I am continually amazed by presentation after presentation where the opening lines are about the presenter and not the audience. Are you guilt of ever starting with any of the following?
· “You probably want to know a bit about me…”
· “I am blah blah and I studied at blah blah and blah blah blah…”
· “Before we get the meat of today I want to thank…”
· “Before I get to the report you’ve been waiting for, you have to understand…”
· And of course, the infamous, “How’s everyone doing this morning?” (followed by “I can’t hear you!”)
While the audience will be patient with you nonverbally (we’ve been taught to sit and listen politely!) they will also mark you as ordinary, expected, and frankly, wasting their time.
Dale Carnegie’s famous admonition, “Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them” still works today for the soul reason - it is audience focused. Our nervousness, our ego, our desire to please or our wish to look good unfortunately puts the focus on us instead of those who came to hear us. The hard truth is that the audience don’t really care about you. No matter how important you are, the audience has one pivotal question in their minds “Can you help me solve my problem; can you improve my condition.” Start there and you will see and maybe even hear your audience say, “Whew! Yes!”