Forgot What to Say Next? 5 Tips to Get Back to Your Presentation Smoothly Without Your Audience Noticing Any Mistake
Imagine this: You’re so confident in the middle of your presentation and your audience is engaged but suddenly…
Your mind goes blank.
It’s a moment every speaker fears the most. Even the most polished speakers face this challenge from time to time.
How do you face this and get back to your presentation smoothly?
In this blog, let’s explore 5 strategies that can help you glide memory lapses with such finesse that your audience will not notice any mistake.
1. Use Smart Pauses
When you forget what’s next, don’t use filler words. Instead, take a quiet moment.
This does 3 things:
- Gives you time to think
- Makes people curious about what you’ll say next
- Lets you look in control
Try using pauses when you talk normally. This way, when you need to pause to remember something, it won’t seem odd.
For example, if you’re talking about how computers are changing healthcare and you forget what to say about spotting diseases early, take a pause.
Look at your audience and say, “Let’s think for a moment about what we’ve talked about so far.”
This gives you time to remember while keeping everyone interested.
2. Go Back to What You Said Before
Learn how to smoothly talk about something you already said while you try to remember what’s next.
Say your main idea again, add a new thought about it, and then use this to move to your next point.
Let’s say you’re talking about making cities better and you just finished talking about parks.
If you forget what to say about energy-saving buildings, you could say:
“Let’s think about city parks again. Did you know that parks don’t just look nice? They can also help the whole city use less energy. Speaking of saving energy, let’s talk about smart buildings.”
By going back to parks, you gave yourself time to remember and found a smooth way to talk about buildings.
3. Use the Room to Help You Remember
Before you start talking, imagine putting different parts of your speech in different spots in the room.
If you forget what’s next, walk to the spot where you put your last point.
Use this to help you remember. Then move to the next spot for your next point.
This works better than looking at notes.
For example, if you’re giving a talk about saving the oceans, you might put plastic trash on the left side of the room, too much fishing in the middle, and climate change on the right.
If you forget what to say about plastic, you can walk to the middle of the room.
This helps you remember your fishing facts and looks natural to everyone watching.
4. Ask the Audience a Question
Turn forgetting into a chance to get the audience involved.
Ask a question about what you just said. Let people answer briefly.
Use what they say to get back to your speech. This gives you time to think and gets people more interested.
For example, if you’re talking about how jobs are changing and you forget what to say about work-from-home tools, you could ask, “How many of you work differently now than you did a few years ago?”
As people raise their hands or say something, you can use their answers to say, “These changes show why we need good tools for working from home. Let’s talk about those now.”
5. Have Backup Topics Ready
Prepare extra information for each main part of your speech. If you forget one thing, switch to talking about something else you prepared.
Use this to get back to your main points. Make it sound like you meant to talk about this extra info all along.
This takes more work to prepare, but it gives you different ways to get through your presentation. It helps you recover if you forget something.
For instance, if you’re talking about clean energy and you forget what to say about wind power, you could switch to talking about new solar technology: “Before we talk about wind power, let’s look at some exciting new things happening with solar energy.”
This lets you keep talking about important stuff while you try to remember what you wanted to say about wind power.
How to Prepare Confidently for Your Next Presentation and Make Sure You Won’t Forget Important Details
If you have forgotten some parts of your past presentation, look at it as an opportunity to do better for your next chance.
It’s helpful to use speech frameworks to guide your overall presentation.
This is one of the topics you’ll learn when you attend the 2-Day Live Training.
Darren Tay, the 2016 World Champion of Public Speaking, will be one of the trainers.
Our proven techniques will help you develop a newfound confidence that shines through in every presentation.
You’ll find yourself more relaxed and at ease to turn any speaking opportunity into powerful moments.
Make sure to save your spot for the 2-Day Live Training right now.
