Primacy and Recency For Speakers (Part One)

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.