Personal Introductions
Three keys to success:
Have a Prepared Intro & Outro
You'll often find yourself in situations throughout your career where you have to introduce yourself. A prepared response comes across as polished and professional, with the added benefit of being repeatable, but we also want to be sure to come off as authentic and tailored to the situation/audience. I sandwich details about my career, experience, and/or interests that are relevant to my audience with my prepared intro and outro. My prepared intro and outro are stored in my Dropbox so that they're accessible to me as long as I have any of my devices on me, and I revisit them often to improve it and to ensure I haven't forgotten any part of it.
The meat of my intro changes based on whom I'm talking to, taking into consideration their tech stack, goals, past/existing pain points, and their personal experiences. As such, my intro is never the same twice. I have some "standard lines" that appear in my introduction, which is usually the first few sentences, such as, "I'm Wes Dollar, Principal Consultant and Web Practice Lead in Augusta, with 21 years of full-stack development experience focusing on open-stack, web-based applications. I've worn almost every hat in the SDLC, including UI/UX design, product owner, DBA, sys/ad (though I probably wouldn't say that too loud in a room full of DBAs and sys/admins [pause to see if I get some laughs]). I've had the privilege of leading projects for some awesome brands, including [blah blah blah]." After this, I begin speaking to things pulled from my experience that I think will build rapport or start a dialog between my audience and me.
I'm naturally an introvert, in addition to being very shy and self-conscious. I have to be purposely focused on being energetic and animated, giving equal attention to my body language and tone of voice. This is why the prepared intro and outro are so important. I can go on auto-pilot for those parts and focus 100% of my brain's power to actively thinking about body language and tone of voice. I'm also most nervous at the beginning of the introduction, and I know my nerves will calm down fairly quickly once I start talking because my brain is distracted by the presentation itself – most people, I believe, are no different. The prepared introduction gets me past the most nervous part while giving me the ability to focus on what's important (tone and body language). I'm usually pretty calm by the time I get to the portion where I go off-script.
The middle section – the off-script, tailored section – is now primed to be successful. I've given my nerves time to calm down, I've established good body language and tone of voice, and I've hopefully gotten a laugh or two thanks to the cheesy little joke I worked in. All of these things should have helped to build some confidence that will get me through this next portion that isn't scripted. I'm going to take a quick pause for storytime...
I grew up singing in the theater. One of the most amazing humans I've ever had in my life was my theater director for most of those years. I remember he would always tell us, "it doesn't matter how terrible the middle is, they'll only remember the beginning and the end." In other words, start strong, finish strong, whatever happens in the middle likely won't be remembered.
Introductions are no different. We've set ourselves up for success by preparing for the intro and outro – the beginning and end. Surrender to the flow of the middle section. As long as you don't step on an absolute landmine or suddenly fall mute, there's not much you can do to get yourself in trouble. Focus on building rapport, open your mouth, and just let the words come out.
Pro Tip: You can say almost anything as long as your delivery is energetic and engaging.
Give Them Just Enough to Pique Their Interest
As with everything, saying less is more. I usually focus on trying to say all the right things that will prompt my audience to ask follow-up questions, thus beginning a dialog. This is not the opportunity to tell my entire life story nor entire career journey. I purposely hold back details so that I can have a real dialog with them when the time comes.
My goal is to give my audience a little morsels, not the whole thing. I'm trying to prompt them to ask me follow-up questions or to start a conversation. For example,
"As part of this conversion project, I saw an opportunity to automate some of the grunt work, which ended up shaving some time off of the successful delivery of the project."
Notice I offered no details, but I spoke to something every project wants – success delivery in less time. This will prompt my audience to ask me questions, such as,
"What were you able to automate?"
"How did you automate it?"
"What was the original timeline of the project?"
"How much time did automation save?"
"Is there anything about our project you think you could automate?"
Pro Tip: As a consultant, I know I've won when they start asking me questions specific to their project or how I can personally help them.
Again, the goal is to build rapport and start a conversation. Give them enough to prompt questions or follow-up conversations. Leave some gas in the tank for future discussions.
Now, don't feel sad or like an opportunity was missed if follow-up questions or discussions don't come right then and there. It may be days, weeks, or months later before you are asked about one of those nuggets you dropped. You're planting conversation seeds. Sometimes it takes time for those seeds to produce something of value.
Know Your Audience
Avoid "bragging". You can certainly lead them to ask you to share those things you're proud of. People listen completely differently when they prompt you for information/details versus when you force it down their throats. Quick story,
I was once at a conference and someone that I didn't know but had become a fixture in our group that weekend was introducing himself to a newcomer to our group. His introduction was way too long, not polished, and was essentially what he thought was his opportunity to brag and talk about how awesome he is. He had recently made the switch from Apache to Nginx to run the myriad of "game-changing" apps he had created, not one of which I could give you any details on. True to form since he knows everything about everything, he started bashing on Nginx and how we would have done so many things differently to make it so much better. The person he was speaking to was Igor Sysoev – the creator of Nginx.
Know your audience. You can't possibly know your audience if you're meeting them for the first time. This is why the "less is more" concept is so important – it, by design, ensures you'll avoid situations like the above where saying less could have saved that fella from shame and embarrassment. He also missed out on a wonderful opportunity to build rapport with and learn something from Igor.