • Find something that did go well. It could be very small, but something to build on is a good place to start. Building is better than avoiding.

  • Write down the scenario you are hoping to avoid. Mitigate any risks of the negative experience happening again. This will help you gain control of the fear it might happen again.

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Liam Sandford
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