Do you have a Plan B

While you may have checked and rechecked and ensured that nothing can fail yet something can go wrong at the last moment. The projector could fail, the remote might die on you or the microphone may develop a hitch. Now these are technical problems. Alternately, the audience might not respond in the manner expected. For instance if  you were presenting  to  your  senior  leaders and he  is  short  of time, he  might ask  you  to  cut  short the  presentation,  skip  the  statistics  and  state the extract.

The essence in all of this is not to panic or be flustered. Always have an  alternate plan up your sleeve. Keep your cool and think of alternatives. If  it  is a technical problem ideally  share with the  audience  what  is  going  wrong  and  see if  it can be  solved, if  not do without  it. A common example of this is the projector not working or your laptop not connecting to the projector. If sorting this out is going to take long, then do without it and use the flipchart instead.

Keeping your confidence is of utmost importance. Even if your  presentation needs  to be  cut short make  sure you maintain the  logical  flow and  finish  with  summarizing the  points effectively. Presence of mind and a good grasp of your presentation content will help you tide over the situation.

Summary:

  • Remember to collect and present the data required for the presentation.
  • In event of the main presentation getting affected by external factors, have a solid plan-B to wow your audience.

Reflection Time:

While at a  presentation, the  speaker  finds that the  projector is problematic and  is not  displaying  the  PowerPoint  slides  correctly. He alerts the venue in charge  to set it  right, however he  is  working  at  another location  and  cannot  come  immediately. The speaker tells his audience that the projector is off-road and will get fixed shortly. He then simply waits for help to arrive while the audience gets restless.
What would be the ideal plan B option in this situation?
What would be your response if the audience was getting restless?
If you were in the speaker’s position what would be your course of action?

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