4 Things Next Level Communicators Do When They Give a Bad Talk
I don’t care how great of a communicator you are, you will give a bad talk. It happens to the best of us.
Mike Tyson got knocked out by Buster Douglas. Tiger Woods got walked down by Y.E. Yang. And world number one Serena Williams' bid to win all four majors in the same calendar year was derailed by an unseeded and unknown Roberta Vinci. If Tyson, Woods and Serena can have their off days, so will we as communicators.
And this bugs me to no end, because there’s no rhyme or reason to it. What I mean by this is I can put in the same amount of work, admire the beauty of my talk as I look at it on the computer screen, only to give it and…crickets. Nothing. If you’ve spoken long enough, you feel my frustration.
So what concerns me in this post is why do we give bad talks, and what to do when, not if, we stink up the joint.
Charles Spurgeon was a nineteenth century pastor whose speaking gift was so big, he was known as, “The Prince of Preachers,” and even he found himself tormented by the occasional errant message. Reflecting on one particular time, Spurgeon recalls, “I could not speak as usually I have done…It humbled me bitterly…Some may imagine that want of study brought me into that condition, but I can honestly affirm that it was not so. I think that I am bound to give myself unto reading and not to tempt the Spirit by unthought of effusions. I always deem it a duty to seek my sermons from my Master, and implore Him to impress them on my mind; but on that occasion I think I had prepared even more carefully than I ordinarily do, so that unpreparedness was not the reason for the lack of force I then mourned. The simple fact is this, “The wind bloweth where it listeth’; and sometimes the winds themselves are still” (Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers, page 280).
Let me translate what Spurgeon is saying: He prepared as best he could. He prayed and asked God to help him. Then he got up to speak and it was one big nothing burger. So what did Spurgeon think the problem was? A lack of power. It looked great on paper, but came out powerless on the stage.
Ever been there? I have. If you’re like me, you can find yourself talking to yourself in the middle of a presentation you are giving to others. And in those moments where it’s not going well I can tell you I’ve told myself to just get this over with so I can go back to my room and crawl under the bed. I put the feeling I get giving a lifeless talk right next to a root canal. So uncomfortable.
Okay, so what do we do when we inevitably lay an egg? I have found these four things to be helpful:
It’s never as bad as you think it is. Give yourself some grace, it’s not as bad as you thnk. I remember one talk I gave to a group of athletes some years ago that I felt particularly horrible about. Like, I was boring myself. Afterwards a couple came up to me before I could make a mad dash for my hotel room. They were in tears (“Of course you are, after that mess,” I thought to myself) as they told me how God used my message to lead them to faith in Christ that evening. Something like this happens nearly every time I give a “bad talk,” reminding me it’s never as bad as it feels, which leads me to my next point.
Learn some humility. You ever put a message together, looked at your notes and thought to yourself, “Oh this is going to be fantastic,” only to get up and give it and it’s fantastically terrible? That’s happened to me so much that I actually get nervous when I feel like the message is great before I give it. But then the reverse is true. There are times I get up to give a talk where I feel like the little boy who came to Jesus with a few pieces of fish and a few loaves of bread to feed thousands- inadequate. And the message is extraordinary. I don’t think these things are random. God oftentimes allows us to feel as if we did bad, only to see people be encouraged to show us it’s really not about us, so be humble.
Learn from it. Sometimes the reason we didn’t do well is clear. Maybe it was a lack of preparation, or we took some shortcuts, or other reasons. Okay, learn from the mistakes and resolve to grow.
Toss it. In golf they say you’re only as good as your next shot. Like communicators, the best golfers will hit errant shots, so instead of dwelling on the last shot, they have to toss it, and look to the next shot. The bad message happened, so you may need to take a peak in the rearview mirror and learn from it, and after you’ve done that, toss it. Onto the next message.
What I’m reading:
