No matter what you do in your presentation the first 2 seconds are what sticks in your audience’s mind.
There are many aspects of your presentation that will make an impact on the audience. These can be:
- Body language
- Eye contact
- Vocal emphasis
- Slide design
- Question handling
None of the above will have much impact on the audience unless you use your first 2 seconds wisely.
Why the first 2 seconds matters
The first 2 seconds is the part where the audience is making a decision.
They are deciding if your talk is a presentation they are going to listen to or not.
Will your presentation be interesting? Will the topic be delivered in a way the audience wants to watch?
Will your presentation be more of the same tired old stuff? Reams of bullet points, read to the audience in a dull voice.
Of course, they are expecting it to be boring. Years of being stuck in awful business presentations have prepped them for the inevitable.
It takes the audience mere seconds to evaluate you!
What you can do in the first 2 seconds
To engage your audience in the first 2 seconds you don’t need slides and you don’t need to be super-confident.
You just need to capture their attention.
Capture their attention with these steps:
- Turn off the slides
- Start asking a question related to your topic (not rhetorical)
- Walk to the center of the room while asking the question
- Wait for a response and relate the response to your presentation
What you have done here is:
- Engaged the audience
- Interacted with the audience
- Made the audience feel your presentation will be different and interesting
An example
Let’s say your presentation topic is the new dress code.
Previously the dress code was a little ambiguous and this resulted in staff receiving warnings.
The new dress code is being introduced to resolve some confusion there has been about what kind of shirts office staff can wear.
It’s a pretty boring presentation topic, but let’s use our first 2 seconds wisely:
- Turn off your slides
- Start by walking from the side of the stage to the center of the room
- As you are walking, ask “Who has found themselves confused about the office dress code?”
- Stop and wait for hands to raise
- Ask a raised hand to briefly share their experience
- Transition into your presentation by explaining this experience will no longer be a problem with the clear policy you are about to introduce
Summary
Forget trying to dolly-up your slides.
Focus on what you are going to do in the first 2 seconds of your presentation.
Amitabha Sengupta says
A learner is bound to get enriched by all the suggestions. There is no doubt about that . Owning an audience is actually a NLP technique, as telling stories also. It works. In my experience everything depends on the kind of audience, and the presentation has to factor that in and adapt. Even a nervous speaker is forgiven , if she wears a smile. What does not work is being mechanical or robotic or cocky. Asking questions to build the theme is a good technique for engagement, provided questions and their sequence are prepared in advance. Otherwise they might become rhetorical, disjointed and confuse the audience.
Alice levy says
Could you share great ice breakers you’ve had success with for personal development workshops?
Dave Mac says
Hi Alice, I think an opener which asks a question the audience can’t help but answer is a good method. If the audience’s answer is likely to be an answer you will address in your presentation that’s even better. As for an example: Imagine you’re doing a presentation about moving everyone to new seating space in the office. This could be difficult because you’re asking everyone to pack up and then unpack. You’re inconveniencing everyone. But maybe, you’re doing this because of the current lack of space, which everyone is pretty frustrated about too. In this situation I would open with, “Who’s tired of having no space to work comfortably?”
Frank Rojas says
I train new hires. Before i start the slides I team them up and have them interview each other.. After that they present it to the class followed by myself. It’s an ice breaker and introduces everyone.
Dave Mac says
That’s an awesome way to start training, Frank. Best things is it gives you a bit of breathing room to understand more about the participants and consider the best way of introducing the next activity/discussion/topic.
Paramjit Singh says
I do agree with initial silence. Which creates curiosity & then a right question can open the house and you can steer the discussion to your objective.
marisse dela cruz says
Thanks for this great article, Dave!
Nick Heap says
I once found myself looking at the audience, smiling and saying “Hello, are you friendly?” After the briefest of pauses, most smiled back and some people said, “Yes, we are”. After that, all went very well. Another “trick” was not to give a talk! The session was on Influencing Skills, I asked the people to talk to their next door neighbour about why they had come to the talk and what question they wanted answering. Then I answered their questions. This would have worked even better if I had asked the audience members more for their thoughts on the questions. In general an audience, together, always knows more than a speaker.
Dave Mac says
Great ways to open, Nick. Thanks for sharing!
Mark Magnussen says
Hi David,
Thanks for the excellent read! Too often we get caught up in the mad rush to get the objectives and administrative information out of the way and get to the meat of the course. By asking an open ended question we get the learner focused on the topic quickly. Silence absolutely the beat way to get their initial attention on you and only you.
If you get the learners to give examples of where they had trouble with the topic before diving into the slide deck, you sink the hook deeper.
Dave Mac says
Thanks for your comment Diksha! Actually, I agree with the point about waiting up to 10 seconds before starting. Silence gets the audience’s attention, and when done right it can help the speaker to appear more confident and in-control. I’ve often had groups full of participants that are very familiar, so it gets pretty noisy with talk at the start of the presentation. Being silent on stage is way more effective at quieting the audience than asking or telling them to be quiet.
Diksha Chakravarti says
Hi David
Thank you for an insightful article. But here’s the thing: at the PSA (Professional Speaking Association) we are told notto begin talking unless we own the stage. In fact it is suggested we arrive onto the stage, pause slightly to the left of the audience’s centre of vision, wait a few seconds (upto 10) and then begin talking. The other points are the same i.e. asking question, etc.
So for a budding Speaker, your views on this would be helpful.
Simon says
Hi Diksha. Who the hell teaches that formula?!?! I can think of times when that would work, of course, but to pretend it’s how you should start is bonkers.
Simon