You only get one chance to make a favorable impression for yourself, and for your colleagues and clients.
Whether you’re hosting a conference, mingling at a networking event, or leading your team through a presentation to a new client, there’s one step that’s inevitable: introducing people to one another. If you’re like most busy professionals, your introductions of your colleagues and clients feel perfunctory, are unplanned, and come across as either terse or rambling.
They deserve better than that – and so do you. As Plato wrote in The Republic, “The beginning is the most important part of the work.” Introducing people to each other is the beginning of establishing credibility (for them and for you), building rapport, creating connections, starting or strengthening relationships, making quality referrals, setting the stage for future business collaborations, and much more.
In addition, when you demonstrate that you care about your colleague and clients enough to learn and share more memorable about them than is on their business card or LinkedIn profile, you make yourself more memorable too.
