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How to recover from a memory lapse during a presentation.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

So how do you recover from a memory lapse when you're giving a speech? Let's face it, nobody's perfect and everybody forgets what they're going to say from time to time. It's not a so called senior moment. It can happen when you're five years old. Part of what makes this worse is when you're nervous giving a presentation, your ability to have recall just doesn't work as well. Your body is sending out adrenaline saying run. Don't use your brain, use your brawn to run. So even people who normally have excellent memories often have a much worse memory when they're speaking because of the stress they're feeling. The nervousness impedes their ability to remember. So my big challenge to you is don't put so much stress on yourself to remember anything. When I'm giving a speech, I. I always have notes, typically on 8 and a half 11 sheet of paper folded over, large bullet points, very large font, no more than three words per line. And I have notes for everything I want to say, whether the speech is 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 45 minutes or even an hour. And I have a bullet point to tell me what every slide is for when I use slides. So if I forget what I'm going to say, it just doesn't matter. I glance down at my notes without embarrassment and then I look at what I'm going to say and I start talking from there. So it's not about being perfect, it's about exuding comfort when you speak and not being afraid to pause. I'm going to tell you the biggest difference between great speakers and what happens when they mess up versus everyone else in just a moment.

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Here's what great speakers do when they have a brain freeze, when they forget what they're going to say and it's this. They'll stop, pause. They'll look at someone in the audience and they'll look like, wow, I just said something so important you need a moment to reflect on it. Now, inside, this speaker may be thinking, oh no, no, I forgot what I'm going to say. What am I going to say next? Inside they may be panicking, they may be thinking that. But outwardly they're projecting calm. They're not afraid to pause and they're looking right at people in their audience, and they're not doing anything to suggest there's a problem. Now, the problem for most people, average speakers, beginner speakers, even intermediate speakers, is that they forget what to say instantly on their faces.

Ah.

Oh, my gosh, I forgot what I'm gonna say. Their eyes, their facial expressions, their shoulders, their body language, everywhere is sending a message to people. Hey, everybody, I'm messing up here. I'm screwing up. I'm sorry. I'm a big dummy. So we are sending that message. Sometimes we even articulate, oh, I forgot what I'm gonna say next. Even if you don't say it, if your body language is suggesting you forgot what you're going to say, the whole audience knows it. They're now feeling sorry for you, or they're rooting for you, or they're wondering why you didn't prepare. All of those things are not what you want. You want people focused on the message you have for them. That's going to help them, engage them, make them do what you want them to do so that there can be some sort of mutual benefit. You don't want sympathy, and you don't want them thinking about the structure of your presentation or how well you're prepared or you're not prepared. It needs to come across as seamless. Now, one of the things that gets people into big trouble with forgetting what they want to say is they try to memorize the speech. Big no, no. There are exceptions. I have clients who do TED Talks, and it's the biggest speech of their life. And they realize that a lot of future speaking engagements and book deals are writing on it. So they will spend six months practicing and rehearsing to memorize their speech. I'm going to take a wild guess here and assume that most of your presentations, your Monday morning staff meeting, your quarterly report to the board, and it's not something you're going to spend six months practicing and rehearsing and memorizing. So don't try to memorize a presentation the night before, and then you forget what you're going to say and you're surprised by it. I'd be surprised if you didn't forget with that short of a notice. So don't try to memorize your presentation. Don't try to just wing it. Some people will tell me, oh, teacher, I'm not trying to memorize it. I just know the general area where I want to go. But then they get up, they have no notes whatsoever, and halfway through their presentation, they realize, uh, oh, where do I go next? So there's this sort of awkward pause. Pausing can be fine, but if it's an awkward pause and everyone gets the sense that you're struggling, you're scrambling to figure out what to say, that is a big problem. So the number one solution? Have a simple one page outline so that you don't have to remember anything. Have practiced the speech enough times on video and looked at it not so that you memorized it, but that you have a general sense of where you want to go, how your different ideas connect from one to the other when your slides come up and build a comfort with it. And finally, if you do forget what you want to say. Just don't tell anybody. Act like you can't believe how well this presentation is going. There is a crowd psychology. If your audience senses that you're doing everything exactly the way you want it to, you're going to convince a lot of them and they'll never be aware that you had a momentary memory lapse. More in a moment on a new book I think you should check out.

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I'm going to do something now that we're urged as school children not to do something I wouldn't normally do, but I'm going to judge a book by its cover, specifically its cover title. There's a new book out called there's not an App for that by a fellow communications consultant, Carrie Pfeffer. This is a longtime reporter and now communications consultant who I just love the title there's not an App for that and it's specifically about communication. And in the book, the author states that there is no simple app for being sincere, for being genuine, for being interesting. Now I'm looking at a news report summary that was in a local TV newscast. So I do want to stress I've noticed, read the book and vetted it thoroughly. But I can tell from the news analysis that this consultant is on the right track. Specifically, the advice is grab a trusted friend or a video camera and give it a go until it looks and feels right. That's what I've been saying all along too, although I would stress grab a trusted friend and a video camera, not or so that's the only area where I would disagree. It's not enough to practice in front of a friend. You need to practice on video until you love what you see. Now you could say, well, there's an app for that. There's an app for the video on your cell phone. Okay? If you want to look at it from that standpoint, fine. You can also use any video camera. You can use a 25 year old VHS camera if you still have one that works. It doesn't need to be an app, but this book is a great reminder that not everything is a simple technology fix of a little app that takes you to a source of data. The source of data isn't going to make you a better speaker. It's not going to make you more interesting, more likable, more engaging, friendlier or more memorable. You're going to have to do that. And the number one way to do that is through practice. As this author states, with a friend and with a video camera. So check out the book. Once I review it, I'll give you a more detailed review. But again, the title of the book, there's not an App for that by Carrie Pfeffer. I hope I'm pronouncing the name correctly. P F E F F E R. Check out the book on Amazon. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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