Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of

executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way

you want to be perceived.

I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach,

and today we're talking about compelling openings.

Mark had been a director at a global software company for many years. During our coaching, he got promoted to senior director. His group was going to expand from six people to 28. I happened to be with him the day

before the kickoff meeting with his new expanded team. I asked him, what's the

first thing you're going to say to your new team tomorrow. In reply he rambled a kind but out of

focus sentiment of welcome. He obviously was thinking about it for the very first time

right then. I felt his opening

moments with his team was too big an opportunity to treat casually, so we

began to work on what he was going to say right at the start. For a moment, imagine you're a

participant at an event. What do you expect at the start? A generic welcome and all the usual blah blah blah right? What you

don't expect is a message that leaps out and grabs you. When you're the speaker use your opening to capture hearts and minds. There are many

ways to deliver gripping openings. What follows are three ways to do that. I encourage people

to do each of these without introduction or preamble. Just jump in. In addition to the three ideas I'm going to talk about here,

I'm also going to tell you one critical technique

you should never leave out of your opening.

Okay, here's the first of the three techniques for creating compelling

openings. Number one, tell a story. The words, let me tell you a story, never fail to stir people. Your story

should either illustrate behaviors you want people to emulate or be an example of behaviors you want people to

avoid. If you've got a story to tell don't spend time introducing it just

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