Kill the Throat-Clearing

The most common opening mistakes are forms of verbal throat-clearing — content the speaker needs but the audience does not. "Thanks for having me," "Let me pull up my slides," "Before I begin..." — all of it pushes the real opening further away from the listener's attention.

Create a curiosity gap instead: give partial information that demands completion. "There is one metric that predicts team failure better than any other." The listener now needs the rest — and you have the room leaning in.