How to Win Through Introduction and Influence People
By: Tarun Kohli
Tags: Career Advice, Life Lessons, Self-awareness, Work, Meetings

I don’t have the typical markers of success — didn’t go to an Ivy league school, wasn’t a scholar student, wasn’t the lead singer of a metal slaying rock band, didn’t win any medals in sports because my cylindrical body wasn’t built for it, wasn’t part of a platoon reclaiming a piece of my motherland in a righteous war against tyrannical infiltrators.

Not having any such dazzling stories to introduce myself ties my tongue in a sturdy Bowline knot. One thing I dread in a business setting more than the annual performance appraisal is introducing myself.

You see, I’m a below average person and have had my fair share of failures and successes. I neither want to come across as someone who stretches the fabric of reality with their incredulous humble brags, nor someone who makes it look like they got beamed into this business meeting serendipitously. No wonder I get caught like a deer in headlights in such situations.

So my mind starts doing cartwheels. Should I say something funny, “Um…I’m Tarun, and I’m an alcoholic” and deflect attention from myself? Or, should I be stoic and search the relevant highlights of my career?

It’s bonkers that my mind gravitates towards the latter and finds this as the most opportune time to introspect my numero uno skills. It marches on a quest to find the highlight-worthy skills right when other people are introducing themselves.

Yeah, the moment where I should be paying attention to other people’s life stories is the time when I get into a deep trance looking for the highlight reel of my career. And somehow the HeadSpace App thinks that I can’t meditate, yes, I totally can — I just need the right environment for it.

Finding these perfect things to say makes my anxiety reach a level where I just want to freeze in a cryogenic state and resume my sentient life once the meeting is over.

Gosh! Why does it have to be like this?

I’m envious of the people who speak charmingly about themselves. Who literally have their audience at ‘Hello’. I so wish to get my hands on their secret manuscript as they make introducing themselves seem so…effortless.

I wish we had a mandatory class for this in our four grueling years of Computer Science curriculum — “How to win through introduction and influence people.”

It would have given us a chance to perfect this life skill of starting meetings on the right note. And that would have been game changing in our world of 42 seconds elevator pitches, and 7 second attention spans.

Well, if there was a class like that, I reckon that it would have given us the below framework for introducing ourselves -

01. Keep it short. No one wants to hear long meandering stories about introductions (ahem…the irony of this post isn’t lost on me)

02. Understand the meeting’s context and the audience. For example: are you meeting the stakeholders for a new business venture or designers who have just joined your company?

03. Take a moment to assess the aspect of your personality that works best for the meeting’s context and audience. For example: you want to showcase your strategic prowess if you were meeting to collaborate on a new business venture. And bring about your empath and gregarious side when meeting designers. Not that empathy, and gregariousness don’t have any space in the business venture meeting.

04. Be curious about other people’s introductions. Give it your undivided attention. If there is one thing you could embody from this entire list then let it be this. Look at it this way: Even if you aren’t able to introduce yourself well, you would at least walk away with the solace of having learnt something about the other people in the meeting. And it is in line with the age-old sage advice — to be interesting is to be interested first.

05. You are the best person to share your story. Find the dots in your career’s tapestry that overlap with the meeting’s context. Bonus points if you can find connections with other people’s narratives.

06. Express yourself as you really are, in your one-of-a-kind brilliance. Share facts, and don’t portray yourself bigger than who you really are. (but if you did solve the Middle East crisis….make sure you say it, and own your Nobel peace prize.)

07. Be humble. But don’t humble brag.

08. And relax, will ya? It’s just a meeting, not the end of the world. I know. I know. I’m the last person to be giving such advice given my tumultuous relationship with introductions. But you should still take it from me as I’m still here, after being in an unfathomable number of facepalm introductions. See, I told ya — not the end of the world.