Perhaps you can relate: you have been asked to present your project to management. You have spent days crafting a sleek PowerPoint and are more than satisfied with it. You project your presentation onto the screen and glance at your audience, but you notice that no one is really paying attention. One person quickly responds to an email, another stares intently at their phone, and yet another rushes to grab a cup of coffee. Hesitantly, you begin your presentation: “I will take you through the developments in the improvement project we have been working on for the past few months. I will first discuss the reasons for the project, then I will outline what we have achieved so far and how we have done it. I will finish with an overview of the issues we will be addressing in the coming months.” Throughout the presentation, things do not seem to improve: emails are still being checked and mobile phones keep ringing. At the end of your presentation, you get questions that you have already addressed, and you feel unheard, wondering how to proceed with your project. 

Do not give into your frustration
Now, it is understandable that you are feeling frustrated, because why are they not paying attention to your story? But if you take another look at the introduction of the presentation, you will see that it is not surprising that you are struggling to capture the audience’s attention. Attention is a scarce commodity in today’s information society. Our attention spans are shockingly short, and the number of stimuli we process in a day is countless. Think about all the pop-ups, emails, and push notifications we receive daily on our mobile phones or smartwatches. As a presenter, you are competing against all those stimuli to capture your audience’s attention. The good news? With a strong start to your presentation, you can still win this battle. 

Learn from the masters
A good introduction works wonders in grabbing your audience’s attention. But what does that look like? The introduction above is merely an announcement that you are going to tell them something. It is almost an invitation for your audience to finish up their last tasks, because the real story has not started yet. Good stories do not need to be announced! Martin Luther King did not start his “I Have a Dream” speech with the words “I am going to tell you about…” but with a brilliant reference to Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. (“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.”) When launching the iPhone, Steve Jobs did not start his story with “I am going to take you through…” but with an outline of the importance of this day. (“This is a day I have been looking forward to for two and a half years.”) 

So, you do not start your presentation with an announcement of your story either! How then? During our presentation training, we teach participants to start with an anecdote or a surprising news item. Sometimes, participants still have the tendency to announce this: “Before I tell you about the improvement project, I want to start with a news item that illustrates why the project is so important.” But after some practice, they start directly with the content, just like Martin Luther King and Steve Jobs did. “This weekend, hundreds of people slept on the floor of Amsterdam Central without food or drink. Just down the road at the Ziggo Dome, thousands of screaming teenage girls struggled or were unable to get home. And all of this was due to a single failure at the train traffic control post. Unfortunately, like ProRail, we are heavily dependent on our network. To prevent our customers from being left empty-handed, we need to take action now.” 

Take some time to get used to it
It may take some getting used to starting a story that way, but after a few tries, our participants find that it actually feels much more natural. Plus, this time, they were able to capture the audience’s attention; no one was looking at their phones anymore. 

Now you might think: starting every presentation with a story or anecdote, is not that time-consuming? Fortunately, it does not have to be every time: a newspaper headline emphasizing the relevance of your story, or a remark someone makes upon entering, are also fantastic openings for a presentation. So, always keep your eyes and ears open: an event, comment, or piece of news could easily become the engaging introduction to your presentation! 

• Pyramid Principle