Below is an excerpt from my upcoming book So What: Better Briefs, Powerful Presentations. If you find this information useful, grab a copy for yourself to tons of information on building a brief from ideation to delivery, constructing slides, and tips for better delivery.
Every public speaker ever, from Shakespeare to Martin Luther King, Jr., has forgotten their lines or lost their place in a speech at least once. You can have all the practice in the world, an orderly stack of notecards, and a teleprompter, and still, somewhere along the line, you’ll find yourself before a crowd with the “Have I already passed my exit?” look on your face. Once again, no one knows except you. They don’t have your content memorized. Even if people who critiqued your practice are in the audience, they will probably assume you made a change since they saw it, and even if they suspect you are lost, they are rooting for you to recover.
One recovery technique is the same as the verbal pause. Stop for a moment, look at the screen to collect your thoughts, and once you’ve found your place, continue. If you need a moment or two longer, clear your throat a few times, get a drink of water, say “Excuse me,” and press on like nothing happened. Sometimes it takes more than a moment, and in the worst case, speakers enter a freezing spiral because they can’t remember the next point, then panic because they froze, so they freeze again, which leads to more panic, and so on. Handling this takes a little more effort.
Consider a hard problem you’ve had to solve, working long into the night with no solution. You call it quits, plan to sleep on it and start fresh in the morning, and while doing something completely unrelated, the answer springs to mind. Sometimes the same thing needs to happen when you lose your train of thought. You need to take the spotlight off the current moment, step back, and re-engage. You can do this either through a recap, or with what I call solicitation.
Recap is where you pause, gesture if appropriate (I use a sort of “stop” motion with my hands), and say, “Actually, let’s pause for a moment and revisit everything that’s brought us to this point.” You accomplish two things here. One, you invite the audience to participate. Done properly, it comes across as catering to your listeners. Two, and more importantly, it jogs your memory. You connect the pieces back from as early in the brief as you choose through to the current talking point, and more often than not, you’ll pick back up where you left off. You might even wonder how you lost your train of thought in the first place. It’s simple, but enough time has to have passed for it to work. In other words, it won’t be effective if you do it on the second slide. Bottom line, if you lose your train of thought, make it seem intentional.
Solicitation is a little trickier and should be employed only if you are comfortable with it, because it requires you to still pay a bit of external attention while you internally seek your place. Solicitation can be accomplished two ways. The first, best used in smaller settings, is to invite participation. Content is seldom produced in a vacuum. You might have previously consulted others in the room, or they may have some expertise in the area you’re discussing, or they own some process affected or informed by your information. Gesture to the person and ask, “So-and-so, this is more your area. Is there anything I’ve missed thus far or that you’d like to add?” Even if they say no, the individual will usually take a moment or two to arrive at the answer. If they do choose to participate, listen to what they’re saying while reviewing your notes or mentally rewinding to figure out how to get back on track.
The other solicitation method is to ask, “I’ll pause here for a moment. I know we’ve covered quite a bit, and there will be time for questions at the end, but does anyone have a pressing question right now?” Again, even if there are no questions, you can pause for a decent length of time to collect your thoughts and get back to where you need to be. If you are newer to public speaking, this can be risky, because it asks you to split your attention. You have to pay enough attention to the audience member to comprehend them while retaining enough brain cycles to get back on track. Done properly, though, this can actually enhance your delivery, because now you come across as collaborative and inclusive.