Guest Post by Lisa Braithwaite

This might be the biggest concern of would-be speakers: “What if I forget what I was going to say?”

The horror! Imagine: You’re standing in front of a room full of people. The seconds tick by loudly as you frantically search your memory for the next point in your talk. You clench the lectern, knuckles white, as the audience becomes restless and start shifting in their seats. You see them looking at each other, some with pity in their eyes, others with disappointment. Your mouth is dry and you feel hot as your face turns bright red and you begin to perspire. You start to feel woozy . . . and you crumble to the ground, mortified to death.

Now that truly sounds like a public speaking horror movie and it’s a movie that plays in a lot of speakers’ heads. But like most horror movies, it’s pretty far removed from reality. With proper preparation, both physical and mental, you can handle anything that comes your way onstage, including the dreaded “mind going blank” monster. Slay the monster with these helpful tips.

Pointer 1: Bring your notes

Don’t let anyone tell you that using notes makes you less professional. The key to using notes properly is to keep them out of sight and only refer to them when necessary.

Keep your notes to one piece of paper, single- or double-sided, so you won’t find yourself shuffling through note cards or flipping through paragraphs of text if you do lose your place.

On your piece of paper, use simple bullets or a clean outline format in large text to lay out your main points and supporting points. When practicing your presentation, use these bullets to trigger the chronology of ideas in your head. Make sure to practice enough that you remember the presentation from start to finish; the notes are not a crutch, but rather a backup tool.

When giving your talk, keep your notes on a table or on the lectern to your side. When you need a refresher about what comes next, take a few steps over and casually look at your notes.

This will not offend your audience or send them into shock. In fact, it makes you look more human, rather than a perfectly polished and mechanical speaker. And taking a step or two to view your notes serves more than one purpose; it adds movement to your talk, and it allows a healthy pause for the audience to process the information you’ve been giving them. This will feel perfectly natural to your audience.

You don’t want to be pacing back and forth to your notes throughout your talk, which is why practice is important. However, just having the notes close by can act as a “security blanket,” helping you to feel more comfortable knowing that they’re there if you need them. You might find that you don’t need the notes at all.

Pointer 2: Acknowledge that you’ve lost your train of thought

If it does happen that you forget your place, and it’s going to take longer than a quick glance at your notes to get back on track, it’s better to acknowledge this fact to the audience than to try and hide it. The audience can tell when you’re not being honest with them or trying to fake them out. Make a human connection with them and say, “Hold on a sec, I’ve lost my place.” Then take those two steps to your notes and find your place.

Seasoned speakers do this all the time, and the audience can relate. They won’t judge you, because it’s happened to them before as well. They will sympathize with you, not criticize you. The audience is not your enemy; they want you to succeed and they want to support you.

While doing your pre-presentation practice and preparation, visualize yourself experiencing this situation. Visualize yourself acknowledging that you’ve lost your place, finding your next point in your notes, and moving forward. Visualize yourself handling this situation with calmness and confidence, and even a little self-effacing humor if you feel so inclined. And visualize the audience as your encouraging, nurturing friend rather than your critical, judgmental enemy.

Pointer 3: Move on and forget about it

Now that you’ve acknowledged to the audience that you’ve lost your place, and you’ve looked at your notes, go ahead and pick up where you left off. Make light of the moment; say, “Now where were we?” and just keep going.

Think of the last sporting event you watched. You might have seen an athlete make a mistake or fall down at some point during the event. Did that athlete sit there, pounding on his forehead, saying “Stupid, stupid, stupid”? Of course not! That athlete jumped up and got right back into the game.

Remember the scene in “A League of Their Own” where the Tom Hanks character says to the sobbing player, “There’s no crying in baseball”? Well, there’s no time for feeling sorry for yourself in sports, and there’s no time for feeling sorry for yourself in public speaking.

While you’re on stage, you are responsible to the audience. You are responsible for serving them, for giving them the information they want or need, for being their guide. Don’t waste their time feeling sorry for yourself and dwelling on your mistake. The sooner you move on, the sooner they will, too.

After your talk, take some time to analyze what happened and determine why you lost your place. Write it down so that the next time you are preparing for a presentation, you remember what happened and incorporate this into your practice.

By using clearly written notes, taking enough time to practice, visualizing yourself managing a potential mishap, and reframing the way you see the audience, you can handle any interruption or disruption. Whether it’s the building alarm going off, the sprinkler system malfunctioning, or the dreaded “mind going blank” monster, you are the star and the director of the movie playing in your head. Make it a blockbuster!

Lisa Braithwaite works with individuals to uncover their challenges and build their strengths in presenting themselves confidently as speakers. Find your voice with public speaking coaching! Sign up for the Presentation Pointers newsletter or a free consultation at www.coachlisab.com. Check out the Build Skills and Confidence e-course and the Speak Schmeak blog.

photo credit: califrayray

The following is a guest post by Anthony Tham, the Public Relations Manager for Travel Salem. We met Anthony at our recent presentation on the Social Media Landscape to the Salem PRSA in early November. It wasn’t long after that Anthony found himself giving seminars on social media. Here are his thoughts on that series of presentations:

Public speaking, one of the most feared things people have to do, got added on to my  list of things to do a couple of weeks ago.  As the person responsible for the social media strategy at Travel Salem, I was called upon to present social media seminars/trainings to local small businesses and organizations aimed at helping them promote themselves. Naturally, I imagined myself in front of a group with a PowerPoint presentation using social media lingo such as “tweets” and “RSS feeds.” Isn’t that what public speaking is all about — standing up and broadcasting information to a group of people? I quickly realized I needed to take a break from the traditional “presentation” to create an atmosphere of collaboration and information sharing.

Unlike traditional presentations — usually a form of one-way communication — the seminars I created strived for interactive, two-way communication. Social media is all about sharing and generating dialogue. You share by interacting; you interact by speaking; and it is through speaking where information is learned. The same concept applies online via various communication tools such as Twitter or Facebook.

The seminars were split into two categories; novice and advanced. Attendees had the option of attending one or both seminars and there were two sessions daily for three days with a combined session on the fourth day. I intentionally kept group sizes small to foster more dynamic participation among attendees, with the average size being about 11 people.

Many social networking tools fall under the umbrella term called social media. The seminars focused on the major players; Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and blogs.

With such a wide range of skill levels, many different questions about social media were thrown at me:

• What’s all the hype about?
• How can I use social media to attract more business?
• How do I do all this without wasting a bunch of time?
• How to reach journalists, bloggers and influencers?
• What are effective strategies to reach my goals?
• Which tools should be used to network with potential customers and other networking opportunities?
• Where do I start?

What I learned:

1)      Adjust teaching style to audience. People familiar with social media use words and phrases like “tweetdeck” or “search engine optimization” like its part of their everyday vocabulary. When you’re leading a conversation with individuals who are new to social media, it’s important to rephrase and explain not just key terms, but any language specific to the topic. For example, you have to explain that people “follow” you on Twitter whereas people would “fan” you on Facebook.

2)      Facebook is pretty popular. Each session lasted an hour and a half. Unintentionally, the majority of the time was spent on Facebook. With 350 million users worldwide, I completely understand why we were “stuck” on this topic for so long.

3)      More time please! It didn’t matter that I decided to split up the sessions based on skill level. Both novice and advanced sessions ran over time – there were just too many things to talk about. I realized I needed to either add more time or divide the sessions based on topic (e.g. just Facebook or just blogs).

4)      “Build it and they shall come.” So how does a quote from the movie “Field of Dreams” tie into the social media seminars? No, I didn’t build a baseball field. However, what was built was a community of individuals who are all interested in learning about social media and how to use it to enhance their businesses, nonprofit organization, startup company, etc. That was the message we focused on as we promoted the seminars to local businesses and organizations. We wanted to encourage open dialogue among participants; where knowledge is shared among the group, not just by me the “presenter.” Each person brought different social media goals to the table. As we shared our goals, our ideas, and creative ways to use social media, the community that we built grew stronger and more equipped to tackle each individual goal after the seminars ended.

Public speaking isn’t so bad, at least when you’re speaking with, and not in front of, your audience. The seminars brought together a community of individuals representing businesses and organizations looking to learn about social media. As I led the groups in discussion, I quickly became aware that I wasn’t giving them a presentation; I was just a member of a community collaborating and sharing information. Just like social media.

Travel Salem’s mission is to attract meeting, convention and tourism business to the region, and to enhance and contribute to the overall identity and economic well being of the region. Travel Salem’s  social media efforts on  Twitter and Facebook , combined with other tools  such as posting photos on Flickr and videos on Youtube, allow Travel Salem to extend its reach to regional, national and international travelers, as well as local consumers. Working with local and regional partners, and those involved in social media, Travel Salem is able to leverage each other to create a community that shares information globally about the Salem region; which will ultimately lead to economic impact for the region.

Early in November at our presentation to the Salem PRSA, we met a number of cool people, including Ed Kramer. Ed met us for coffee at Salem’s Governor’s Cup a few weeks later. An independent marketing consultant, Ed came to Salem from Silicon Valley, where he was in the high-tech PR game, heading the public relations for both Oracle and XSoft, the software-marketing division of Xerox. A good deal of his focus was on internal communications, and he told this story about what employee buy-in can mean to an organization.

Years ago when the U.S. was preparing for its first Apollo mission, a group of organizational researchers were finishing a day of interviews at the NASA Space Center on Merritt Island, Fla. It was after hours. They were tired and wanted to get back to their hotel. As they were leaving they spotted a man putting a mop away in a closet on the lower floor of the building. They were interested if this person worked directly for NASA or for an outside cleaning company. One of the researchers approached him and said, “Excuse me. Can you tell me what you do here?” He looked up proudly and said, “I’m helping put the first man on the moon.”

Imagine if every person who worked for you felt they were as critical a member of your team as that gentleman did. What a powerful force that would be in helping your organization meet its goals!

Thanks Ed…we appreciate you sharing!