Life’s Grand Mosaic

Impact by equinoxefr

The opening of your speech can make or break it.

It will determine whether your audience pays attention or tunes out after 10 minutes (or less).

To be successful the introduction needs to relate to the audience and show an understanding of the audience.

And it needs to be consistent with both the topic and tone of the speech.

The technique you use should help you to introduce the themes, ideas and subject of your speech.

Use one of the following techniques to grab your audience’s attention.

Famous Quotes

The strengths of a quote are that it can help you establish your knowledge and authority.

See also my detailed article on using quotes: 4 Tips for using Quotes as a Public Speaker

Humor

The strengths of a humorous introduction are that it will relax the audience and help you create a connection with audience members.

However, poorly chosen or badly delivered, humor has the greatest potential to fall flat and even distance the audience from the speaker.

Story

The strengths of telling a story include relaxing the audience, making a connection by relating the subject to the audience. For example, if the audience is mainly engineers, the story should include an engineer or a setting familiar to engineers.

Question or Statement

The strengths of using a question or statement include opening the minds of the audience, shocking them or creating curiosity.

A question may be rhetorical, or be a question that you plan to answer in the speech.

Examples of a statement include citing statistics or asserting your opinion or the opinion of someone known to the audience.

When you are trying to open the minds of your audience, a question or statement will usually be less subtle than a story, humor or a quote.

See also:

• Speech Introductions – the Three Steps you Need
• 4 Tips for using Quotes as a Public Speaker
• Turning a Joke into a Great Story
• 10 Ideas for using Stories and Case Studies in your next Speech