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Let me set the scene for you:
You’ve been asked to speak at a particular function. Before you speak, you are approached by a willing participant who has been tasked with introducing you. This person seems eager to do a great job, and tells you, “I’ve got it covered. I looked at your bio online and I’m ready to go!”
Sound familiar? Now let me tell you what happens next…
The person tasked with introducing you doesn’t have quite the energy you have, and begins to read your bio, that same bio that looks good on a website, but is a little bit long for an introduction.
Wait, let me do that again…
After mispronouncing your name, the person tasked with introducing you reads a bio from your website that was never meant as an introduction, and drones on and on, making sure not to miss a single word. In a slow, methodical, dreary tone, your lifetime of accomplishments seems to take forever to recite. The audience finds themselves either annoyed at the pompous bragging in the speaker’s intro, or they’ve all checked out and are looking at their smartphones. I’ve had introductions that were so poor that I’ve thought to myself, “I don’t even like me!”
It sounds ridiculously simple, but when you have a presentation to deliver, one sure way to stumble out of the gate, is to be introduced poorly. The solution is a simple one, but it will require a little bit of work. My suggestion is to create a different bio, meant for speaking occasions that consists of two things.
- You will need to write two of the best, short sentences you’ve ever written about yourself that the audience might not know about you. For instance, most people know I’m a speaker, but they might not know how long I’ve been at it. They also probably don’t know that I’ve been all over the world doing it. Most people know I’ve written some books, but they might not know the level of success of these books. My best two, short sentences sound like this: A sought-after speaker and bestselling author, Rob Jolles been teaching, entertaining, and inspiring audiences for close to four decades. His books have been translated into over a dozen languages, and his program deliveries have taken him around the world.
- You handle the rest of the introduction. The truth is, most speakers can do a far better job telling his or her story to the audience than someone who barely knows them. My secret weapon has always been this: I let whoever has been saddled with the job of introducing me that I’ll be happy to handle the rest of the introduction myself. I can assure you; they will be grateful! I tell them to say something like this: I’m going to let our speaker, Rob Jolles, jump right in. I’m sure he’ll do a better job introducing himself than I can, so let’s bring him up, and let him do his thing!
This brings me to the final step of being introduced properly. Always carry a short introduction with you so you can tell whoever is working with you exactly what to say. If you do this for a living, have a version of this that can be downloaded from your website. For the record, I’ve never met anyone whose job it was to introduce me who wasn’t grateful to be handed a clear, simple, introduction in a large font, and given permission to let the speaker do most of the introduction him or herself.
The next time you are tasked to speak, show up with a well thought-out, short introduction, along with a gameplan for showing the person who is introducing you how to pass the reins back to you. You will not only be doing a favor to the person who is introducing you, you’ll be doing yourself a favor by being in position to hit the ground running when you take to that stage!