(This month, we continue our popular year-long series, ‘Do Your Presentations Suck? with a closer look at your presentation’s Introduction. Enjoy!)
Your Introduction might suck if you don’t Start Strong – if it doesn’t quickly build rapport, establish credibility, stress audience-centric value and let them know what’s coming. And it might really suck if you start by talking about yourself or telling a joke.
We all learned about the three parts of a speech in high school: the introduction, body and conclusion. You remember … ‘Tell ‘em what you’re gonna say … say it … and tell ‘em what you said.’ Nothing new here.
Some of my most loyal readers are job seekers who have heard me speak at one of the three non-profit job seeker groups I support in NE OH. So, I thought you might find this piece interesting and potentially helpful. And please share it with anyone you know who is in a search or planning a career change.
I recently engaged in a LinkedIn discussion group about using jokes in the introduction of a presentation to gain audience interest. Here’s a summary of my rant on that topic.
I totally agree that the first few minutes of any presentation are most important. Start strong, powerfully and engaging – immediately. But, I totally disagree with telling a joke unless you were hired to be an entertainer, it’s an after dinner speech and the only goal is to be humorous. Jokes rarely work in a typical workplace presentation and can create a very ineffective impression from the beginning. It’s often hard to recover from such a weak start.