“Yep, I did it.”

Anyone who has worked in a hospital emergency department will recognize stories that go something like this:

“I was cleaning out the fridge, and had just got up to doing the vegetable drawer - and I like to do all my housework naked as I enjoy the feeling of freedom - when I slipped and fell awkwardly and that’s how it came to be lodged…”

This is the extreme, even more childish version of the “Hey! Look over there!” strategy we looked at earlier in the week.

It’s one you tend to see when public figures have done something really naughty.

Like the famous excuse of US Senator Larry Craig, arrested for soliciting in an airport bathroom after putting his foot on the foot of the patron in the next stall. Craig, a married father of 3 with a history of hostility to gay rights, said:

“I simply have an unusually wide stance.”

So amid the recriminations over John Della Bosca’s resignation this week, he gets points for at least handling it in in a professional and adult fashion, with no ridiculous excuses.

For readers elsewhere, the 53 year old state government minister was exposed in that morning’s newspaper as having had an affair with a now-disgruntled 26 year old. He spoke in a calm tone, admitted he had made errors and took full responsibility for them. Watch the unedited press conference here, click on the ‘Della Bosca faces the music’ link.

For valuable tips on public apologies after making a public fool of yourself, Peter Lewis offers a very useful article here.

While most people would do these things instinctively, the same attitude of entitlement that makes people powerful and famous means they don’t do humility well. That mindset is the main reason they got into trouble in the first place.

Among his suggestions:

• Dress like you’re going to a funeral.
• Be more outraged at your action than anyone else in the room.
• Don’t say ‘you want to move on’ right then and there - allow some time for anger.
• Don’t say your opponent was just as bad.
• Apologise to your victim, not to your family.
• Apologise for what you did, not that what you did might have upset someone.
• Don’t take questions.

And whether you’re at the lectern, in the boardroom or anywhere else, whatever you do, don’t take an unusually wide stance.

Al Gore pic courtesy Alex De Carvalho

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In the last post we discussed the importance of presentation openings.

We’re always amazed at the eternal popularity of the worst speech opening technique ever. It’s a method that torpedoes your speech before it’s even left the dock.

It’s the Apologetic Opener.

It goes something like this.

• “Sorry, I’m not used to public speaking…”
• “Sorry I’m a bit flustered, the traffic was terrible on the way here…”
• “Sorry, I’m a bit hung over, hit it pretty hard last night if you know what I mean…”
• “Sorry, I’m really tired, was up most of last night working on deadlines, no rest for the wicked…”
• “Sorry, I’ll try not to bore you TOO much…”
• “I won’t waste too much of your time…”

The logic behind it is that many people believe they’re a poor speaker. So they figure if they present an apology in advance, preferably for some factor beyond their control, then the audience will cut them some slack.

Regrettably, audience don’t care about your problems. Just over a nasty cold? Been up all night with a crying baby? Forget about it and focus on your speech, because you’re absolutely wasting your breath trying to whip up some sympathy.

Imagine you were in a restaurant and the waiter is doing a terrible job. You ask why he brought the wrong main course, half an hour late. He tells you that he’s had a really tough time lately, just broke up with his girlfriend and he dropped hot platters on on his foot earlier and has a nasty bruise.

Do you care? Do you want to hear about his troubles? Didn’t think so. And neither do audiences.

When you open with an apology, all the audience hears is: “Bad presentation coming up. Stop listening now.”

The Apologetic Opener has a distant cousin, the Self-Deprecating Opener.

This is a much better way to start, because it shows that you’re a normal human and don’t have an over-inflated view of yourself. And that you’re confident enough to risk looking silly.

So, say you’re an international diplomat, presenting on how you once brokered a peace deal between warring nation-states in Eastern Europe. Open by telling them you’re now into the third round of negotiations of the Download Bandwidth Limit Treaty with your teenage children, and have been unable to extract any meaningful concessions so far.

Look at Al Gore’s opening in his Inconvenient Truth speech, where he introduces himself as “I’m Al Gore. I used to be the next President of the United States“.

It got the audience on side from the start, and helped transform the image of a guy who had been renowned for robotic humorlessness.

Self-deprecation can be a fine line to tread. In the wrong hands, it can be fairly nauseating - like almost every Hugh Grant movie you can think of. Test it on some friends for some honest feedback before you take it on the road.