This is episode 514.
Welcome back to Speak Up, the podcast for high-performing introverts, including you, social introverts where we reveal the charisma and communication secrets of A-listers so that you get the recognition and the opportunities you have earned.
I am your host, Laura Camacho, your magical executive presence coach, godmother, and strategist.
And these are the Speak Up 12 Days of Christmas where you get 12 tiny but mighty tips between December 25th and January 5th to help you create big executive presence, to get the recognition and the rewards for your contributions in this new year.
So here's something that gets overlooked in a lot of ambitious careers.
People cannot champion you and your work if they can't explain what you do in an easy and interesting way.
If your introduction is too generic, too vague, too long, too detailed, sounds like a job title, then you are forgettable.
Nobody cares.
It's just you're generic and that's not what it takes.
Generic does not make it to the executive suite.
You need an introduction that is crisp, clear, repeatable, that opens doors, that is interesting.
And you're going to use this anytime you're meeting people.
And even if you're presenting to a group where maybe even most of the people know you, but there's a few that don't.
You can always go with the, oh, I'm happy to be here.
And for those of you who don't know me, blah, blah, blah, your introduction.
It's 11 words on the 11th day of Christmas here.
So here's the structure.
I help who?
Who do you help?
Achieve what?
Through how?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
That's seven words.
It is not an 11 word introduction, so here is your introduction template.
I help blank achieve blank through blank.
All right, so it's who do you help, what do you help them do and how do you help them?
And you don't have to explain from soup to nuts every detail, just big picture.
Here are three examples.
One is for me.
I help scientists and other nerds communicate complex data with clarity and confidence.
Another person.
I help teams reduce quality issues through proactive risk strategies, or i help engineers simplify technical projects.
So executives act fast.
Of course, when you get to the c-suite folks yeah, i'm the cfo and that's your introduction, but until you get there, we want a little bit more detail, because people need to understand a little bit more about you than just your oh, i'm a project manager.
When your intro is that clear about who you help, three things happen.
So people get your value more easily.
It's just clear who you help.
So that puts you in the solution category, not in just the overhead category or the cost center category, even if you do work in HR or compliance.
But then people can repeat what you do.
And that is what you want.
That is Scaling your visibility.
Anytime you want to get a message out there, it has to be easy to repeat.
So scalable visibility.
Simplicity is sophistication and action.
So introduce yourself, who you help, what do you help them achieve, and how do you do that?
Have a fantastic day and I will catch you tomorrow in the last day of the 12 days of executive presence.
Bye-bye.