Staying agile when presenting your ideas

One of the most common questions I get when I’m coaching people on speaking and presentation design is this:

“What if [insert unexpected interruption] occurs?”

This can be a very good question to be asking yourself before you start speaking in front of an audience. But, at the same time, it can be also be deadly.

Well, not deadly in a you’ll-die-if-you-do-this sense, but possibly deadly to your ideas. Nothing will kill an innovative idea faster than poor communication.

So, what to do?

The first thing we need to be clear on is this – if you’re speaking to a group of people, you can almost guarantee that something unexpected will occur. It's the nature of the game. Things rarely go 100% to plan, and in many cases, it’s the bits that don’t go to plan that offer the richest learning (for you, and your audience).

The more time you spend fretting about potential unexpected interruptions, the more likely you’ll over-prepare and become completely disconnected to your audience. Instead, you’ll want to maintain a state of flow within your presentation, smoothly handling any interruption in a way that enhances your message and the diffusion of your ideas.

And what better way to illustrate this than with a flow chart!


Now, this post has only tackled the easy stuff – the unintentional interruptions. In part two, we’ll look at intentional interruptions – the things humans do to each other when they want to ask a question or reassure their ego. Stay tuned!