The art of the introduction
A man delivers a speech
Conference season is nearly here, which means that over the next few weeks, speeches will be feverishly drafted, re-drafted and polished.
As every seasoned writer knows, the first sentence is often the hardest, yet the opening minute is the hinge on which the whole speech swings.
It takes just seven seconds for an audience to form an impression about the speaker - the time it takes to walk across the stage to the microphone and politely accept some applause. No matter what the topic or message, no audience in the world is going to be excited to listen to someone who shuffles towards the front of the stage with their head down.
When the speaker reaches the mic, the opening sentence needs to have an impact. There is an instinct, particularly among polite and self-effacing Brits, to spend a good thirty seconds thanking everyone who arranged the conference, the audience for attending and the caterers for laying on some sarnies, before finally introducing themselves.
Unless this is done in a particularly interesting way (for example, President Obama introducing himself as ‘Michelle Obama’s husband’), the people in the room zone out for a bit, and then the speaker has to work doubly hard to grab their attention again.
After all, the audience already knows who the speaker is. They’ve usually just been introduced by the chair, and their names are quite often emblazoned on a screen behind them.
For many speakers, getting rid of that habit is surprisingly difficult—especially if they’re accustomed to slow, careful openings or to the strict rhythms of debating halls and courtrooms.
It’s also worth remembering that these days, high-profile speeches will be clipped up for socials or streamed on TV. So extraneous introductions will lose an external audience who will simply scroll away or switch channels.
By all means, acknowledge the room (Friends, Romans, Countrymen!), but then grab their attention and don’t let go. Tell a story, pose a question, create an image in the audience’s mind, just for the love of God, don’t waste the first five minutes!