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Confidence & Flexibility
🤹 Permission to Be Terrible
Deliberately create the worst presentation imaginable, then identify exactly what made it bad.
What you need
Any harmless topic.
How to play
- Give a deliberately terrible mini-presentation.
- Include three bad habits on purpose: confusing structure, endless repetition, weak opening, etc.
- Ask what made it difficult to follow.
- Repeat one small part in a much better way.
See one in action
Topic: healthy eating.
Terrible version: “Um… food is important. There are vegetables. Also fruit. I had an apple once. Anyway, I think that proves my point.”
What went wrong? No clear point, weak structure, irrelevant detail, and no explanation.
Better version: “Healthy eating is easier when meals include foods that provide energy, nutrients, and enough variety to stay satisfying.”
Being deliberately bad makes it easier to notice what good communication needs.
Terrible version: “Um… food is important. There are vegetables. Also fruit. I had an apple once. Anyway, I think that proves my point.”
What went wrong? No clear point, weak structure, irrelevant detail, and no explanation.
Better version: “Healthy eating is easier when meals include foods that provide energy, nutrients, and enough variety to stay satisfying.”
Being deliberately bad makes it easier to notice what good communication needs.
10 ideas to try
Choose any one of these prompts and use the activity steps above:
- Give the worst possible presentation about healthy eating.
- Give a confusing presentation about why weekends are useful.
- Give a boring presentation about something you actually love.
- Give a presentation with an opening that apologizes for existing.
- Explain your favorite movie while constantly forgetting what point you are making.
- Give a speech where every sentence starts with “Basically…”
- Present a great idea using the least enthusiastic voice imaginable.
- Explain a simple recipe in the most confusing order possible.
- Give a speech with ten unnecessary details before revealing the main point.
- Present why exercise is useful while never once explaining why it matters.
Make it harder / funnier
Assign each player one secret bad habit to exaggerate.
Why it helps
Reduces fear of mistakes and helps people recognize effective speaking by contrast.
Ready to use this skill?
Try it in Public Speaking →Take the activity into a full SpeakCoachLab practice session.