A live-stream segment in which TJ Walker warns that technical problems (burned-out bulbs, power loss, frozen laptops, compatibility issues, stuck slides) are inevitable during PowerPoint presentations and emphasizes controlling your reaction rather than the problem. He advises presenters not to panic, apologize, or draw attention to the failure; instead keep speaking, engage the audience, and continue the presentation. Walker illustrates this with a personal anecdote where his laptop had lost power (plug unplugged), he continued talking and plugged it in while keeping the audience focused, then referenced the incident later as a teaching point.
Chapters
If you give enough PowerPoint presentations, at some point you're going to have problems, I guarantee. I hope it doesn't happen to you, but it will happen. Bulbs will burn out, laptops will lose power, won't be compatible, something will just stop. A screen will stick, a slide won't. Advance problems are inevitable. You can't control the problems, you can control the how you react in the worst case situation. You fall apart in front of your audience and that's what they remember. Or you spend so much time apologizing or looking embarrassed, they might feel sorry for you. But you don't want sympathy from your audience. You want them focused on your messages. So here's my advice. You've got to learn how to just get through it without causing too much distraction to your audience. Obviously, if the ceiling caves in and you're injured, don't try to continue the presentation. You can stop and talk about it. If all the power goes out and everyone is in pitch black and there are no windows, obviously you have to address, and that happened to me once, by the way, you have to address that issue. But if it's other things, the bulb burning out, the computer, freezing the laptop freezing, compatibility issue, loss of power, you have to just keep going. Remember, nobody's there for your PowerPoint presentation. They are there to get ideas from you that could possibly help them or interest them. So if the slides all of a sudden don't work or the bulb burns out, you got to keep talking. Don't ever, ever forget that. Let's look at a typical scenario. This has happened to me before. I'm giving a PowerPoint presentation, everything's going smoothly, everything's going well, and all of a sudden I look up, there's nothing on the screen. I look over at my laptop, it is dark. I'm trying to troubleshoot in my own mind while still talking to my audience about public speaking skills and how to deliver a PowerPoint speech effectively. And I glance down and I see that the plug from my laptop is not plugged in, it's getting no electricity. So I've now quickly deduced the problem with everything is I simply lost power in the laptop and that's why nothing else is working. So what did I do? I didn't say, oh my gosh, folks, I'm such an idiot. I feel like a fool. I didn't want to cause a lot of attention because I wanted to to focus the attention of the audience on the particular issue at hand, on some other aspect of public speaking at the moment. So I continued talking, walked around the room, tossed a question out to one of the audience members in the front of the room while everyone's head turned to look to that person. I bent down, plugged the laptop in, things powered back and I was able to seamlessly go to the next slide a couple of minutes later when I needed to. The audience never had any idea there was a problem. Now later on that day I did reference it to help illustrate the point of how you should handle yourself when there is a problem with your PowerPoint but I didn't want to call attention to it at that moment. So there are going to be problems, there are going to be slides that just stick. Don't advance bulbs that burn out, you can't control that. You can control your reactions. Don't panic, don't apologize, don't even talk about it unless absolutely necessary. Keep the focus on the ideas of your presentation and you'll be in good shape.
