Start Presentations With A Mental Puzzle To Make A Great Impression

Start Presentations With A Mental Puzzle To Make A Great Impression

First impressions matter, and this is certainly true when you give a presentation. To get off on the right foot, try posing an intellectual question to engage your audience and get them thinking.

Picture: Matej Kastelic/Shutterstock

We already know how first impressions work. When you give a presentation, your audience’s first impression of you has a great effect on how it receives your speech. Confidence and body language are important, but so is your opening line.

Inc suggests you should take advantage of this when you decide how to start your speech.

If our listeners insist on attributing to us those qualities they glimpse in the first few seconds of our talks, despite subsequent evidence to the contrary, let us employ all means at our disposal to take advantage of their leap to judgment. Let us be masters of body language and wizards of the opening salvo. For speakers, it seems, all’s well that begins well!

Use a puzzle as your opening gambit, and your audience is likely to perceive you as intelligent — something which is always an advantage.

“We’re always reading that there are literally millions of undiscovered insects in the Amazon rainforest. I’m completely stumped by the variety of creatures that show up on my front porch in suburban New Jersey. Who are they? What are their names? And why on earth are they knocking on my door?”

Click the link below to read the full article and get some more ideas about how to make a great first impression when you give a presentation.

The Most Powerful Ways to Start a Presentation [Inc]


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