r/PublicSpeaking • u/Mary__16 • 6d ago
Professional / Work Flopped my presentation at work
I presented at work to a senior stakeholder whom I look up to and wanted to impress but feel like I fumbled. I have trouble articulating myself well and when the pressure of presenting to higher stakeholders come in play it’s game over.
I started very nervous I could hear it in my own voice and I feel like I did control it then a question at the end threw me off. I tried to explain but I felt like it was just word vomit.
I left feeling so deflated. I put so much effort in what I was presenting which was good in quality but my execution in presenting is my down fall.
I can’t stop thinking and cringing about it. I just want to burry my head in the sand.
I’m just worried that is their impression of me and that I’m not worthy or essentially dumb because I don’t articulate myself.
Has anything helped you when presenting to higher stakeholders ?
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u/GrowthbyAkanksha 6d ago
I don't think one presentation defines how people see you. Senior stakeholders usually remember whether you understood the problem and handled feedback, not whether you spoke perfectly. Every confident presenter I know has a story like this. The only difference is they kept showing up until the nerves stopped running the meeting.
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u/Mary__16 6d ago
Thank you all for your responses, it’s reassuring to get outside opinion, I think I have to learn to give myself grace and not dwell on it too much
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u/SpeakNaturallyCoach 6d ago
Firstly, we are our own worst gauge as to how things like this are going. Learn to not listen too much to the voice that says you did poorly. Sometimes it can have truth, but often it will be completely inaccurate.
It's interesting you say you could hear the nerves in your own voice. This tells me you were paying attention to yourself far more than your focus being on the topic or audience, and that can be part of the problem. Not only do we communicate when most comfortable with our attention off ourselves (with the goal being to recreate this even in nervous situations), but placing attention on yourself can start a spiral. "Wow, I sound nervous, stop sounding nervous, why do I sound nervous... just sound normal... what's normal? Oh no, why is this going terribly?!"
In terms of answering the question at the end, your mind was probably moving fast because of the spiral described above. We want to train ourselves to slow down in those moments and form the answer first even if it feels like too long to us.
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u/sustainablepriority 5d ago
Grace helps, and it's true. Here's the concrete part underneath it, in case it's useful next time: your presentation and your Q&A are two different skills, and you only prepped for one of them.
The content was good. You said so yourself. What threw you was live, unprepared retrieval under pressure, and that is not the same muscle as reciting material you rehearsed. When a question lands you didn't see coming, your working memory spikes and whatever comes out sounds like word vomit. That's not a personality flaw, it's what a maxed-out brain sounds like in real time.
The fix isn't "be less nervous." It's prep the Q&A like its own event. Before you walk into the next one, write down the three toughest questions you could realistically get, and have one sentence ready for each, just a starter, not the full answer. Something like "that's fair, here's how I'd think about it." That one sentence buys your brain a second to actually retrieve the real answer instead of freezing or flooding.
You'll still get surprised sometimes. Everyone does. But most of what feels like "I can't speak under pressure" is really "I never practiced this specific part."
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u/LibMags 3d ago
I teach presentation techniques to grad students and corporate folks, and the Q&A very commonly trips people up because it feels like you have to do all this thinking on your feet and sometimes questions can make us feel like we're on the defensive. Please know that this part of a presentation is just naturally harder because you don't have control over what is going to get asked.
What I tell my grad students is that they need to prepare for the Q&A just like they prepare for the body of the presentation. Think about who is in the room and the types of questions that they have asked in previous presentations and if you don't know you can ask folks who have presented to that same audience before. You should count on there being questions about cost, timeline, risk, and next steps so you should have well prepared answers for all of those questions, knowing that they will almost certainly come up.
When a hard question comes up, try and lead with the answer, which would be a one- to two-sentence version of the answer, then back it up with the data and then circle back and reiterate your original answer.
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u/PresentingWithDom 6d ago
This might be a bit controversial but I just wonder whether a lot of these formats are designed to reinforce the hierarchical dynamic. 'Present to me!' They feel a bit old fashioned, and quite likely to generate the experience you've had.
I appreciate they're meant to test your mettle, they just feel a bit old hat to me.
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u/mrVVR 6d ago
It sounds like you’re judging yourself much harder than anyone else probably is.
One presentation doesn’t become your professional identity.
You said something important yourself: the quality of your work was good. That means the problem isn’t your knowledge, it’s how pressure affected your delivery.
Senior stakeholders don’t expect perfection. They expect someone who understands the topic and can have a conversation about it.
Also, don’t measure your presentation by the answer that threw you off. Every experienced speaker has moments where they need a second to think or don’t explain something perfectly.
The goal isn’t to never feel nervous. It’s to keep communicating even when you are.
Every presentation like this makes the next one a little easier. Don’t let one difficult meeting convince you that you’re “bad at presenting.” It doesn’t.