How To Have An Interesting And
Effective Safety Meeting . . .
Your Opening - Part I
"Unless a speaker can interest his audience
at once, his effort will be a failure."
--Clarence Darrow
Walk up to the front of the room, stand before your
audience and look directly at your listeners without saying a word.
Wait until you have their attention. Then, don’t thank them
for inviting you. Don’t say how glad you are to be there. Don’t
talk about anything trivial. Immediately hit them with your best
shot. "To be or not to be. . ." "Four score and twenty
years ago.. ." "In the beginning.. ." etc.
The opening of any presentation, written or spoken,
plays a big part in how well the audience will listen. That’s
because first impressions are the strongest. A poor beginning may
so distract or alienate listeners that the speaker can never fully
recover. Moreover, getting off on the right foot is vital to a presenter’s
self-confidence. Nothing is more encouraging than watching listeners’
faces begin to register interest, attention, and pleasure.
Here are two methods used most often to capture an
audiences’ attention. Employed individually or in combination,
they will help your next audience get caught up in your presentation:
1. Relate the Topic to the Audience
Even when you use other interest-arousing lures, you
should always relate your topic to the audience. Perhaps not in
the first few sentences but definitely before you get to the body
of your speech. This is as easily done as said. No matter what the
topic, all you have to do is tie it to a common experience that’s
familiar to everyone in your audience.
For example, if you’re giving a presentation
on confined spaces, begin by describing a nightmare where "you
are being chased by an object of unspeakable horror, yet your legs
can only move in slow motion. You can’t breathe, and you gulp
for air that isn’t there. You are completely helpless—eye
to eye with death. Then you wake up, gasping for air, your heart
pounding, your face clammy with sweat. You sigh with relief when
you realize it was only a nightmare. Or if it is real and a wall
of mud is chasing you inside a trench—you may never sigh again."
Most people have had nightmares where they couldn’t
breathe or were being chased and couldn’t get away, therefore
they should be able to relate to your introduction.
2. Startle Your Audience
One surefire way to arouse interest quickly is to
startle your listeners with an arresting or intriguing statement.
No doubt, everyone in the audience paid close attention after this
presenter’s introduction:
If you are like most people, one of
the first things you did this morning after getting out of bed was
to clean your teeth with a mixture of chalk, seaweed, formaldehyde,
detergent, and antifreeze. If you are a woman, you may well have
smeared acid, Crisco, castor oil, and fish scales on your face and
lips. If you drank a cup of coffee, you probably consumed skeletal
remains of tiny sea creatures from 135 million years ago.
The presenter’s topic was the invisible world
of microscopic life that goes on unnoticed under our noses every
day. By opening with a string of startling facts about that world,
she grabbed the interest of her listeners. Imagine how much less
effective her introduction would have been had she simply said,
"There are hidden physical phenomena taking place around you
all the time."
This technique is highly effective and easy to use.
Just be sure the startling introduction relates directly to the
subject of your speech. If you choose a strong opening simply for
its shock value and then go on to talk about something else, your
audience will be confused and possibly annoyed.
More ways to have a bangup opening...Read
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