On start of a project you will meet your team for the first time. You should ever see it as a new team, even if you already know these people from previous projects. But now you have a new project, maybe with a little bit other constellations of people and with a new project environment. So you should use your first meet with the team to introduce yourself and take the chance to imagine yourself as the project leader. This is an important step because the human being wants to look up to someone and so your team wants to have a strong project leader.

A short and clear statement to your own person with respect to the project should create confidence within the team. And this short introduction speech is so important that you should do it separately from other meetings. Don’t mix it with a project kickoff or some other project startup meetings. Perform your introduction speech as a short five minute talk and schedule it a little few days previously to the project start. You can set up a short meeting or you can spontaneously get all team members together.

Content of the speech

Your speech should contain the following content. But keep in mind to say only one or two sentences per point because the speech should at least have a length of about five minutes.

• Short introduction of yourself
• What is your function and how do you interpret your function
• What is your motivation and why do you want to do the project
• What do you want to contribute
• How do you want to embed the project members into the team and how much personal responsibility do they have
• What do you expect from the team members and what do you not like
• Why do you need the team (you can say one or two sentences about each team member and why you need him, but be careful and talk about each member and do not favor someone)
• Give a short outlook on the next step (e.g. “I am therefore pleased to see you all on next Tuesday in the project kickoff meeting”)

Summary

The introduction speech is an often missed but very important short introduction of yourself, your expectations and your team. It allows you to give the team a first impression of yourself and set up some basic expectations and project rules. So this speech is the first step to create confidence within your team and present you as a reliable project leader.