What the best communicators know about the first 120 seconds...
The first two minutes of your talk is the most important part of what you will have to say…by far.
Next level communicators understand the moment they get up the audience is asking themselves, “Will I listen to what he has to say, or will I fiddle with my phone for the next however many minutes he talks?” Because of this, the first thing you must do as a communicator is to arrest their attention. If your first one hundred and twenty seconds does not grab them by the collar, they won’t engage long enough to hear the meat and potatoes of your talk. The truly great speakers know the value of an effective intro.
I want you to think of your introduction as the landscaping to a house. Let’s say you are in the market to buy a new home, and you pull up to one where the yard is overgrown, the bushes have not been trimmed, and there seems to be way more weeds than grass, and chances are you will hesitate to even go inside and see the rest. I don’t care how valuable the home is, bad curb appeal can actually work against people hanging around long enough for the tour. I know you’ve worked for hours on your sales pitch, and have pieced together a pretty convincing argument as to why a person should choose a certain path, but none of that matters if they're not drawn in by the curb appeal of your message. It’s on us as communicators to get the people to lean in, put down the phone and engage.
At no point in history is the need to grab people’s attention more important than now. Unless they are some kind of student, when you stand to speak it will be one of the few times in the week where they are being asked to sit still for a prolonged period of time and listen. Social media, smart phones and soundbites have served to diminish our focus. This is why communication experts say we only have about two minutes tops to hook them.
So what are some practical ways we can use this precious two minute window to capture the room?
An engaging story which ties either directly to your overall theme, or feeds into your first point. The story should be short, and create good tension among your audience where they wonder where you are going with this.
Humor. This could tie into the first point, where the story has an element of humor to it, or it could be a joke you tell which may not have anything to do with what you are talking about, but could refer to the city you are in. Remember the rule when it comes to humor- it should singe and not burn.
Startling statement. I was once asked to give a talk on the importance of engaging senior citizens within a multigenerational club (interesting subject I know). I began the talk by saying, “The problem with our world today is we have way too many old people…” I let the statement dangle for about three seconds while everyone’s blood pressure spiked, and then finished with, “and not enough patriarchs.” I went on to define patriarchs as older people who leverage the odometer of their lives to invest in the next generation. While their blood pressure returned to normal, I had them hooked for the rest of the talk.
What I’m reading:
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