Ditch the Clichés: 3 Remarkable Ways to Open Your Speech
Description: Discover effective strategies for captivating your audience right from the start. In this insightful article, we explore three commonly taught approaches to opening speeches that fall short of expectations. Gain valuable insights and learn alternative methods to grab attention, create curiosity, and make a lasting impact on your audience.
Have you ever attended a speech where the first minute felt like an hour?
"Uh oh," you think. "Why did I choose the front row? I'll never be able to sneak out now! Maybe I can fake an emergency."
Writing speech a speech is hard. Opening a speech? Doubly so.
Whether you're going to be talking for 5 minutes or 50 minutes, there's an unreasonable amount of pressure to get the opening right. Within just 30 seconds of starting your speech, the audience is deciding whether or not to engage with you.
And if you don't grab them right away, getting them back will be nearly impossible.
Accordingly, there's tons of advice about how to open a speech. Unfortunately, most of it isn't very helpful. It's stuff that sounds good, and may even be good in theory, but in practice it just doesn't work.
In this article we're going to examine 3 common strategies speakers are taught for opening speeches, why they don't work like you might hope, and what to try instead.
1. The Predictable Prologue
My 5th grade English teacher taught me how to write an essay:
Tell them what you're gonna tell them.
Then tell them.
And then tell them what you told them.
And in theory, I agree. At a 20,000 foot view, it's how all great communication is structured. But if you take this advice literally and actually "tell them what you're gonna tell them," you're likely to end up with a rather predictable speech and a bored audience.
Examples
Consider a speaker who begins a talk on peak performance like this:
"Today, I'm going to tell you about the science of peak performance, how to achieve it, and why it matters."
Sure, it's clear and direct, which I love. But it doesn't invite curiosity. There's no incentive for the audience to engage closely, because they immediately know the general outline of what's coming.
Instead of immediately laying out a roadmap of your speech, our speakers find that it's often more effective to begin by identifying a problem or question that your audience can relate to, and that your speech will address.
This approach accomplishes two things: it immediately engages the audience's interest, and it creates a promise or expectation that will keep them listening.
In the words of David Mamet, "The only thing keeping the audience in their seats is wondering what's going to happen next."
For example, our client Sneha Mandala was delivering her talk at TEDxReno on peak performance. Here's how she opened:
"Go to school. Study hard. Get a job. Work hard. Get a promotion. Work harder. And then you'll be successful, right? I thought so, too."
It's so much more interesting! The audience immediately understands the problem that this talk will be address - working yourself to pieces in hopes of feeling successful - and starts to wonder what direction or shape the talk will take.
2. Quotation Quicksand
Ever heard you should open your speech with a quote?
Ugh. This one is brutal. Nothing will make your speech sound like a 10th grade public speaking class assignment than starting with a quote.
Why is this such common advice?
In theory, it grounds your speech with wisdom, gravitas, or inspiration.
But there's only two types of quotes: famous quotes and non-famous quotes. If you start with a famous quote, you'll bore the audience, because they've heard it before. If you use a non-famous quote, the audience won't have any attachment to it or the quoted, so you may as well have not used a quote at all.
Furthermore, you give all of your power as a speaker to the person attributed with the quote! Subconsciously, the audience now believes you don't trust yourself enough, or that you're not really qualified to give this talk.
Examples
For instance, imagine a speaker who starts a talk on creativity with a well-worn quote like:
"Albert Einstein once said, "Creativity is intelligence having fun.""
Listen pal, you're not Einstein. Just be you!
I believe that thought leaders do 3 things: they make predictions, judgements, and assertions. So instead of opening with a quote, we often coach our speakers to start with a strong, surprising, or thought-provoking assertion that sets the stage for their argument or perspective.
This grabs the audience's attention because they will be curious to hear the reasoning behind such a bold statement.
For example, our client Rishika Kartik, a freshman at Brown University, recently delivered her talk on making creativity more accessible at TEDxBrownU. Here's how she opened:
"Don't touch the art! Have you ever heard this before? Perhaps in a museum or a gallery?"
Tell me you're not immediately engaged by that opening. Don't you want to know where this is going?
This opening is bold and slightly jarring. It's an assertion that pulls the audience into focus and says "Hey, this is going to be a wild ride. Pay attention!"
3. The Narrative Nosedive
Savvy speech writers will tell you to "open with a story," because we know that stories are hands-down the most effective way to engage an audience.
Humans are story creatures. We use stories as shortcuts, and therefore opening with a story, especially a personal one, is a quick way to connect with the audience and get them to care deeply about your topic.
So, what gives? What's the problem?
The problem is that many speakers don't know how to tell a story in a format that works well at the beginning of a presentation.
Oh, plenty of speakers know how to tell a story halfway through a presentation, when the audience is already on their side. When you have an hour for a keynote, you can take 3-5 minutes in the middle to tell a winding, entertaining tale with tangents and side comments.
But if the audience doesn't understand why you're telling them a story within 90 seconds or so, they're going to lose interest.
(Note: You get a bit more time with a story than a traditional opening, because the structure of a story is so irresistible to our brains).
Remember, the opening of the speech is to earn the audience's investment in the rest of it, however long you'll be up there. And most stories take too long to get to the 'point' or 'lesson.' In other words, they take too long to answer the audience's question, "What's in it for me?"
Examples
Imagine a speaker begins a talk on sexual abuse advocacy with a ten-minute long anecdote about a trauma they faced in their childhood.
Gripping as the tale might be, it's going to be too much, too early. The audience might lose patience or fail to see the relevance if it takes too long to get to the point. Or they might get squeamish about the topic because they don't have any context or rapport with the speaker yet.
We've found that are two ways to open with story that actually work:
Lead into the story with a sentence or two on the problem the talk is designed to address, that's relevant to the audience (see above);
Tell the shortest possible version of a story that demonstrates the main problem the talk is designed to address - a minimum viable story.
We have used both approaches with our clients in their TED-style talks, keynotes, and even workshops. Since we already covered 1 in an earlier section of this article, let's look at 2.
Take for example Jane Epstein, a survivor of sibling sexual abuse. Here's how she opened her talk at TEDxBocaRaton:
"My husband and I had been in marriage counseling for five long years. I’m pretty sure we put our therapists' three kids through college. You‘d think we’d have it all figured out by then….
But one day our therapist surprised me. He said, "Jane, I have to tell you, your anger and depression don’t match the circumstances. Is there something we don’t know about?"
I crossed my legs, looked at the floor, and said...
"My brother sexually abused me.""
In just over 45 seconds Jane had an entire outdoor amphitheater in the palm of her hand. Some held their breath, while others actually burst into applause in support. From that point on, the entire room hung on her every word.
(Fun fact: She was so effective that People Magazine picked up the story, and Jane has since taken meetings with legislators in Washington in her role as an advocate.)
And never, ever do this
Before I let you go, I need to list a few cardinal sins of professional speaking related to opening a presentation that, somehow, impossibly, I still see on a daily basis.
This a tough love section. If you realize that you've been doing some of these, that's okay! Stop doing them today and we're square.
"Before I begin"
You absolutely cannot begin before you begin.
Whatever you say first is the beginning. If it's so critical that you have to say it before your first line, then it needs to actually be your first line. If you find yourself needing a preamble to your speech, scrap the opening and rewrite it completely.
"I'd need to thank..."
Not at this moment you don't!
If you want to thank the organizers, the sponsors, the donors, do it towards the end of your presentation before your conclusion. The most important line in your speech is the very first line. Until that point the audience has no idea what to expect. They don't know what your voice sounds like, the tone of the presentation, nothing.
There's more tension before the speaker's opening line than at any other point, so leverage that tension for all its worth.
"Hi, I'm [name]"
Nobody cares.
Your name is not critical to the message. Plus, see previous point on tension. Introduce yourself after the introduction. In other words, introduce the speech, then the speaker.
"I'm sorry, I..."
Please, please, PLEASE don't open your speech by apologizing to the audience for running late, or being tired, or missing your layover, or losing your laptop charger. They don't care, and it's not their responsibility. This one is selfish, pure and simple. You're there for them, not for you.
I could go on, but I think that's enough for now.
Go make a dent in the universe
So, there you have it. Three standard yet flawed or misunderstood pieces of advice on how to open a speech, and what you can do instead.
We've dismissed the idea of telegraphing your speech's entire outline in the first 30 seconds, leaning on the words of others, and diving into a personal epic before your audience even knows where they're headed or why they should care.
The opening of your speech is the most important moment in the entire presentation (with the closing a close second). It's a golden ticket to your audience's attention. It's your chance to say, "Hey, there's something powerful here for you." That's not achieved by immediately laying out a roadmap or borrowing wisdom from others. It's not even achieved by baring your soul (at least, not right away).
Instead, it's achieved by posing a question or highlighting a problem that resonates with your audience, by making an assertion that's bold enough to make people sit up and take notice, or by sharing a story that's short, sweet, and straight to the point.
Lastly, your audience doesn't want to be lectured at - they want to be engaged with. Here's to crafting presentations that not only capture attention but actually move people to action.
Let’s Optimize Your Opening
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Whether you’ve got an upcoming talk at a TED-style conference, a critical pitch, or an internal presentation, we can teach you how to put the right words in the right order to drive action on your ideas.
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