Primacy refers to the beginning of something, as it enters our brain. This new entity has a powerful impact on our memory and our concentration. To muscle itself into our existing brain thought stream, takes a lot of mental energy. If successful, the new direction grabs us more powerfully than continuing with the same existing thought pattern. Recency is focused on the last thing we have heard. One of the narky criticisms of some people is that the thoughts we share with you are the result of our most recent conversation. We tend to remember the last thing we heard. That makes a lot of sense doesn’t it, but what does this mean for speakers?

Are we only able to have our audience remember our openings and closings of our speechs? Yes, the audience will certainly most easily recall the first and last pieces of information. They will also strike an impression of us, on the basis of our first and last visual and vocal touches. Obviously, we need to plan for and control the delivery of all of this opening and closing business, but we can go beyond that. There will also be numerous other opens and closings going on during the audiences’ busy day. How do we shove all of those completely aside and dominate the minds of our audience. We want them to absorb our message and to exclude all other competing thoughts?

Why do we have only one opening and one closing? Could we break the talk up into chapters? Each chapter is given a gangbuster opening and closing for that particular thought or point we want to convey. Could we bring some physical action to the fore to differentiate the chapters and lift the audiences’ engagement with us? This is only possible if we switch up our thinking about what is achievable with a talk. The speaker’s normal fare is the same as everyone else’s normal fare. We are immediately at a disadvantage to stand out from the crowd. Sadly, we are at one with the speaker push, fitting in with standard operating procedures and methodologies. We become another grey automaton lined up with all the other robot speakers. Let’s stop doing that.

In a forty minute talk, there will be room for around seven to eight chapters, an opening and the first close before the Q&A, then the final close. Let’s change up the opening at both the mental and physical levels. We want an opening statement, question, quote, testimonial or story that rocks the audience back into the folds of their seat and makes them take note that they are strapping in for a major ride here today. This shatters everything that came before for them up until that point. We must extinguish their previous thoughts and proclivities. This is especially so, if you are one of a number of speakers tumbling along one after another, launching forth on some worthy topic.

Let’s organise some crew, instead of always going solo. If there is a switch between you and the MC or the previous speaker, there is always some dithering around with the tech to get the laptops exchanged and your slides up. This drains the lifeblood of your first impression and the energy in the room simply tanks. The MC roars, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the incomparable, the amazing, the stupendous Dr. Greg Story. Please welcome him to the stage, because he is going to totally rock our world today”. You scramble up on stage and are immediately bent over like an old, old man, head down, trying to get the laptop hooked up to the projector. This unwanted intrusion into the opening segment continues while you are zipping around with your mouse, looking to boot that slide show up. This lull in proceedings has cratered the impact of that powerhouse MC introduction. It has now effectively been driven down to a pathetic whimper. People have whipped into scrolling through their Facebook, LinkedIn or email, ignoring you while you get your act together. The opening’s marvellous, magical momentum has melted away.

Why not get someone else to handle the logistics, so that you can get straight into your talk? They set it all up while you are already speaking to the audience. At the right moment they leave the slide advancer for you on top of the laptop, gracefully glide off stage and leave you to continue solo. This way we float directly onto the power stream of the MC and then take the audience even higher with our own energy. Yes, we need to have a lot of energy at the start, because remember there are two bodies on stage. We want to monopolise the audience’s attention for ourselves. We purposely stand on the far side of the stage, to draw everyone’s looking line away from the tech God and have the audience focus on us instead.

In Part Two, we will go deeper with our entry and exit points of the chapters and then how to choreograph the big crescendo for our polemic’s sparkling conclusion.

Bruce Springsteen’s song Glory Days lyric, “Boring stories of Glory days yeah, they’ll pass you by” pops into my head sometimes, when I hear a speaker reminiscing about their glorious past. I was sitting there at a chamber function when the speaker began to talk at length about his start in sales and his experiences. It was fascinating for him no doubt, but it made him sound dated. He seemed to have become covered in dusty cobwebs too all of a sudden. Talking about ourselves is great and dangerous at the same time.

Usually when we speak, there will be our introduction done by the hosts. If we are on the ball, we don’t place ourselves in their hands, so we write what we want them to say. That doesn’t mean they are on the ball and can carry out a simple task. If we make it too long, the hosts usually manages to murder it by dropping bits or getting things wrong. I am always astonished that they cannot successfully read a piece of paper with words on it.

The audience is also on danger alert because they know the propaganda offensive is about to hit them. It is hard to write about yourself though, because there are so many things you want to include. Why is that? We are desperate to establish our credentials with the audience, so that they will become more accepting of what we are saying. We believe that volume is important so we should cram as much in there as we can. In fact, we are defeating our own efforts because either the host mangles the text or the audience switches off.

Avoiding the chronology approach is always a good start. Sometimes these details are included in the programme flyer and you don’t need to mention them at all or you can organise your own flyer for the attendees. This is a good tactic and not hard to do. When we are speaking about ourselves, we should focus on the key points only. These are the things which relate to our expertise on this specific topic. I am a 6th Dan in Shitoryu karate, which is wonderful, but probably doesn’t have anything to with a topic like presenting. I could instead say this is my speech number #342 and that would be congruent with establishing I am a real world expert of the dark art of public speaking and have the experience required to tell others how to do it.

Often we are using powerpoint, so we can bring up some slides about our company. This should also be brief. Simple clear slides are what we want and the selection of information should be limited to the most powerful USPs or unique selling points of our firm. Slide after slide makes an audience restless. They are sitting there thinking, “enough already, get on with it”. When I worked for a long established Australian Bank which was rather unknown in Japan, I would show a photograph of the establishment of the first branch back in the 19th century. It was a black and white photograph with people dressed in the fashion of the Victorian era and it oozed with longevity. I also attached the date in the Japanese Imperial reign format, rather than the Gregorian calendar, to make it seem even more ancient and venerable. That one photo showed my Japanese audience we had stood the test of time and could be trusted with their money.

The CEO cowardly public speaking escape route of reliance on the souped-up corporate video at the start of the talk should be avoided at all cost. These videos are rarely a good match with the specific topic for that day, because there is usually only one video. It has to be the Swiss Army Knife of propaganda videos, to travel around the world boring people of every persuasion. If there is a particular section in the video which is really powerful, then just cue that part and don’t bother with the left over detritus.

Giving our own examples is a good idea in the talk, but again, we have to steer away from too much recalling of our glorious triumphs. The audience is only interested in how what you are telling them will result in their own glorious triumphs, now and into the future. We have to get a balance struck between talking about ourselves for effect and not for the stroking of our own massive speaker ego. Where possible, use client examples of what you did for them, rather than droning on about what you did.

It is a tricky equation of how much is too much, which bits are more important than other bits and how much time should I allow for it. Err on the side of caution and go minimalist, recalling Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “less is more”.

For many people it may seem we are getting into oxymoron territory here. “Public speaking…enjoyable? You must be kidding mate”. Many are called upon to speak and reluctantly they give their talk without talent, enthusiasm or particular motivation. A duty, an unavoidable pain, like going back to the dentist for that root canal. As we rise in our careers, the necessity to speak in public goes right up in frequency and length. Unfortunately, no one tells you this is what is on the cards for future you, so you are perpetually unprepared. If we knew this was part of our unescapable future, then we would all get the training and end the misery right there.

Even for those who are sufferers, do they seek relief through getting training? No. They just continue blundering forward, reeking havoc wherever they go, destroying their personal and professional brands. This includes those who are devastated by nerves, quivering, pulse racing, hot flushes sweeping over their body, faces going bright red, knees knocking, stomach queasy and throat parched. Do they get training? No. They just lurch from fearfulness to fearfulness, whenever they are required to speak in front of others.

What do we need to fix this. Obviously training is one part and so is repetition. Most speeches though are one offs, a one and done affair. The speech has been used up for that audience, on that day and then it is shelved forever. So how do we get repetition? We may not get the chance to repeat the content, but we can give more talks. To do that though we have stop hiding from the chance. As a child in Brisbane, I watched the Three Stooges on black and white television and one of the jokes would be two of them would step back when asked to volunteer, making it appear that the other one had stepped forward, wanting to do the task. Reluctant speakers are mentally doing the same thing. Whenever the chance to get some repetition going comes up, they step back and let others do it.

Even if the chance to present to an audience is a one time thing, that doesn’t mean the talk is a one time thing. If we are smart, we are giving this speech numerous times. We do these without an audience, in private, as a rehearsal for the big event. I competed in senior level Karate competition for many years and would never dream of going on to the mat and doing the kata or prearranged patterns, once only just for the judges. I would be practicising for months in the Dojo, rehearsing that kata, over and over again until I dropped. Why would putting your reputation out there in business require anything less?

By the time you hit that stage you are well practiced and confident. Consequently your brain doesn’t release masses of chemicals preparing you for battle with a sabre toothed tiger, where you either run away or stand your ground and fight. Consequently, come showtime you are not so nervous. Some nerves yes, but not debilitating.

The other mental shift is to decide who this speech is about. Not what it is about, but who it is about. For people who hate speaking in public or become crippled with nerves, the speech is all about them. It is about their mental trauma, induced by how they feel they will be judged by the audience and their deep fears of imminent, unmitigated disaster, about to humiliate them for the rest of time.

We must switch the focus to the audience. We are giving each person six seconds of eye contact, inducing that feeling in them, that they are only person in the room. Hawk like, we are scrutinising their reaction to what we are saying. We are judging if they are with us or do we have to push harder to bring them on board. We are pumping out our ki (気) or intrinsic energy into the audience, to maximise our body language. We are using congruent gestures to add lustre and power to our words. Tonal variety, variations in speed and power engage the audience, such that they are eschewing their mobile phone’s siren call to escape to the internet.

In response, some will smile, nod, laugh at your amusing asides, follow you through the navigation of the talk. After a while, some will start to lean into you. It will only be a few millimetres, but what a rush that feeling is. When twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred people start doing that at the same time, there is a powerful energy in the room. It hits you like a drug racing through your veins and leaves you looking for your next hit. This is when public speaking surpasses duty and becomes a real pleasure.