Don’t do it! It doesn’t work. Imagine you are going on a date if you are single, or try to remember a time when you were single going out on a date. How impressive would it have been at the beginning of the evening if your date said, “I’m sorry but this is going to be a really lousy date because I’m not good at this sort of thing, and I didn’t get enough sleep last night, and my mom picked out this ugly shirt…?”

Would that have made the date go better, or would it have just soured things from the start?

I routinely see entrepreneurs, business people and political candidates start off their presentations by saying things like this:
“Sorry, but I know my presentation is really boring!”
“I’d like to apologize for some of my slides being out of order.”
“Let me get through this tedious stuff and then we can have fun with your questions.”
“I know you won’t be able to see my slides but…”
“Gosh, I’m really scared to be in front of you today.”
“I missed my plane and flew all night so I am really tired….”

These are awful ways to start a presentation. What you are really telling your audience is that you hold them in such low regard you didn’t adequately prepare for them. You are disrespecting them so they should respond in kind, by ignoring you. Is this any way to start a new relationship?

The reality is that you aren’t going to help yourself by making excuses or trying to minimize audience expectations. But here is the more important reality: your audience already has very low expectations for you and every other speaker. Why? Because most presenters are really boring and tedious. Most presenters waste the time of the people they are presenting to. A fairly high percentage of presenters start by making lame excuses or trying to minimize expectations.

You, on the other hand, can really distinguish yourself by being interesting and great from the moment you start presenting. As a presenter, you need to look at things from the standpoint of the audience. As an audience member, chances are you are rooting for the presenter. You want the presenter to do well. You and the presenter have a mutual interest in the presentation going well because if it is awful, you the audience member will suffer. Most audiences in the world are rooting for you the presenter. They want you to do well otherwise they would have figured out some way to avoid being in the room with you when you are talking.

The one big exception is for comedians who have to present in front of a paying audience that is expecting a huge belly laugh every ten seconds or they will be disappointed. That is the hardest audience to please. But most business audiences are pleased if you just don’t bore them to death. So take this reality and accept it. Then use it to your advantage to give you confidence and to set you straight from the very beginning of your presentation. Although you don’t want to openly articulate this, everything you communicate with your words, energy, enthusiasm, and body language should convey “this presentation is going to be freakin’ fantastic, for you and for me!”

You can beat the expectations of your audience very time you speak, not by lowering the expectations, but by exceeding the already low expectations that other presenters have created before you.