Recently, I sat in on an all-hands.
And within minutes, I knew almost none of it would be remembered.
Speaker after speaker stepped up.
“Good morning…”
“Thanks everyone…”
A few slides. A few updates.
By the third speaker, the room had shifted.
Eyes down. Laptops open. Energy gone.
Not because the content was bad.
Because none of it was built to stick.
You’ve probably heard this:
Audiences retain about 25% of what they hear.
It sounds precise. Credible.
It’s also… untraceable.
No one knows where it came from.
It’s been cited since 1914 as “long known.”
Which is a polite way of saying: we’ve just agreed to believe it.
But the underlying idea points to something real.
Psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus demonstrated a much more useful pattern:
People remember what comes first.
And what comes last.
Everything else fades.
You don’t have a messaging problem.
You have a placement problem.
Most leaders focus on the middle.
That’s not where memory is made.
After twenty years of coaching executives, here’s what actually works:
Two things.
Your opening
Most people start with:
“Good morning, thank you for being here…”
That’s not an opening. That’s a warm-up.
Your audience is most alert in the first moments.
Spend that attention deliberately.
Start with the one thing that matters most.
No preamble. Just begin.
Your ending
Most people end with:
“Well… that’s all the time we have…”
So the last thing that sticks…
is that you ran out of time.
Instead, decide this before you walk in:
If they remember one thing, what is it?
Say that.
Then stop.
If nothing else lands, your opening and your ending will.
Make them count.
#Leadership #LeadershipCommunication #ExecutivePresence #PublicSpeaking #Influence
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