The days and weeks leading up to Thanksgiving often inspire a heightened sense of gratitude. We offer a bit more grace and we’re more mindful of opportunities for giving thanks.
This thanksgiving perspective extends to our professional lives. Everyone who’s taken a turn behind the podium, regardless of the season, is grateful for a good introduction.
Introductions of other speakers are critical. When delivered effectively, introductions pique the audience’s interest, set the speaker up for success and they help you, the introducer, gain credibility – all in 30-90 seconds! While short, an introduction is an important presentation in and of itself. The next time you have an opportunity to introduce a speaker, consider the following structure:
- Purpose
What is the purpose of this talk and why is it important to the audience?
- Professional
Why is this speaker so qualified to address this topic?
- Personal
What is something personal about this person that the audience might find interesting to know?
Below are additional tips for gaining your audience’s interest and attention:
- Be personal and speak from the heart
- Avoid superlatives – “the best,” “you’ll be amazed,” “number one,” etc. They can become noise.
- Run your introduction past the presenter
- Make sure you know how to pronounce the speaker’s name!
Introduction – Example
Using the structure shown, your introduction may look something like this:
- Purpose
Hiring the right team for critical projects can mean the difference between success and failure of the project. But how do we know if we have hired the right person? As team leaders, we face this challenge often.
We need to hire quickly to keep projects on track, but the wrong hire can do just the opposite. Think about the impact of a bad hire on the team (pause), the project (pause), the company’s revenues (pause). Hiring is a high-stakes process and is an area we can all benefit from improving.
- Professional
Our speaker today is no stranger to this process. She has hired over 300 project team members in our company in the last three years. She has compiled her experience in a handbook titled “Hiring the Best.” Her work experience includes… (highlights briefly provided). Her education further qualifies her to speak on this topic because… (brief highlights of qualifications provided).
- Personal
And if you can believe it, in her spare time, she and her family are always on the hunt for fun places to go skydiving!
Please help me welcome Susan Smith (lead applause).
Following this structure for your next introduction will lead to an interested audience and a thankful speaker!
