How To Introduce A Speaker

Hello. My name's Michael Ronayne, I'm a director of the College of Public Speaking, and I'm going to be talking about different aspects of public speaking. It's very important to introduce a speaker properly.

I remember probably the first professional speaker I ever heard. He had a wonderful introduction. He came onstage, and he thanked his host for the marvelous introduction.

He said, "I knew it would be good, because I wrote it myself." And everybody laughed, and I laughed, and it was only years later I realized he probably wasn't joking. Because I've had a lot of fairly lame and noncommittal introductions, and the problem with that is it takes away the momentum of the speaker.

The job of the person hosting and introducing a speaker is to provide an interest in the room, so that the audience wants to listen to whatever that person has to say. So if you've got to introduce somebody, it's quite simple, not necessarily easy, but basically you just need to make sure you get three words into your introduction. Three words: successful, friend, listen.

"Here's my friend Bob. He's incredibly successful at what he's doing at the moment. He's a great friend of our organization, so we're very lucky to have him here this evening.

He's got some wonderful information he'd like to share with you this evening, so I suggest you all listen very, very carefully." And with that, you've built up a level of expectation that the audience are ready to listen to whatever this person has to say. If you think of it a little bit like a running race, a relay race, your job as the host, as the introducer, is to start the race.

You've got a baton in your hand. Your job is to get enough momentum up by the time you hand the baton over to the speaker that he has enough momentum behind him that he's now able to do his job and speak to the audience on your particular behalf. So when you're introducing a speaker, just remember three words.

You get these three words in, it'll work: successful, friend, listen. So that's the best way, the most effective way, of introducing a speaker. .