How to Introduce Yourself Professionally

Alexandra Roberts on executive presence and social protocol

Your name is the one piece of information in a first meeting that the other person cannot work out for themselves. Most people say it fastest.

I spent more than ten years in hotel management, running the front office at The Lowell on the Upper East Side and later working as a host at Four Seasons San Francisco, and I heard a great many people introduce themselves across a counter. The ones the staff remembered were seldom the important ones. They were the guests who said their name once, clearly, and then waited for you to say yours.

That is nearly the whole skill.

Say both names, slowly

First and last, with a small pause between them. In San Francisco people drop surnames almost immediately, which is fine once the introduction is over, but the first time you say your name the surname is what lets someone write to you afterward, or mention you to a colleague without having to describe your jacket. “Hi, I’m Dan” at a reception in Pacific Heights gives the other person nothing to hold.

Slow down more than feels natural. You have said your name so many times that it has worn smooth for you, and the listener is hearing it for the first time over a room full of glasses. If your name is unfamiliar to most Americans, say it once and then offer the shortcut yourself: “Siobhan, said shi-VAWN.” People are grateful to be told, and they will use it.

The sentence after your name

One sentence about what you do, in words a stranger could repeat to someone else at the same party. That last test is the one I give clients, and it rules out nearly everything they bring me. A title fails it, because “VP of Platform” means something different at every company on Market Street. The pitch fails it too, since nobody can repeat forty seconds about your go-to-market motion, and nobody asked for it.

“I run a company that makes payroll software for restaurants” passes. So does “I advise families on how to hand a business to the next generation.” Notice that neither one tries to impress. The plain version invites a question, and a question means the other person has chosen to keep talking to you, which is worth more than anything you could have said about yourself.

Then stop. Ask about them, or simply let the silence sit for a second until they fill it.

Around a meeting table

A round of introductions at the start of a meeting has its own rules, and the first one is that the host goes first. Whoever called the meeting decides how much biography is acceptable, and everyone after them will copy it almost exactly. A host who spends ninety seconds on their career has just licensed every person at the table to do the same, and the first quarter of the meeting is gone.

So hosts, keep it short. Your name, then a single clause on why you brought everyone together.

If you are a guest, match the length of the person before you and add the one thing they did not say, which is why you specifically are in this room. “Priya Raman, I lead finance, and I’m here because the budget question at the end is mine.” Now everyone knows when to look at you. On a video call the same rules hold, with the added discipline of unmuting before your turn so the table does not wait through your fumbling; I go further into the remote room in executive presence on video calls.

At a reception

Socially, the order is reversed. You rarely open with your work at all, and on the Peninsula the question tends to arrive sideways anyway, as “What are you working on?” rather than “What do you do?” Answer the version you were asked. Give your name with your hand, connect yourself to the evening (“I sit on the board with Catherine”), and leave the career for when it comes up. If you are walking up to a group that is already talking, the sequence is a little different and I describe it in how to join a conversation already in progress.

When the room already knows who you are

This is the case that the standard advice ignores, because the standard advice is written for people trying to be noticed. A good number of my clients have the opposite problem. Their name is on the building, or their face was on the front of the business section last spring, and somewhere along the way they have quietly stopped introducing themselves.

I think this is a mistake, and an expensive one. When a well-known person walks up and simply starts talking, everyone who recognizes them is put in the position of pretending they do not need an introduction, while the one person who does not recognize them (there is always one, and it is often the spouse of someone you will want to know) is shut out of the conversation entirely. It also reads, unavoidably, as rank being pulled.

Say your name anyway. Both halves, in the same plain sentence you would use anywhere else.

At The Lowell, the guests with the most reason to assume we knew them were the likeliest to give the desk their full name on arrival anyway, as though we might have forgotten them since spring. It made everyone behind that counter want to look after them. Senior people who do this are remembered as gracious. Senior people who skip it are remembered as senior, and nothing more.

Keep the descriptive sentence even plainer than usual. “I’m Elena Marsh, I started the company Tom works for” is warmer, and somehow more powerful, than anything that recites the valuation. The room knows the valuation. What it does not know yet is whether you will be pleasant to sit next to, and your introduction is the first evidence.

When the honest answer is complicated

Between roles or recently sold: say what is true in one breath and point forward, as in “I sold my company in June and I’m taking the autumn to decide what is next,” because apologizing for a gap in your own introduction asks a stranger to comfort you before they have learned your name.

In writing

The same discipline applies on the page, with more time to edit and fewer excuses. Your name and your reason for writing go in the first sentence. The request comes after, and the whole thing fits in a short paragraph. When someone else is making the introduction for you by email, the conventions shift; the etiquette of the intro email covers who replies first and how quickly.

Why it reads as presence

People sometimes expect an executive presence engagement to begin with posture or voice. I often begin with the introduction, because it is the one part of a first meeting entirely within your control, and almost everyone does it carelessly. A person who can give their name and one honest sentence about their work, and then turn their full attention to the person in front of them, has demonstrated in about six seconds that they are comfortable without an audience’s approval. That comfort is most of what clients mean when they say someone has presence.

Introducing other people well is the companion skill, and it is in how to introduce two people in person. If you lose the other person’s name thirty seconds after they gave it, what to do when you forget someone’s name will get you out of it.

Say it slowly. Then listen.