Comments on: How to recover from a presentation disaster

By: Weekly links roundup by Communications from DMN

Weekly links roundup by Communications from DMN — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:32:17 +0000

[...] Advice on how to recover from a nightmare speaking experience [...]

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:36:39 +0000

Hi Roger
Thank you for sharing your experiences. You’ve made the point I was making even more concrete. And I think it’s so useful for presenters at the beginning of the presenting journey to realise this so that they don’t beat themselves up necessarily.

And thank you for your comments on my blog .
Olivia

By: Roger C. Parker

Roger C. Parker — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 04:26:38 +0000

Dear Olivia:
This is a great post, one I can personally identify with.

For several years, I traveled around the USA presenting day-long graphic design seminars. It never ceased to amaze me how difficult it was to judge the quality of my presentations from the front of the room.

There would be days when I felt really good about the presentation, yet the evaluations were terrible. Other days, I felt I was presenting to cardboard cut-outs, and I’d get sparkling evaluations.

Often, days after a “poor” presentation, I’d receive letters talking about how my presentation helped attendees change careers!

I also appreciated your “audiences” are different subhead, and encourage you to return to the topic in the future.

Anyway, I’m referring this post to my clients, and am glad to have discovered your blog and empathetic writing style.

Roger

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:01:05 +0000

Hi Zach
Thanks for the points you’ve made. I agree with you that we can be imperfect judges of our own performance – and also can be inaccurate in trying to mindread the audience.
Olivia

By: Zach Robbins

Zach Robbins — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:07:16 +0000

Emma’s case is very common. Whenever you present it’s very important to remain confident no matter how you think your audience is responding. It’s good to be able to read an audience, but not to allow what seems like bad responses to discourage you during your presentation or after.

Getting feedback is a very important tool in gaging your performance and relying too heavily on your own imperfect judging is not.

I’ve been a part of creating a community of speakers that will hopefully provide constructive feedback for people like Emma and myself. Hope it catches on and we can all benefit from it!

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 10:23:54 +0000

Hi Todd

I think it can be useful for individuals to examine their own thinking and identify the specific thought patterns that contribute to their feelings. This is the basis of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy which is a mainstream therapy for severe anxiety and depression. It’s a useful approach for reducing the fear of public speaking too. Once a person becomes skilled at identifying their faulty thinking and replacing that with more useful thought patterns they then have more control over their feelings.

I do agree that it is also useful for a person to get external feedback to provide an objective reference point.

Olivia

By: Todd Sheridan

Todd Sheridan — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:59:47 +0000

I found Emma’s case or example above typical of many of the responses I get from people wanting support around presenting. One of the first things that they mention to me is that their last presentation was a real ‘flop’ or ‘disaster’ and, that they felt they not only let the audience down but themselves as well. My first suggestion to them is that we examine why we are so harsh on ourselves and once we are able to come up with some reasonable responses we then move on. There are so many unknowns that each individuals brings along with them that it is fruitless trying to outguess what it is that they may be thinking, or how they are feeling at that moment. However, those who are continually looking for ways to improve in their presenting skills, will always see things that probably don’t exist, until someone else can verify otherwise.