224. What to do when a speech goes 'wrong'

What do you do when a speech goes 'wrong'?

You learn how to be the Adaptable Speaker!

In this episode I cover 3 key concepts you need to adopt to do this:

1/ Write in the masculine, deliver in the feminine.

2/ Understand, you are the notes.

3/ Remember, it's not that serious!

Welcome back to That Voice Podcast.

So last week I got a very inconvenient message from AirBnB.

Saying our reservation in for a house in Wellington New Zealand had been cancelled.

I’m going in January with my sister and three kids.

We’re doing a bit of Lord of the Rings themed holiday.

Anyway being school holidays I had all the accommodation booked weeks ago, so to get a cancellation this close freaked me out a bit.

What can we do, the house apparently had a burst pipe and wasn’t going to be repaired in time.

I was able to find a new booking, had to pay a few hundred dollars more.

Not that happy about it, but what were we supposed to do, and it’s a privilege to be able to go on holidays.

Mind you I’m not usually booking for 5, it’s normally just me and Patrick.

This little story got me thinking about adaptability, especially when things are outside our control.

And that happens with speaking all the time.

Expectation is the source of all disappointment.

And if you expect a speech or a webinar or a presentation to go exactly a certain way, chances are you’re gonna get disappointed, so it’d best to expect the unexpected.

So how do you prepare for the unprepared.

Well you get skilled up in speaking. We do a lot of this in Soul Speakers my online group coaching program.

And to adopt 3 key concepts.

Number one -

Write in the masculine, deliver in the feminine.

So of course you prepare your content, but not every single word and move. You create the scaffolding of the butterfly enclosure so you can fly around.

You need to be able to flow and adapt.

And this can work even in the confines of quite detailed preparation.

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is a great example of this.

The way she performs is almost identical every show, but we’ve seen her adapt to microphone, stage and wardrobe malfunctions.

Second you need to remember –

You are the notes.

As soon as you rely too heavily on external prompts – slides, notes, someone coaching from the audience you lose the trust in yourself, in your knowledge in your voice.

Chances are you’re speaking because of who you are and what you know thanks to years of experience.

You’re not being chosen because you can perform a script.

And when you harness this inner confidence. The word confidence means to trust, when you harness that trust in yourself it doesn’t matter if you drop the paper or the tech fails because as long as you have your breath you have your voice and if you have your voice you have the ability to move your audience.

And the last concept or belief you need to adopt to be the adaptable king or queen is …

It’s not that serious.

Be playful have some fun.

And bring a healthy dose of perspective.

If a bumpy presentation is the worst thing that happens to you in a day. How great was your day?

What an opportunity to laugh it off, to get some rapport, to use to your advantage in a fun way.

A recent Soul Speaker call was How to deal with a mid-speech disaster – and no joke canva crashed in the middle of me showing a video. It was very meta. What a chance to showcase exactly what I  was teaching about.

Great speakers use whatever the unexpected thing is as material to improve their presentation.

I’d heard sirens go past in the middle of a speaker and they said – see it’s an emergency.

I’ve seen tech fail and speakers say lucky you, no powerpoint slides today.

I’ve heard speakers throw to audience discussion so they could run to the bathroom quickly.

And they’re able to do that by bringing a springy lightness to the whole thing.

The obstacles don’t get in the way of the path, the obstacles are the path.

I called this episode – what to do when a speech goes ‘wrong.’ And I hope you’ve got from this that there is no such thing as a speech going right or wrong, it’s about being the adaptable speaker.

And you can do that if you write in the masculine and deliver in the feminine, you understand you are the notes and you remember it’s not that serious, so have fun and hit back those curveballs that come your way.

And if you want to get comfortable and good at this, join my online group program Soul Speakers, link is in the shownotes.