TJ Walker explains how presenters should handle mistakes: avoid unnecessary apologies that make the mistake the most memorable part of the presentation, instead offer brief factual corrections and maintain calm, confident delivery. He notes exceptions (serious incidents like safety hazards) where an apology is appropriate, and closes with a call-to-action to improve communication skills.
Chapters
You're giving a presentation, everything's going really well, but then you make a mistake. Hey, you're human and you want to be transparent. You want to be likable, you want to be real, relatable. So what do you do? I'm sorry. Oh, I made a blunder. You make a joke out of it. Here's the problem. If you apologize, especially if you apologize excessively during a presentation, it can overwhelm the substance of your message. Because when you apologize, quite often that's when, ahahaha. Emotion is coming across your face. It's. It can become the most emotional moment of an entire presentation. And the problem with that, it's not that emotions are bad. The problem is emotions are memorable. So if the most memorable moment of your entire presentation is you apologizing for something, then that's what people will remember. Not the actual content. Not why they should invest in you, not why they should support your organization with all the budget funding you're requesting for next year. They're remembering that emotion of the mistake. So we live in the real world. Mistakes happen. Blunders happen. Nobody's perfect. I'm not perfect. Nobody's expecting you to be perfect. It is human nature to make a mistake, say, oops, my bad, I'm sorry. Am I asking you to be arrogant and cocky and act like I'm perfect all the time? How dare anyone suggest I'm less than perfect. No, that's not what I'm suggesting. What I am suggesting is that for the vast, vast majority of mistakes you make in a presentation, don't apologize. If you need to make a correction, just say the actual number is 2 million, not 2 billion, and keep going. Don't say, oh my God, I said billion. That's crazy. That's so stupid. Why did I say that? I meant to say 2 million. No, just say the number is 2 million and keep going. Give yourself a brief little correction, trying not to act like you're flustered, embarrassed, and overly emotional about it. If all you do is forget a word for a second, don't say, oh, I'm sorry, senior moment. Just stop, pause, give yourself a second, Wait for the word to come to you. Keep going. No one is going to remember that it took you a second to remember that word. If you repeat yourself, start a sentence, but don't complete it and go back to the beginning of the sentence and start again. Don't apologize. People do that all day long, every day in conversation. Even extremely intelligent, articulate people do that. No one's going to notice. No one's going to care. You want to act at all times when you're presenting. Comfortable, confident, relaxed, conversational. Not that you think you're infallible, not that you think you're perfect. But you're there. You're sharing ideas, you're sharing information. You're excited about it, you're passionate about it. You stumble over a word or you get the wrong word there occasionally. Don't worry about it. Do not apologize. Now, if something dramatic happens, a piece of the ceiling falls down when you're giving a presentation, it's your office and someone almost gets into injured, of course you can comment on that. You can say, I apologize for the ceiling falling down on you. We're almost done. Everything appears to be safe. You want to try sitting over here? Or you may have to evacuate and give your presentation in the parking lot, but that's rare. It's extraordinarily unlikely that that's the sort of thing that happens to you. Typically in a presentation, the more common thing is you get a word wrong, a fact wrong, it takes you a second to remember because you're a little bit nervous and you waste time apologizing. And ultimately, your audience doesn't care if you're perfect. They don't want you to waste their time. They don't want to have to extend sympathy for you for making mistakes. They just want some idea that's interesting and useful and memorable. If you can do that for your audience, they will love you and no apologies will be necessary. If you want to be more successful, then improve your communication skills. The best way to do that, smash the subscribe button right now.
