As a little boy, I was taught to say sorry when I made mistake. If I accidentally spilled something, I would say sorry. If I didn’t say excuse me and bumped into you, I’d say excuse me and then say sorry. If I didn’t want to share my shiny new toy because I wanted to simply play with it first, I had to share it and then say sorry. We were all taught that saying sorry was the right thing to do and the first thing you do, when you make a mistake. The older you get, the more we drift away from apologizing. That doesn’t mean the situations that cause you to feel like you need to say sorry disappear. Two things happen: We get better at avoiding those situations and many simply don’t care to apologize like that anymore. Now, when you bump into someone, instead of I’m sorry, you may instead only say excuse me. But depending on how you feel, you may say nothing at all. Personally, I’m not apologizing for every little mistake I make. I carry the same mentality to the stage. A mistake that I never apologize for is not presenting exactly what I wrote during my speech preparation. I think many speakers fall into this category. We may beat ourselves up because our talk may not have delivered EXACTLY as it was designed. But is that truly a mistake worth apologizing for?

It’s extremely important for you to realize what is and what isn’t worth apologizing for as a speaker. You making a small hiccup in your talk can turn into many cringe-worthy moments if you are speaker who is still prone to make many little mistakes and every other minute you apologize for it. Some people don’t want to hear any excuses. And other people won’t know you make a mistake until you point it out to them. But most of all, you say much more than I’m sorry when you apologize. Depending on what you are apologizing for, it may go something like: “I’m sorry, but I didn’t get a chance to prepare like I wanted to…. I’m sorry but I forgot to bring my flash drive… I’m sorry, but I got my points mixed up. You see the thing is that when we apologize, we almost always want to give detail into why we are apologizing. But when you are on the stage and time is limited, one small lack of confidence can be a mood killer.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes when giving a talk. I’ve made mistakes multiple times over in the midst of recording. But I’m not going to point them out to you. If you notice it, then cool. If you don’t because I keep it moving, then that’s even better. In my mind, I know exactly what I did and didn’t do, but I do my best to never let my audience (which is you) in on how I made a mistake. I’ve skipped entire points and I had to keep going. Sometimes my teleprompter moves faster than I anticipated, so I have to make up words on the fly. There have been things that have happened right outside my window that has thrown off my train of thought, but I still kept going. All these things I could apologize for, some in my control and some not. Ultimately, I made the decision that they just weren’t worth the apologizing for.

So you may be thinking, what’s worth apologizing for? Let’s run through some examples:

An easy one consists of something you shouldn’t do, but on rare occasions happens: If you offend someone, rather it be because of a point in your talk or a disregard for their feelings, then a sorry is warranted. You’ll know when you may have offended someone. Facial expressions are key in the moment. Something you shouldn’t apologize for is if you miss a point in your talk. A simple “I forgot to mention” would work. If you don’t remember the point at all in the moment, keep going and the next time around do your best to correct your mistake. Another thing you should immediately apologize for is if you are (for some reason) late. This particular scenario has a trickling affect from stressing out the organizers to throwing off an entire conference. So while you should never be late, if you feel it’s about to happen, do your best to get in contact with the correct parties to let them know and be sincere in your apology. One last thing you shouldn’t apologize for is if you are missing a slide in your presentation. You can simply play it off. Yes it might be obvious to your audience that something is missing, but you can poke fun at yourself to bring laughter and make some people smile. It’s all about your charisma in the moment and realizing that you are human and mistake happen. So KEEP GOING!

If you make one or multiple mistakes, it’s ok. It happens to the best of them. The best thing I can tell you to do is to keep going. Apologizing in the moment isn’t wrong, but do you really need to apologize? If you continue to keep your composure, then the audience will follow your lead and will remain comfortable. If all else fails, and you feel you need to apologize for a mistake you make in the moment, then make sure you only do it when the mistake is big. Of course, I’m not wishing bad luck on you, but mistakes worth apologizing for do happen.

But most of all, understand that there is no perfect speaker. There will always be someone who could point out something wrong about a speaker you may deem perfect. The point isn’t too be perfect. The point is to be impactful. If you go into a talk worrying too much about making mistakes, then you are setting yourself up for difficult 45 minutes. But if you go and give your best effort and still falling short in some areas, THAT’S OK. You will have another chance to improve. And you will!

Make your next presentation, your best presentation!

Sincerely,

Julian A. Leonard
(Founder of The JLeonard Group LLC)

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