Technology will fail you.  Audiences will go cold – or fail to show up.  You’ll forget to say something important.  What happens when things go wrong – when you’re staring what seems like failure in the face?  Here are 5 ways to help you recover. 

1. Remember, the audience doesn’t know what you haven’t done or said.

Giving a speech is especially tough for perfectionists – the kind of people who are often asked to give speeches.  Why?  Because you know what you should be doing, or you should have done, and when reality falls short, it’s debilitating.  So try to see it from the audience’s point of view.  If it isn’t wrong in their eyes, it’s not wrong.

2. Enlist the audience’s help with technological problems. 

If you take the burden of solving a technological problem on your shoulders alone, then everyone in the room will be watching you attempt to fix it.  The seconds will seem like eons.  And the audience will rapidly get impatient.  Instead, make it everyone’s problem by asking if there is a really smart, nice technophile in the room.  At least 4 engineers will leap to your rescue and the problem will become everyone’s.  I once had to give a speech at a Harvard Business School event in one of its very high-tech auditoriums.  The speeches were back-to-back that day, and so I had to break my rule of always rehearsing in the room beforehand.  The A/V person was nowhere to be found.  So naturally the sound didn’t work on the videos I wanted to play.  I enlisted the help of a couple of really smart biz school students and the audience as a whole waited patiently with me as they tried to figure out what was wrong.  The students were not able to figure out the problem, and so I gave the speech without the videos.  The audience treated me like a hero, rather than an idiot, because I had carried on without my usual accoutrements. 

3. Be in the moment and remember there are no mistakes. 

It is easy to say and hard to do, but Improv teaches that there are no mistakes, only happy accidents.  This philosophy is fabulous for public speakers.  If you can genuinely stay in the moment and respond to whatever happens with courage and a positive attitude, the audience will love you for it, and forgive you anything that goes wrong – which said audience will probably not notice anyway. 

4. Take a time out and turn the issue over to the audience. 

Sometimes, things go wrong that are apparent to the audience.  There are hecklers, or you go blank, or a person dressed as a gorilla wanders through the hall.  That last actually happened to me once, but that’s another story for another day.  When the glitch is obvious, or you see a train wreck coming, it’s always good to pause and say, “Let me pause here for a moment and take everyone’s temperature.  How are you doing?  What questions do you have for me so far?”  Usually, the several minutes of the time out are enough to get the presentation back on track.

5. If all else fails, throw out the rest of the agenda and go to Q and A.

Just as no one ever complained about a speech that ended early, no one objects to opening up the floor to Q and A.  Of course, the disadvantage is that you’ll most likely lose forward momentum; audiences’ questions meander, circle back, and repeat.  But that’s OK if the audience is engaged.  Just keep a close eye on the energy levels, and cut things off just before the audience starts to flag. 

For an hilarious take on how to cope when Power Point lets you down, here’s a short video from my favorite corporate humorist, Tim Washer.  Enjoy!