PRESENTATION NERVES AT A PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURAL

You may be able to identify with feeling nervous when speaking to a group of people. It's perfectly normal. We all worry, to some degree, about forgetting what we intended to say or stumbling over our words.

Now imagine standing in front of 2 million people (with countless more millions watching on TV and the internet) and blowing your lines.

That is exactly what happened to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and our new President at the swearing-in on Tuesday.

Justice Roberts started to utter the oath that President Obama was supposed to repeat..."I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear..."

But Roberts got only as far as the first four words when the President chimed in and spoke over top of the next three words. This apparently threw the Chief Justice off and he flubbed the following line, getting the next part of the oath woefully confused ("...that I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully..." instead of "...that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States").

And in that moment, President Obama hesitated and waited for the Chief Justice to offer him the correct line. When Roberts didn't, the President quickly repeated the line that Roberts had given him, even though he knew it wasn't correct.

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED

So what is the point of highlighting this uncomfortable moment in an otherwise flawless ceremony?

It captures three lessons we can all apply:

• It's easy to get nervous in front of an audience...even when we are accustomed to speaking  frequently to large groups.

• It's the sign of a professional to keep calm, even after a mistake. Neither the President nor the Chief Justice appeared shaken or paralyzed by the gaffe (despite the millions of people watching and listening).

• It's helpful to stay focused on what's most comfortable for the audience. Both the President and the Chief Justice realized, in the moment, that the audience would find it awkward for them to belabor the mistake by going back to the beginning and starting again. What their audience wanted was for them to simply keep going.