Florian Mueck - PlusPlus

This is a miserable situation... Pause! ... for pessimists. Again we outpaced our competition!

Polemics are great attention-getters.

ONE WORD

Does your speech have a message? It had better. Without a message you have no speech; you have nothing to present. Now — you can reduce any message in the world to one word.

Take the Albert Einstein example from above: Perseverance.

Personally, I love the one-word start because of its radical simplicity. Once expressed with dignity and intonation, your portentous word hums in the room, and everyone in your audience knows, after just 1.3 seconds, what your presentation will be about.

A participant in one of my seminars once started his speech by saying,

Divorce....

An uncanny silence blanketed the room; we all felt smothered by a blanket of negativity. It didn’t even take him 1.3 seconds to capture our fullest attention.

QUESTION

Rhetorical or not, questions are always a great tool for getting your audience to listen to what you are about to say.

Have any of you guys ever been to Barcelona?

What would you picture in your mind if you heard this question? Isn’t it hard not to picture the Sagrada Familia, F.C. Barcelona, or the beautiful sandy beaches? Even those who have never been will search their memories for anything they might have heard about Barcelona — Gaudí, perhaps, or the 1992 Olympics.

Whether we verbalize an answer or not, we will always be alert to questions. Questions make us think. Always remember, a thinking audience is a good audience — unless you’re a politician!

PERSONAL ANECDOTE

Sharing a personal anecdote at the beginning of your speech that shows why you’re passionate about your cause will automatically increase the level of your ethos, the credibility you convey as a speaker.

Imagine you want to persuade your audience to become entrepreneurs. You could start your speech by saying:

The room was always full. I remember that our classrooms at university were always overcrowded — but not because of me! I would be sitting at home, in the students’ residence, launching my first entrepreneurial adventures, together with my friend Dennis.

I may not be Michael Dell; I’m certainly not Bill Gates. But I tried; therefore, I do have the credibility to talk about entrepreneurship.

When you start your speech or presentation with a story or anecdote that boosts the level of your personal ethos, step by step you wade more deeply into the waters of persuasiveness.

Boost your content by taking an unbreakable hold upon your audience’s attention; begin your speech with a quotation, a polemic, a single portentous word, a question, or a personal anecdote.

But I can’t start my speech with one of those five patterns. I have to welcome the dignitaries and authorities and thank the organizers first.

I hear this all the time. Yes, some events and occasions require a welcome, and thanking certain people and institutions. But my question is:

Have you ever tried to do it differently?

Only dead fish swim with the flow. I don’t want to be a dead fish. I want to capture the full attention of every last seat in my audience in the first 1.3 to 1.7 seconds.

Imagine these opening words:

Dear Mr. President, dear Madam President, honored Dean and Professors, honored guests and friends of this institution....

Would words like these ever capture an audience’s full attention? Ever?

Instead, by this time the last three rows have already fallen asleep.

You can do better. You can change the order of things. You can welcome the dignitaries and thank the organizers after your opening lines.

Example: a “Commencement address”

It was a rainy November evening 18 years ago. A new chapter of my life was about to begin. 1,000 anxious eyes gathered in this very same room; mine were among them. Doubt and anticipation met and mingled. What would my future bring? What would it look like? Would I become the CEO of Siemens? Would I start my own venture? My future was draped in fog, but now my present is clearly in my sight. What made the fog disappear?

Dear Mr. President, dear Madam President, honored Dean and Professors, honored guests and friends of this institution.

There are no rules in public speaking. You make the rules. You can change the expected order of things to increase the impact of your speech. No one is going to come up to you at the cocktail party later and say,

You didn’t follow protocol!

(And if someone does, just smile, chuckle indulgently, and turn away.)

Boost your content even more by grabbing the audience’s attention straightaway, and then doing the welcoming and thanking.

Have you ever attended a talk by a speaker who just talks and talks and talks, but you haven’t a clue about where the whole thing is going?

It’s important that your audience know the main point of your speech or presentation very early on. If they haven’t learned it after about a minute, they’ll rapidly start getting uneasy.

My recommendation for you is to mention your key message, the point of your talk, at the end of your introduction.

Example: a speech about “Friendship”

Have you ever missed your friends when you needed them most? Have you ever let a good friend down? Have you ever cried for a friend you lost?

Friends are one of the most valuable treasures we have in life. Today I want to encourage you to invest more time into this treasure.

From that point onward you present your arguments and reasons, stories and anecdotes. But your audience will know right from the start what your speech is all about.

Boost your content even more — cement your key message in the audience’s mind by mentioning it by the end of your introduction.

Think about one of your favorite movies. Think about one of your favorite books. Is there a climax in “Star Wars”? Is there a climax in “The Usual Suspects”? Is there a climax in “Perfume”?

Apart from “Pulp Fiction” — a movie with at least 534 climaxes — good movies and novels, and even New Yorker articles, have a climax.

Climax, a rhetorical device, is based on the good-better-best structure. I’m frequently amazed that so few people exploit this dramaturgic tool.

Why would you speak first about the passion of your employees, but then conclude with a detailed exposition of the company’s IT infrastructure? Believe it or not, there are people who do.

From now on, especially in the body of your talk (the three pillars of your Speech Structure Building™), you’ll want to use a structure that includes a climax.

A = GOOD B = BETTER C = BEST

Example: on “The benefits of Barcelona”

What I really like about Barcelona is the weather. We have an average of 300 sunny days a year in Barcelona, and, considering how important sunshine is to our well-being, it’s no wonder people walk around smiling all the time.

What’s even better about the Catalan capital is its cosmopolitan lifestyle. People from all over the world come together for tapas, business, or Toastmasters meetings.

For me, the absolute best of Barcelona is the beach. Very few major cities in the world can boast a four mile long sandy beach right near the center of town. After a tough day, sitting at a beach bar at night listening to chillout music and sipping a fine Priorat by the light of flickering torches is simply priceless.

The climax structure works in the body of your speech, and smaller climaxes will work for a certain number of shorter points in your talk (within the A-B-C pillars). Always move up the ladder of excitement. Your audience will be thrilled, waiting to hear what’s even better than what came before.