Episode #157 What Is The Best Way To introduce Yourself When Presenting

Usually when we are speaking we are introduced twice. Once at the very start by the MC and then during our segment of the talk. The MC’s role is quite simple. It is to set the stage for the speaker, to bring something of their history, their achievements and various details that make them a credible presenter for this audience. This can often be a problem though, depending on a few key factors.

Are you relying on the MC to do the research on you, encapsulate your achievements and highlight why you should have the right to stand up here in front of everyone and pontificate on your subject? Most people are too busy to do better than a perfunctory job of this and often they won’t appreciate what particular points need more highlighting than others.

It is always best to prepare your own introduction. Keep control of what is being said about you and the areas you wish to showcase. You can decide for each occasion which elements of your history or current focus are going to be most impactful for this particular audience and topic. Don’t make it too long.

I was recently organising a speaker for an event and his self-introduction was very long, a potpourri of his entire life. He obviously couldn’t discriminate between very, very high points very high points and high points, so he cobbled the whole thing together as a unit. I wasn’t the MC that evening but the actual MC ignored the whole thing and just said, “you have seen his biography in the meeting event notice, so I won’t go through it now”. Yes, we may have glanced at it, but we were not remembering it in detail and the chance to reconnect with it was no longer there.

The MC role can be difficult to manage for the speaker. They can choose to ignore everything your wrote and give their own version. Usually this is laced full of errors, exaggerations and miscommunication. Some MCs have pretty big egos and think they are the star of the show and that they can do a better job than any offerings from the speaker. What comes out of their mouth is usually an amazement, because you know what they were supposed to say.

For this reason, my advice is to only feed the MC the key points and deny them the option to seize hold of your reputation and background and pervert it into something totally unrecognisable. You only need them to set the stage and give you a chance to connect with your audience. When it is your turn to speak you can go freely into the details you want highlight.

I would not do this immediately following on from the MC. We need a break and the biography is not the best way to start your speech anyway. The start of the talk has only one purpose and that is to stay the hand of every single person in that audience, from secretly reaching for their phone to escape from you, to the charms of the internet.

Design a blockbuster opening that will grab the attention of the audience and then introduce yourself, rather than the other way around. When you get to your self-introduction, look for opportunities to tell a story that brings some highlight to the attention of the listeners. This is a more subtle way of telling everyone how fantastic you are. This also limits the amount of content you can share with the audience, ensuring it doesn’t get too long and too detailed. We will remember your story more than any other part of your introduction, so choose something that is highly memorable about you. Make it positive rather than negative. You can tell plenty of stories in your talk about how you learnt through failure, but for the introduction, choose those incidents which portray you in a good light. This is what you want people to associate with you – success, ability, innovation, bravery, learning.

Don’t allow your introduction to happen, with you as an interested bystander. Grab hold of the content and feed certain parts the MC to allow them to do their job. Keep other juicy parts for yourself, to set the scene for your speech to be a great success.