How to Introduce Yourself to a New Team
Making introductions is a sometimes difficult process. The level of difficulty depends on how comfortable you feel in meeting new people. Whether you’re a loud and outgoing extravert or a quiet and calculated introvert, over time you will find it easier to introduce yourself successfully to a new team. An important point to make, is that extraverts don’t necessarily have the upper hand in making a good impression. Sometimes, a loud of brash personality can accidentally brush up their team the wrong way. You could say that in first introductions, thinking carefully before you speak is a clear strength. What follows are three useful tips that will help you kick off work with a new set of employees quickly and positively.
Introducing Yourself Tip 1: Spend more time asking about your team, than talking about yourself
When presented with a large group, many team leaders often fill the new group in on their background. When kept extremely brief, this can be a helpful conversation starter. Don’t let this run for more than a couple of minutes however, as simply reiterating your CV won’t necessarily win you many friends. What will win friends is if you communicate a deep interest in your team; who they are, where they’re from, what they’ve done and what they like to do at the weekend. All these tiny pieces of information will help break the ice, and also get you up to speed on the specialities and strengths of all your team members.
Most people crave attention, and receiving it from a new ‘boss’ or team member will go a long way to building up a working relationship with plenty of goodwill and flexibility. For some, to receive attention in front of a group is a little awkward and removes them from their comfort zone. If you detect this is the case, simply redirect questions to other team members, but ensure that you continue to maintain good eye contact with the individual so as not to exclude them from the discussions. Make a mental note to have a nice chat with the person in a more private setting where the employee will feel more comfortable to ‘open up’ and break the ice.
Introducing Yourself Tip 2: Refrain from ‘boasting’ about past achievements
This is linked to my first point. The reason why I ask team leaders not to talk at length about their prior experience or achievements, is that this has the effect of ‘boasting’ about ones experiences. In teams where some members are older than the team leader, this can quickly lead to resentment. At the introduction stage, the team leader has not ‘won’ the respect or trust of their colleagues, and as such, tales of spectacular feats may only be met with jealousy and competition. Many team leaders like to talk about their achievements to justify their leadership role, and effectively say to their team ‘I am a qualified leader, it is sensible to follow me’. What I would recommend contrary to this, is to hold back these boastful comments, such as ‘I graduated from Yale’, ‘I was offered several jobs but took this one’, and let your performance and behaviour tell the same story in the following weeks. You can let these facts slip later on, when people aren’t likely to form a negative judgement based on your past success.
One simple way to think about it, is that each team member is a worker, but also an individual with an element of pride and ego. When you make an introduction, try to bypass that pride and ego completely, by not directly competing at all with your colleagues. Leave qualifications, sales wins, and even the car you drive, out of the equation for as long as possible to ensure a smooth entry to a team.
Introducing Yourself Tip 3: Allow a degree of autonomy as a default upon arriving.
Whether you’ve experienced this in work or merely seen it on TV, there exists a striking cliche of a new manager with an autocratic leadership style coming into your team, and laying down a whole new set of rules with an iron fist. ‘I’ve been brought in to improve this team, these are my rules, they have worked before, you will obey them.’ is the message behind this behaviour. This is an amateur mistake when moving into a new team with staff you’ve never met before. We all appreciate that each team is different, so ensure you’ve observed your team in action before introducing a new way of doing things. As Stephen Warrilow the change management strategy expert would say, don’t just do ‘organisational process change’ well, you must also handle the change on an individual level.
These tips are just suggested practise, and will not be appropriate in all situations. It is important that as a forward-looking manager, you analyse your own team situation before acting upon this advice. Leave a comment below to tell me how have learnt to introduce yourself to teams!
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