Mistakes Happen—Here’s How to Keep Your Audience Focused

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 can become the most emot 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.