Communication Tip - engage them with your opening.

I'm in Oxford as I write this, preparing to speak to an audience of Head Teachers tomorrow.

It's one of my favourite cities, and the location of a large part of one of my favourite novels - Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

It's a vast, sprawling story of the relationship between Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte, and Sebastian's family. It was made gloriously famous by a Granada Television dramatisation in the early 80's (and less so by a film version a couple of years ago).

Thinking of the novel as I walked around the Oxford Colleges today, one thing kept coming to mind with regard to my speech tomorrow. The opening line of Brideshead Revisited.

The opening line of Chapter One (although there is a prologue) is "I have been here before".

It is spoken by Charles Ryder, on realising that the army platoon he captains (in the Second World War) is to be camped at Brideshead, home of Sebastian's family. "I have been here before".

The line sets up the whole drama of the novel, setting Charles on a journey through his memory of the preceding twenty or thirty years, from his first days at Oxford, to meeting Lord Sebastian Flyte and friends, Sebastian's dissolution through drink, Charles' marriage and development as an artist, and his relationship with Sebastian's sister Julia.

But it all starts with that one line - "I have been here before".

With the opening line, Waugh sets the stage for his story - and with an opening line, every presentation you make, every email you send, every report you produce will set the stage for how your audience will take it and understand it.

Work hard on that opening line. Is it strong, engaging, involving? If it is, you'll be some way to achieving your objective. (And you do have an objective, don't you?).

If it is weak, unengaging, banal - then you are off to the worst of all possible starts. And don't expect that your audience will come with you on the rest of the journey.

I'll be working hard on my opening for tomorrow's speech. But then again, I have been here before.