What To Do if Your Presentation Session Failed

Let's evaluate every session of presentation that you've been through. What is failure? A failure can be associated if more than 50% of result didn't go as expected. We know that the failure is usually subjective based on each point of view. There is time where presentation counted as fail for someone, while it still counted as success event for the others. Hence, it's highly needed an objective standards/indicators for easy evaluation and do improvement. 

Create Success Indicators of Success and Do A Comparison

Before you begin to punish yourself and the team because a subjective thinking that the presentation has been failed, it might be useful if you are creating a list of indicators of success determination. Example list as follows:

• Success if the average results of questionnaires filled with 80% responds that indicates satisfied (should be followed with direct question on the questionnaire form such as: Are you satisfied with the event? Answer: Yes/No)
• At least there are 3 excited audiences who asking questions
• Audiences are able to answer/respond 5 basic questions about your topic (if at the end you throw a simple assessment verbally or written based)
• The speaker is able to give a suitable analogy for each topic discussed

If you have prepared that list then do a quick comparison with the presentation result that you've got. If the percentage exceeds (for example more than 50%) gives a positive result from all total indicators, it can be concluded that your presentation session is success. However, whatever results obtained must be evaluated in such an objective way and you must keep record about it might be useful for future improvement and assessment.

Have More Logic than Emotion

Try to control yourself and get into logical thinking rather than trapped into (negative) emotions such as angry or sad. Especially when you are having a failed session. We totally understood that you might feel sad at beginning because of audiences seem like didn't attracted to what you've been said. Disappointment will always be there, but at this time you need larger than just disappointment. You need outsider such as your working partner/team to help see through objectively (neutralize the situation). You can make gentlemen agreement among all team before presentation begins that all of you will still encourage each others even if the presentation fails (no matter how bad is the situation). You might see this way really beneficial at the end of the session. Nonetheless, logical thinking that 'anything happened couldn't be rewinded' will help you to move forward and think on the positive side that you can take from the experience.

You Need to Count on Questionnaires

In conjunction with the earlier point about success indicator, it is advisable for you to measure those indicators through questionnaires that could be given at the end of session. Even if you thought majority of audiences will give you negative feedback, but this is really the valid source to get real feedback about how you are performing and impacting on audiences. Honest feedback will be priceless and really helpful for progress evaluation in any session. Hence, don't forget to prepare questionnaires and distribute it. 

Don't Blame Others

Even if it seems that the failure of a presentation is because of certain parties, you must be wise. Blaming others will not nurture any improvement for future. You must be objective and see yourself as the one who need to responsible for presentation result. Let's say, if a presentation is chaos because of broken cooling machine (AC), then it's not certainly the fault of the building management. It should be prevented earlier when we do a rehearsal and check before D-Day. This will be an important check point for the next session to prevent same thing happened again. You see the different right? If you tend to blame someone, then we hardly can see what kind of thing that could be learn for future prevention. Nonetheless, you certainly need to sincerely apologize to the audience about the discomfort that happened and hope that they will show up again for your future session for sure.

If you like our articles, help us to share this knowledge via social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn) thanks a bunch and have a nice day! :) 

Disclaimer: this article originated written in Bahasa and being translated using Google Translate hence please understand if there's any mistake of tenses and/or misunderstanding that occurred. Read the original version by switch this web to Bahasa version on upper right button. Thank you for reading!

Pictures credit to Pexels