As a speaking coach, I consistently remind my students that their performance from the platform is only a small part of what it takes to be a great professional speaker. One of the elements I stress is a checklist of details they must carefully address right before their talk. These include checking in with the meeting planner, going over the introduction with the person assigned to perform that task, checking that all of the A/V is working correctly, etc. Ensuring that all of these elements are in place makes the process of going on stage and rocking the house much easier and gives everyone the impression that you put the “pro” in professional speaker.
On December 1st, I was delivering a keynote for PaymentsFirst in Birmingham, AL. This was a big presentation for two reasons: 1) I was creating new content for 2018 and delivering it for the first time, and 2) I was videotaping the keynote to harvest new video for my website and social media. The session was to begin at 8:30, so I got to the venue early, checking to make sure the video team was setting up and they had everything they needed. Things seemed to be going swimmingly, and since I was fighting a chest cold, I walked to the restaurant to get some hot tea to boost up my voice for the presentation.
When I got back to the venue, it was 8:05. The CEO of the association approached me and said, “We’ve been looking for you—are you ready to start?” Turns out, the start-time was 8:00, not 8:30.
This was clearly my error, not theirs. I said I was ready and handed her my intro, but, evidently, she was not the one who would be introducing me. Now I was scrambling to find my introducer, quickly go over my intro, tell the video team we were starting now (not in 25 minutes), get on stage and set the PowerPoint to the beginning slide, grab the slide advance clicker, and head backstage. There were five minutes of welcome and announcements, and then I was introduced.
With my head back in the game, I got into my topic and was rocking it… until about 25 minutes into the presentation, when a Gmail reminder popped on the screen instead of my presentation! In my rush, I had forgotten a key element of my pre-presentation checklist: closing down every program on my MacBook except PowerPoint. I had to walk over to the laptop—which was fortunately on the stage—close it, and then continue. It was definitely not the “pro” moment I had expected to deliver for my clients. After closing down Gmail, and remembering that the video cameras were running, I went back to the last starting section of my presentation and resumed from there.
This was not exactly my best example of how to have everything on your checklist covered before a presentation. And it was definitely a learning lesson for me that I must not rely on my years as a professional speaker to carry me through each presentation. The checklist is there for a reason—I must use it to ensure that everything is perfect for me to give the best performance for my client (the meeting planner) so she can in turn be a hero to her clients (the audience). I have now added “confirm the start of the presentation” to my checklist.
But this incident also brings up an important point about keeping calm in a crisis situation. When Gmail bombed my presentation, I simply walked over to the computer, made a joke to the audience about how Google “has to be a part of everything,” shut it down, and then restarted in a place where it would be easy for the videographer to make a clean edit.
Crisis situations will come. Plan ahead and figure out how you can minimize their occurrence, and when they do happen, as calmly and efficiently as possible, reduce the negative effects.