– How to Start a Speech –
Knowing how to start a speech is one of the most difficult aspects of public speaking. The first sentence of your essay is your first impression. It’s how you get others to pay attention to you. The time has come to make your speech after hours of preparation.
People start shifting in their chairs, staring at their phones, following the news, conversing with one another, and doing everything besides actually listening to you.
The length of time the audience will “tune in” to your presentation is typically determined by the introduction. If you weary your listeners right away, there’s a slim chance your message will be received efficiently.
How to Effectively Start a Speech
How do you effectively open a speech or presentation to prevent this from happening? Here are effective ways on how to start a speech:
1. Prepare to be yourself
Consider your natural style and how you want people to feel before you begin writing your speech. Allow yourself time to think about what attributes you’d like to exhibit as a speaker.
What would you wish to provide your audience as a benefit?
What quality would you like to display as a speaker?
This will assist you in selecting a genuine method to begin your speech and will drive the remainder of your speech in a path that is true to your unique personality and goal. That isn’t to say that you should play it safe and predictable.
You may push yourself beyond your comfort zone – in fact, we urge our speakers to do so – but it’s more about expanding your actual self than pretending to be someone you’re not.
2. Telling your Story
A great method to begin a speech is with an engaging opening to a narrative. Storytelling can bring even the most mundane things to life. Consider what motivates you to accomplish what you do.
Stories may help you connect with your audience right away and establish the tone for the rest of your presentation.
People are far more inclined to listen to, remember, and share their speech if it is based on personal experience in a strong story, rather than stuffed with facts and theory.
3. Thank the Organizers and Audience
You can start by thanking the audience for coming and thanking the organization for inviting you to speak.
Refer to the person who introduced you or to one or more of the senior people in the organization in the audience.
This compliments them, makes them feel proud and happy about your presence, and connects you to the audience like an electrical plug in a socket.
4. Open with a Problem
You can start with a problem that must be solved. If it is a problem that almost everyone has in common, you will immediately have the audience’s complete and undivided attention.
5. Make a Strong Statement, then Ask a Question
You might begin by making a bold remark and then follow up with a question. You then respond with a response and a new inquiry. This quickly engages them and makes them pay attention to everything you say.
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6. Try Different Approaches
It’s time to test out a few alternative ways to start your speech once you’ve reduced it down to a few options. You can get a sense of which ones are perfect for you by reciting the opening words aloud.
It’s critical to push yourself to try something new, even if it’s a bit unpleasant at first. Getting unbiased, professional opinion is one of the finest methods to find out how your speech will be received by the audience.
7. Putting it all Together
In reality, the most important aspect of beginning a speech is to get oneself in the appropriate frame of mind. Your audience will have confidence in you if you exude confidence. You don’t have to go in with all guns blazing, though.
The most common source of public speaking jitters is because most of us strive to be someone we’re not, so start with being yourself to gain confidence.
If you don’t like another’s approach, don’t start your speech that way. Find a new approach to begin that is effective for you.
8. Permission to be Authentic
Knowing what you’re good at and doing more of it; pushing yourself to try different ways to start your speech; telling your story; getting feedback on what works from the audience’s perspective,
And staying connected with yourself as you step forward to do your talk are all key to starting a speech with power and confidence. You’ll attract your audience as soon as you start speaking if you combine these factors.
9. Compliment the Audience
Begin by truly and respectfully appreciating the individuals of the audience.
Smile as if they’re all old friends you haven’t seen in a long time as if they’re all old friends you haven’t seen in a long time.
You might tell them it’s a pleasure to be here, that they’re some of the most influential individuals in the business or sector, and that you’re excited to share some critical ideas with them.
10. Your Introduction and Conclusion Needs to be Strong
The two concepts concerning why you need to start and end strongly, are primacy and recency. Primacy states that people remember most vividly what they hear at the beginning of a speech.
Recency says those same people will strongly recall what you say at the end. In terms of public speaking, this translates into your introduction and conclusion. And you really do need to start early.
In more practical terms, there are three specific reasons why your introduction needs to be engaging and interesting immediately:
▸Audiences make judgments about you and your message in the first minute. After that point, you’ll be able to change those opinions easily.
▸Your opening sets the entire tone of your presentation including whether you’ll be interesting or not.
▸This is when you introduce your message and tell the audience why they should listen.
Your audience needs to be both fully engaged and predisposed favorably toward you and your message. Neither will happen unless you can grab their attention, so they’re on board when you spin your verbal magic.
You should spend time beforehand, of course, knowing how to organize a business presentation.
11. A Big Idea
Sometimes you want to share your big idea right up front which can be helpful because it is intriguing and gets people clued in right away.
12. Special Note
Be very careful to not deliver your one-liner by re-reading your title slide. You also want to position it as exciting and intriguing.
13. A Quirky One-Liner
If you can use humor — do it! Humor or curiosity is a great way to start a speech on a high. You can get creative with these! Think of an interesting fact about you, your audience, or the topic that can lead you into your content.
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The Tone of the Speech
The tone of the speech is also set by the introduction. A great speech opening can be:
1. Creative
The “imagine” and “what if” scenarios. For example, Ric Elias started his TED Talk with a story about his plane crash experience.
He wanted to amplify the importance of lessons he learned from this experience, so he had people imagine what it would be like going through that.
Attention to detail is very important when you’re using this tactic because you want to spark the imagination of the people in the crowd.
2. Humorous
You can start your speech with a joke or a funny statement, but only if you’re comfortable with using humor.
If jokes come to you naturally, use them. If not, it’s better to steer away from a humorous introduction because it might seem forced and fake. Be sure your audience doesn’t see the joke as offensive.
3. Serious
You should use serious opening lines when you want to position yourself as an authority on the subject.
Experts are confident in their knowledge, and their body language shows it. That’s why your ideas if presented seriously, can have a bigger influence on the audience.
What you should not do
You now have an idea of how to start a speech, but we just want to amplify some opening lines you should definitely avoid. When it comes to public speaking, you should never;
1. Start with a Quote
Quotes are blunt and overused. it will be better to avoid them completely.
2. Hesitate
If you don’t have the opening line, just start your speech directly. Pause for 10 seconds and get straight to the point. It’s way better than rambling and delaying the start.
3. Using the Word “so”
You need to come out with a strong word to captivate your audience.
4. Starting with “My name is…”
Repeating your name is redundant as it takes away the time you could’ve used to present a proper introduction.
5. Waste Time on Greetings and Thanks
Contrary to the above tip on greeting and showing appreciation, it is preferred you don’t linger or rather waste time on greetings.
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Tips on Public Speaking
Here are some tips from a well-known public speaker Ken Robinson. He often speaks about education and creativity, but he also talked about public speaking and presentation. His tips are:
1. Remember that you’re speaking to individuals, not an abstract audience. It doesn’t matter how many listeners are hearing your speech. You need to speak naturally, even if you’re in front of a bunch of people.
2. Calm down and breathe. If you’re relaxed, the audience will also be relaxed, and you’ll be able to get your message across more easily. Conversely, if you’re nervous, the audience will also be uncomfortable.
3. Keep a conversational tone. If you want your talk, business speech, or presentation to be effective, listeners need to be connected with you. That’s the key to good communication.
As a public speaker, you shouldn’t act like you’re chatting with friends, but nonetheless, you need to connect with the audience in a friendly manner.
4. Know your stuff. If you’re fully prepared to talk about a certain topic, you only need a couple of bullet points on paper to remind you of your speech structure.
5. Rehearse the speech but don’t overdo it. You don’t want to sound fake and unnatural because you’ll lose the important connection with the crowd.
6. Leave room for improvisation. This tip, of course, isn’t for everyone to follow, but it can be very useful to leave the option of flexibility with your speech.
Every time you give a speech will be different, and every audience is unique. That’s why being adaptable will help you connect and engage with the listeners better.
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Famous Speech Openings
Below are a few famous speeches that could help you grasp the context of how to start a speech for an event.
1. Bill Clinton, 1993 speech in Memphis to ministers (after having heard himself introduced as “Bishop Clinton”)
“You know, in the last ten months, I’ve been called a lot of things, but nobody’s called me a bishop yet. When I was about nine years old, my beloved and now departed grandmother, who was a very wise woman, looked at me and she said, ‘You know, I believe you could be a preacher if you were just a little better boy.’” — Humor
2. Jane Fonda in her TED Talk “Life’s Third Act”
“There have been many revolutions over the last century, but perhaps none as significant as the longevity revolution. We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did. Think about that: that’s an entire second adult lifetime that’s been added to our lifespan.” — Statistic.
3. Steve Jobs, 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford University
“Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to college graduation. Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it, no big deal—just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why’d I dropped out? It started before I was born.” — Story, with a seamless transition into his speech.
Powerful Ways to Start a Speech or Presentation
In summary, the following key points are powerful ways to start a speech that can be rehearsed to be remembered. They are;
1. Question
2. Story
3. Quotation
4. Visual
5. Statistic
6. Startling statement
7. Personal anecdote or experience
8. Humor
9. Expert opinion
10. Sound effect
11. Physical object or demonstration
12. Testimony or success story
You could easily come up with hundreds more based on your own or your audience’s knowledge and experience.
Always keep in mind that the finest grabbers quickly captivate an audience, both emotionally and intellectually.
These same tactics, however, may be utilized to end your presentation in a way that keeps your listeners pondering about what you said.
Hope we’ve been able to help. If yes, Kindly share this article with your friends.
StudentsandScholarship Team.
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