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I'm starting a new role as a development team lead in a large American corporate software development firm. Over the course of my first week, I'll be introducing myself to various stakeholders. During these introductions, I plan to provide an overview of my experience to date. I want to make a good first impression and in the past, this is how I would describe my experience :

I worked at company X for Y years and worked on Z.....

and repeat this simple template for a number of different companies and technologies. Now as a dev team lead I think something more or different is required. I'm not suggesting lying but want to describe my background from a more leadership perspective. So, in addition to :

I worked at company 'X' for 'Y' years and worked on 'Z'.....

Also include:

At company 'X' I was also responsible for researching the architecture for the 'H' component.

I'm joining the firm as a dev team lead and therefore was not an internal hire so I feel I have to prove myself more rather than if I had been internally promoted. Also, I feel I will be under more scrutiny to deliver and know what to do because I'm an external hire into a leadership position.

How should I introduce myself to the various stakeholders? Please advise tips / heuristics /rules (or books) . Although I will be meeting different stakeholders they will all be of a technical background, some more than others so I plan to use the same outline of my background experience at each meeting.

Update: I should have mentioned but I've been requested by my manager to prepare a couple of slides to briefly outline my experience. I plan to talk about my past experience at a high level (1 minute) and my hobbies (1 minute).

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  • You may want to tone down on naming past companies X, Y, Z too often or at least not at the beginning of the sentence itself. Some may think of it a show off. Instead focus on describing your expertise and your experience in general.
    – PagMax
    Commented May 13, 2021 at 17:01
  • Yes, the example sentences given here are totally wrong! Don't "list" like that.
    – Fattie
    Commented May 14, 2021 at 0:51

4 Answers 4

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Since there's a dearth of answers:

  1. The good news is since you are now more senior you actually do not have to say so much. You do not have to explain much.

  2. Make a brief list of companies you've worked for: that's enough.

  3. Be extremely short. Nobody wants to listen to these things.

  4. For continuity, thank or mention the person who introduced you and wrap from there.

Here's an example text

"Cheers, I'm Ben, call me Blue. As you may know I was previously with Apple, Google and Tesla for some years. It's great to be here with the team at NewCo. Thanks for that intro Steve, let's get to work eh!"

Anything more than that is unnecessary.

Don't forget that since you are now more senior you actually do not have to say so much and you should not say so much. You do not have to explain much.

Regarding your astute question on famous books on business communications, there are many and you should read them all. You'll find that How to win friends, Just listen, Crucial conversations, Exactly what to say, etc etc. all have the same thing to say on this issue. It's not a critical communication, it's a formality. Everyone listening is annoyed to have to get through it. The overwhelming factor is to be brief. Again the critical element is that now thatyou are more senior you should not explain your self too much.

Hence,

I'm joining the firm as a dev team lead and therefore was not an internal hire so I feel I have to prove myself more rather than if I had been internally promoted. Also, I feel I will be under more scrutiny to deliver and know what to do because I'm an external hire into a leadership position.

That may or may not be true, but it's completely unrelated to these introductory sentences when "Steve" says in a Zoom "Why not introduce yourself Ben...". Literally just introduce yourself, ie state your name, thank "Ben", and mention in a phrase list places you've worked.

Enjoy!

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  • Please see the question update.
    – blue-sky
    Commented May 14, 2021 at 4:59
  • ah fair enough @blue-sky - perhaps someone can answer that question
    – Fattie
    Commented May 14, 2021 at 11:50
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I feel I have to prove myself more rather than if I had been internally promoted. Also, I feel I will be under more scrutiny to deliver and know what to do

Your feelings are likely warranted, but you don't prove yourself by enunciating your resume every time you meet someone. Presumably the people who made the decision to hire you were satisfied by your experience and ability to describe it, and this will be the assumption your new colleagues make. You just need to do your job honestly.

It is indeed a good idea to introduce yourself to "various stakeholders", but such introduction should not exceed one or two sentences, something along the lines of "I'm new to this company. Previously I worked as ... for about N years, most recently at companies X and Y". If they want to know more about you, they'll ask.

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  • please see the question update.
    – blue-sky
    Commented May 14, 2021 at 4:59
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This is a European perspective, so feel free to disregard it in favor of more US centric answers:

How should I introduce myself to the various stakeholders?

Tell them who you are, what you will be doing for them in this company and tell them what you can help them with even if it's not officially your job.

For example:

Hello, I'm Alice. I am the new Teamlead for Enterprise Products. As you are probably aware we handle all our foobar widgets, so feel free to contact me any time you have questions about those or if you feel we could improve them in some way. In the past I have also worked in AI extensively, so if you need another pair of eyes on AI projects, I'm happy to help.

This tells me what I need to know. I do not need to know which companies you worked at before and I don't want to hear about it. It's either boasting or boring, equally useless.

You don't need to show them your credentials. That just seems super insecure. Your credentials have been validated by the only important authority there is in the company: your bosses. They hired you, you passed. That should be enough validation for anybody else.

As far as hobbies go, I like it. Make it very short, but mention something personal.

If you cannot reach me after hours, I'm not ignoring you on purpose. I am the drummer in a punk band, we aren't that good, but we make up for it in volume. So I might actually not have heard the ringer, sorry.

You can also target this. Our new CTO (4 hierarchy levels above the regular IT people, big company) when introducing himself said he plays Call of Duty, but isn't very good at it. With 100 IT people crammed into the largest presentation room, that faceless entity guy from upstairs became a 200% more likable character in a heartbeat. I doubt he'd use the same slide for the board of directors though.

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Go much more casual and much less like a resume. You're not selling your skills, you have the job. Notice that hobbies and personality are set as equal to this- your boss doesn't want a resume dump. You're introducing yourself, and your best bet is to sound approachable and easy to work with. Having been in this situation before, I'd go something more like:

"Hi guys, I'm Gabe. I've been programming for about 20 years now at companies like Facebook and Amazon, as well as a couple startups. Some of the coolest things I've worked on are the On This Day feature of Facebook, their holiday celebrations, and the Swype keyboard. I really love to work on high level architecture, although I have a lot of fun when I get to really micro-optimize code performance. When not coding I love to ..." (Obviously fill in your own experiences, unless you're claiming to be me :)

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