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How to bounce back from a shockingly bad presentation
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.
