Life’s Grand Mosaic

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.

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by roland
A speech introduction is in many ways similar to an introduction to a prize fight. It catches the attention of the audience, identifies the participants and situation, and sets the stage for the primary event - the fight.
The body of the speech is the main event and the beginning merely prepares the audience [...]

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The reason many speeches fail is that the speaker does not understand one simple fact:

A speech is a dialogue, not a monologue.

You are the speaker and the audience is a silently questioning listener.

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This post accompanies issue 1 of my free newsletter “How to be a Confident and Influential Public Speaker”. If you would like more information on the ideas below please signup below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

There are five means that you can use in a speech:

• joking with the audience (humor),
• telling a story (narration),
• presenting data (exposition),
• justifying (argument), or
• appealing to the audience (motivation).

The audience’s attitude and level of understanding is one of the two criteria for selecting the means to be used in your speech.

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