Rio Grande Restoration

An old adage suggests that people are interested first in themselves, next in other people, then in things, and finally in ideas. This may explain why relating a topic to personal experience heightens audience interest. When speakers have been personally involved with a topic, they gain credibility.
We are more willing to listen to others and take their advice if we know that they have traveled the road themselves. Jason Shafer, a Dean’s List student at Vanderbilt University, related the following personal experience as he began his self-introductory speech:
With a lot of hard work, your son will hopefully make it through a trade school. That heart-gripping statement was what my parents heard when I was in third grade. You see, I was a terrible student in grade school. I was the worst. I’m sure most of you just flew through grade school, getting As and Bs. No problem whatsoever. Me, on the other hand, not at all. I got Cs and Ds. And I had to work for them. All of my teachers tried. They didn’t know what was wrong. They tried different techniques, but nothing really seemed to work. I guess the point of crisis came in third grade when my teacher realized that I couldn’t even read yet. It just about killed my parents. They wanted the best for me. So they had some testing done, and found out I had a learning disability.
Relating your subject to personal experience can be very important if you face an unfriendly audience. Brock Evans, vice president of the Audubon Society, recently addressed the Seattle Rotary Club on the Endangered Species Act. Because this speech was presented amid a controversy concerning logging restrictions in that area, his introduction before this group was especially critical. Evans combined the techniques of involving the audience and relating the topic to personal experience in this introduction:
It is always a distinct honor to be invited to speak before a prestigious group like the Rotary Club of Seattle. I thank you for inviting me to be here today, and not just because of the opportunity to share a few
thoughts about this very important subject. Those of.you who know me know that my roots here run very deep. It was 30 years ago that I moved here from the Midwest, because I wanted to live in what I thought then—and still do now—was the most beautiful part of the country.
And those of you who know me know that my passion for this special Northwest land, its unique blend of mountain and forest and sea, goes even deeper. . . . It caused me to leave a law practice here, in order to devote my life to fight to help keep our way of life, to keep the Northwest the special place it is. It has now become a life’s work that has taken me many places, first all across the Northwest, and finally into “exile” as I now believe—in the nation’s capital—that other
Washington, where for better or worse, so many of the great issues of our time are finally resolved.
In this example, the love of the area and its beauty unites the speaker and his listeners. The fact that the speaker “adopted” the area lends special credence to his passion for it.